Which took a lot longer than expected because right after I threw all the stuff at it that I could ( which is step one of my usual modus operandi, step two is seeing how much of it is necessary and how much I can cut ) the stuff happened that I will tell you about in a moment and then we had to prepare to go to the Comic Con in Dortmund and then we were at the con and I just finished the post before this one Yesterday or the day before. It´s difficult to know since my sense of time is a little off now with all the nightly eight hour bus rides until four o´clock in the morning.
Anyway, here is finally the part I cut from the original post and it´s a good thing I did it. Not only because I felt that this is something that should not get buried in - between a post as it might be of interest for a lot of my readers. Also to make the post shorter. And if you have read the last post you know that despite this measure it still ended up being incredibly long. In any case I don´t want to drag this out any longer as you´re dying to know why I should have written the post about Joe Staton´s GREEN LANTERN Yesterday and how that would have saved me a lot of grief.
ADVENTURES IN COMIC BOOK MAKING : BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
I´m glad you asked. As more frequent visitors of this humble blog know I was very busy the last few weeks getting the second issue of VERSAUTE BETTGESCHICHTEN finished so that it would be in time for our visit of the GERMAN COMIC CON 2018 in Dortmund. That´s right. Since we booked all the Comic Con attendances in advance we have another taxing trip before us after the fiasko that was Berlin. For budget reasons we have to once again rely on Flix Bus to take us there ( which is something I am absolutely not looking forward to ) and I´m not sure I have a Hotel room booked.
Anyway, my plan was to finish the new issue last Friday as far as I have managed to do things and then send it to the printer so I get it in time.
But my brother convinced me that it would look much better if I would color the whole thing over the weekend. Which I did not think was possible but I was willing to give it a try. I have to say beforehand that I scanned all the pages in the wrong resolution and in the wrong format which cost me at least one full day. If that hadn´t happened maybe I could have colored the comic in one weekend or three days to be more precise.
As it is Clip Studio does a lot of neat things but getting the art in the right size - which is absolutely necessary if you send your files to a printer - is not among those things which is why most people use other programs to do that. With all the problems I had I think I will just draw the next issue in the right size from the beginning instead of drawing it at twice the size and then scaling it down. It might not look as polished that way but I am avoiding a lot of trouble and problems and if I want to be professional about making comic books to earn a living that is what I have to do.
Be that as it may, I scanned the art in a second time and worked through the whole weekend to get most of the pages finished. My brother thinks I could have gotten some coffee at the end and finished one or two pages more but the truth is my brain just stopped working properly and the last two pages I colored turned out a bit wonky. Also there was no time left because I still had to make the pdf file to send to the printer. I had already made a backup pdf file as a backup if I could not get the new comic book colored in time but now I had to make two new versions. Why two new versions ? Well, originally the second issue was going to be 48 pages but then I found out that there is a price difference between 48 and 44 pages but not between 44 and 40 pages. The next price bump would have been between 40 and 36 pages but I could just not bring it down to 36 pages.
WHEN IS A DELIVERY NOT A DELIVERY BUT PART OF A PACKAGE DEAL ?
So I had the pdf file ready, my brain was starting to give out on me ( I was fighting bouts of narcolepsy while coloring ) and I had to make the order for the comic. My brother had promised that we would do that together so I ordered the right paper but he was sleeping and the deadline was approaching so I had to do it all myself. Now everything worked out fine but the thing that threw in the monkey wrench was the 24h express delivery. Which I added because otherwise it would not arrive on time.
It meant the costs for printing my new comic would be higher than usual but the best comic is useless if it arrives late. And I could not go to the Comic Con Dortmund without a new comic. So I had been working on the comic book through the entire weekend until Monday morning so my order would be the first thing the printing company would get without getting much sleep. Which means that I was passed out most of Monday.
Which brings us to Yesterday. I was going into and out of sleep cycles very randomly but I was awake until 8´o clock. I thought about writing a new post - which would have been this one - until my package arrived but instead I decided to lie down a while and wait for my package to arrive.
Now mind you - just lie down. Not sleep. Because of my condition my body needs at least eight hours of rest every day if I want to do anything.
So I try to make sure that I get eight hours of rest even if I don´t get much sleep. Ever since my knee surgery I have not slept very much and the only time I know that I was indeed asleep is when I wake up late.
With that said it can sometimes get very boring if you have to lie still for two or three more hours when you want to do something. Thankfully I have been able to think about my comic the last few weeks when I have to do that - plotting it out in my head. Now the thing is that I was waiting for the mailman or in this case the ups man to arrive but he never came.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. THE UPS MAN ? NOT SO MUCH.
What I got instead of my package was a notification in the mailbox that he had tried to deliver my package but that nobody was home or at least did reply when he rang the doorbell. Which I am not convinced he really did.
Because me, my brother and my mother were all at home and I cannot believe that none of us heard the doorbell. One person ? Maybe. Two persons ? Maybe. But three persons ? That is highly unlikely. Plus, I don´t think I didn´t hear the doorbell. I am convinced I was awake the whole time. Be that as it may I spent the rest of the day finding out what had happened to my package, where I could pick it up and how to get there.
HEY, LET´S SEND SUBZERO TO THE MIDDLE OF FREAKING NOWHERE
I even tried to get a new identity card because my current one is expired but I didn´t have the right biometric photograph for a new one. So I went to the ups station to pick up my package ( which was in the middle of f - wording nowhere ) and while I really didn´t need a new identity card I was glad that I only ordered 50 copies of my new comic book because it would have been impossible for me to schlepp the 100 copies all the way home.
Thankfully the bus was going the normal route again ( for the last few weeks it has been taking a detour around Neckarweihingen which meant that it did not go to certain bus stops which made buying things very difficult for me ) so I stopped at the diner on the way back to eat a pizza - otherwise I would have probably passed out from exhaustion - and get some ice cream at the ice cream parlor ( which was closed the last few weeks which cut down on 70 percent of my activities ). For the rest of the day I was too kaput to do anything so I did a few things on the internet.
STAND AND DELIVER ? THIS UPS MAN SURE NEVER HEARD OF ADAM ANT
So I at least got my comic book in time for the Comic Con in Dortmund but while I certainly paid for a 24h delivery I did not get it. In fact I didn´t get my package delivered at all. I had to go and get it myself which cost me some money, more time and a lot of pain and in the end I probably can´t even get a refund. Because the printing company will claim that it is not at fault because it sent the package away on time and if anyone is to blame it is ups. And ups will say that they delivered on time but nobody answered the door and it´s not their fault that I had to go and get it.
I still don´t understand why they could not give it to a neighbor. I mean, we are constantly accepting packages for our neighbors when they are not at home and vice versa and you mean to tell me that on the one day when I get a really important package NONE of my neighbors is there to take it in my stead ? That´s very hard to believe. So I´m not sure if the ups guy really rang the doorbell and tried to deliver the package but in any case he didn´t try very hard. Come on, he could have left it with some neighbor.
As it is I paid for the 24h delivery but I didn´t get neither the 24 hours nor the delivery. And like I said I don´t think I can get any kind of refund.
And then my brother wants me to sell the new issue for a very low price.
ADVENTURES IN COMIC BOOK MAKING TWO : WHICH PRICE IS RIGHT ?
Which I don´t want to do for three reasons. First up, you have to keep in mind the overall prices of the small publishers and I have seen some of the other artists sell a 16 page comic with color pages for way more than 7 EUROS. Secondly the printing costs alone - with the 24h delivery mind you - are higher than the first issue of my comic and you also have to factor in the costs for the material you used. Plus your own work. So if I went with the price my brother wanted me to I would probably sell it for below the production costs. The third factor is that it is extremely difficult to sell a 16 page comic when you also sell a 32 page comic and now a 44 page comic for the same price. Especially if the 44 page comic is almost entirely in color. Which also should bump up the price. As does the adult content.
I tried to go for a more general audience but again things did not turn out as planned and in the end I have another porn comic book on my hands.
So there are various reasons why my new issue should be priced higher than my first issue. It has almost 50 percent more pages, most of the pages are in color and if I don´t increase the price I won´t be able to sell the first issue or the comic my brother made. Because I still have the customer mentality and if I had the choice between a 16 page comic in black and white, a 32 page comic in black and white and a 44 page comic with color pages - all for the same price - I know which one I would pick.
Anyway, that explains my cryptic introduction in my previous post. Since this is a spin - off post I don´t have any links and as this will be on the blog only one day later we don´t have as many celebrity birthdays as usual. Also I already covered some of the birthdays of Today before so I am only including new ones or the ones where I have something new to add.
We are starting with a brand new one, actress Jodie Resther who played Kiki on the cult kids tv scare show Are You Afraid Of The Dark ? and who turns 40. I would like to tell you that it was one of the shows I enjoyed as a kid but I only found out about it through writing this blog. I have since then though watched all the episodes so I picked a good one with Jodie for you. It is called The Tale Of The Dangerous Soup and it stars a young Neve Campbell who later starred in another scary cult movie franchise.
Continuing with the anniversaries Judd Nelson celebrates his 59th birthday who is most famous for The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo´s Fire opposite a then young Demi Moore who turned 54 on the 11th this month and filled out quite nicely since then. She is the number one in my Top Movie Stripteases thanks to her spectacular performance in Striptease .
Speaking of spectacular strips, the reason why I am mentioning Demi Moore - besides the opportunity to feature her - is I wrote a new version of her cult siren entry ( part 1 / part 2 ) with more GIFs of Demi girating her booty than you can .... okay, I´m not going to finish the sentence.
Coming back to Judd Nelson, another thing he has in common with Demi Moore is mad dance skills which brought him a nomination in this top ten.
We also have a comic book birthday as Jerry Ordway turns 61 and he is the reason why I covered a lot of Today´s birthdays. Jerry made a name for himself with the super hero teams from the WW II era and the resulting legacy characters. He´s best known as one of the foundations of John Byrne´s 80s Superman reboot and the short lived The Power Of Shazam.
Even if you have only a remote interest in the big red cheese this series that was cut down before its time is a must read even if Jerry Ordway only did the interior art for the last six issues ( he did all the covers ). He was born to write the character and penciler Mike Krause is no slouch either.
Inker Mike Manley also does a few issues but the icing on the cake is The Power Of Shazam 14 with art by none other than the late great Gil Kane.
And Jerry Ordway did do all the art on the graphic novel of the same title that was the lead in for the ongoing series that won the Comics Buyer´s Guide Fan Award for Favorite Original Graphic Album. This book also came out during the much maligned decade of the 90s. I had it on my pull list and it was something I was looking forward to every month. I was so sad when it was cancelled and I weep for all the readers out there who only know the NEW 52 re - imagining and think they know the character.
For some reason comic companies are hesitant to hire Jerry Ordway and you really have to search for his work like his recent five issue stint on Spongebob Squarepants of all things. To honor one of my favorite artists I did a post about the Justice Society of America Annual 1 which was part of the Thy Kingdom Come saga and featured Power Girl´s return to Earth 2. Man, do you remember when Geoff Johns was still writing good comics ?
Today the best version of the Justice Society characters is on Legends of Tomorrow what in itself is sad proof of the miserable state of DC Comics.
Now since my first tribute post for Jerry Ordway I have written a few more, in fact my very first post this year was about all the DC books - well most of them - Jerry Ordway did. He is not as well known for his work at Marvel although it has not been less prolific. Frequent visitors of the blog won´t be surprised that I took the opportunity to kill three birds with one stone by posting his inks on John Byrne´s Fantastic Four and so far I have done two posts, one special Valentine´s Day post about one of the worst break ups in Marvel history that mainly contained pages from Fantastic Four 277 but also some from Fantastic Four 278 and Fantastic Four 279 and a special BDSM post about Susan Richards transformation into Malice.
Since the Captain Marvel movie - which will be called SHAZAM to avoid any confusion with Disney´s Captain Marvel movie which is really a Miss Marvel movie - will be in cinemas next year I wanted to post a video that explains his proper origin and I think it´s telling that the only idea the writers of the NEW 52 had was introducing a larger and racial diverse foster family for Billy Batson. Who will all get super powers at one point or another in the comics ( and at least one of them will get super powers at the climax of the movie ) showing that they do not understand the character of Billy Batson or Captain Marvel. All they achieve with this is diluting the original concept which is why I predict the Captain Marvel movie to be a financial success ( come on, everybody is gushing about how funny this movie is. Grim and gritty super hero movies are out and so is having a message for kids. But stealing is okay. At least if you are poor. ) but a creative fiasko.
Ed Harris celebrates his 68th birthday and among his credits - which are too numerous to list them all - is playing General Starkey in Stephen King´s The Stand which also starred Molly Ringwald from The Breakfast Club ( and many other John Hughes flicks from the 80s ) AND Busenwunder Laura San Giacomo who celebrated her 56th birthday on the 14th of this month.
The underrated living blow up sex doll template with the overdeveloped breasts never did porn although Laura clearly has the necessary superior physical attributes. Her mammoth 39E melons put other actresses busts to shame and even got top porn stars envious since Laura´s magnificent mammaries are all natural. Laura would have been one of the greats if she hadn´t dressed like a nun. She still couldn´t hide her XXL double airbags.
How apt that Today is also the birthday of Anna Nicole Smith and not only because she almost was my first candidate in my The Search For Power Girl series on the old boob blog. But as if that wasn´t enough Joe Dante directed two episodes of Police Squad and two songs of Randy Newman were used on The Naked Gun : From The Files Of Police Squad both with Leslie Nielsen who was Anna Nicole Smith´s co star in The Naked Gun 33 1/3 - The Final Insult. Daimn, she would have been a heck of a Power Girl !
Which must have been what 89 year old billionaire J. Howard Marshall was thinking when he married the then 26 year old Playmate Of The Month of May 1992 and Playmate Of The Year 1993 in 1994. His family was probably not very thrilled about this since they assumed she only married him for his money which she planned to inherit as soon as possible by having lots of freaky sex with the old guy in as many positions as you can think of. Of which horny J. Howard Marshall probably was aware from the get - go.
This must be the absolutely best way to go : after getting filthy rich you marry a young and flexible blonde Playmate Of The Month with giant 41DD boobs whose only goal in life is to kill you with sex. Who knows to which endurance testing hardcore sex orgies the overinflated living blow up love doll submitted the lucky guy - we only know that it took her thirteen long months to succeed. Man, that was probably the best year of his life !
Anna Nicole Smith didn´t last much longer either with her untimely death in 2007 but instead of engaging in all the negative gossip and rumors about the steady decline of her film career I want to remember her at her best :
Apropos the Maid of Mammaries, I could not include Yaya Han in my last post although I should have since Joe Staton drew some of her very first JSA appearances. In 2016 I managed to do another post about Darick Robertson in which I mentioned the BREAKDOWNS storyline that introduced Power Girl´s famous coconut bra costume. And I just got to say that I still have not given up on a Yaya Han Power Girl coconut bra cosplay ( with the tiniest coconut shells you can find although compared to her huge 40D oppai all coconut shells look small no matter how big they are ) as she has already shown that she does a terrific Power Girl cosplay and she has no problem filling out the magical cleavage window.
So far I had written five posts on Yaya - two of them are pretty safe but the other three are absolutely not safe for work - and I keep mentioning her on various JLA casting posts and any other posts involving exotic sexbombs like Kiana Tom, Ava Cadell, Akira Lane, Miko Lee, Gail Kim or Minka and I swear the completely NSFW BIG YAYA HAN POST is still in the pipeline. In the meantime I have made two new posts about Yaya which showcases a part of her anatomy that I have ignored too often - her legs.
A lot of people claim that Yaya Han´s boobs are not as big as they look online and that she is faking a lot of her overdeveloped 40D ( !!! ) oppai´s voluptuousness with special push ups, wonder bras and her costumes.
But first of all there has to be something to be pushed up or squeezed tightly into a wonder bra and Yaya Han has proven she got plenty of that.
So I chose a video in which she is not wearing a special costume and her titanic torpedoes still look terrific. What a pair of mouthwatering melons !
That shirt is obviously straining to contain Yaya´s XXL - sized asian airbags and her milkshakes really bring all the boys to the yard. Her giant breasts are perfect to be wrapped around my rock hard yule log and if Yaya Han´s juicy jingle bells don´t get you into the Christmas spirit nothing will.
One reason why Miko Lee kept popping up in the posts about Yaya Han is that I needed a body double for Yaya´s more explicit scenes I had in mind.
Which is not ideal since Yaya Han has a 40D bust and Miko Lee is nowhere near in that league. Thankfully it looks like hasian talk show host Jeannie Mai is auditioning for the part and while she also is a bit smaller than Yaya in the chest area she does have an impressive skill set. I am convinced.
This hot sexbomb is of vietnamese descend and even though she is " only " a 37C and not a 40D like Yaya Han I think she could be a body double for explicit scenes. At least it would be fun to put her body to the test.
Mai oh Mai, she could keep me awake for more than one thousand and one nights but she would not be telling any stories since Jeannie would be too busy giving my magic lamp ( which not only grants more than three wishes but also grows to enormous size if you rub it the right way ) a spit shine with her asian lubrication before applying the wax with her huge massage balls. For the finish she insists on french polishing it as she is a pro in the use of asian lapping materials. Plus Jeannie is too classy to talk with a full mouth and it would be difficult to tell a story while getting her brains f - worded out and screaming with pleasure at the top of her lungs.
Although the top ten video of Today could qualify as a music video I wanted to include this one that was brought to my attention by my brother. There is some irony in that but it´s too complicated to explain now. This is the second best harmonica jamming - after Darth Vader .
Speaking of coming in second place, I didn´t go into this with the mindset that I would hate it but after binge watching the first season of She - Ra and the Princesses of Power I have to say that it was hampered by the usual SJW tropes that are plaguing all the new cartoon shows. Which was pretty much what I expected. The show in itself is not uninteresting and the story is engaging but after a while the constant bombardment with tropes is getting on your nerves because with just a little more effort ( or a little less effort making every character such an unoriginal mixture of old cliches ) it could have been a worthy version of She - Ra for a new generation. Instead you get the usual tv cartoon show that gives the viewers what the producers of the show think their audience wants.
Or at least the smallest common denominator. As apparent from the title they HAD to do the same thing as with the SHAZAM movie where instead of one interesting and original character you have a whole selection of racially diverse people who are all different in any way that doesn´t make a difference. Because deep down they are basically the same. The story has an interesting starting point that at least tries to connect this with the original She - Ra series and they even have a character named Bow in it but then the usual tropes start. First off our heroine - or heroines - have to be younger than the original version. Now I don´t know if that is because the tv execs only think that Today´s younger females can´t relate to older females or if that is actually true. I would say the first but after seeing a few Teens React videos I´m not so sure anymore. I mean, there are some that seem to prove that Today´s girls can not relate to another female character properly if said character doesn´t have the same cultural, racial, political background or age as them. Which may be the reason why characters in comic books and the movies are constantly getting younger.
When I was reading comic books as a kid that was not the case. There were younger characters like Robin or Rick Jones but we didn´t identify with them. I identified with Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, Thor who were clearly older than me, a different ethnicity ( I don´t know if we even had spanish or hispanic super heroes before Hector Ayala ) and a different nationality. But I still identified with them and not somebody like Robin.
Not because I could tell myself that one far away day I would be as capable as " the " Batman if I just trained enough while Robin was already better at everything than me that it was impossible to have him as a role model.
No, the reason was quite simple that Batman is the one who is calling the shots while Robin just comes up with another " Holy this and that, Batman ! " before following his orders. And I wanted to be number one, a leader not a follower. So it was logical that I identified with the main character and not the kid sidekick as Robin only transformed into an interesting character for me when he became the leader of Perez´ New Teen Titans.
Anyway, back to She - Ra, there are just too many tropes to really enjoy the show : the heroine who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks who then finds out that everything she thought was true about life has been a lie and there is a great destiny waiting for her and she will be the best there ever was and greatness is just around the corner. They stress the point so much that they had to include it in the intro. Which I don´t get.
It´s like they are trying to empower girls ( because let´s be real, that is the demographic they are going for with the whole princess schtick ) but not too much so that they get to a point where they can´t be controlled.
" Greatness is waiting for you but you are not there yet so don´t get cocky and listen to your SJW instructors. " As it couldn´t be any other way the main character has a best friend who is rebellious, undisciplined, an outsider who has a problem with authority and who ultimately becomes her biggest enemy once our heroine sides with the good guys.There are more tropes but they are just too many to list here and I also don´t want to encourage anybody from checking out this show. Also some people may enjoy the show BECAUSE of all the tropes or may not be aware of them.
I just had to include the OG She - Ran and for me this show has the better look. Again, one of the tropes of new cartoon shows is that they all look like independent comics ( and when I say independent comics I don´t mean such great series like Strangers In Paradise, Bone or Usagi Yojimbo but series like Lumberjanes ) because either it´s the only comic books the producers know or they think that is how a cartoon must look in order to be successful. It´s like when everybody was mimicking the look of Batman - The Animated Series without understanding why it worked so good with that show but isn´t the right look for every cartoon. Also, am I the only one who misses the times when cartoons taught kids important lessons ?
Nowaday all you get from cartoons are pseudo lessons like " We should try to understand everybody´s viewpoint. " or " It´s okay to be different - as long as your different follows certain socially accepted norms because we don´t want any people whose being different makes us uncomfortable. "
To close things out here is sci fi classic This Island, Earth from 1955.
New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best
Judas Dancer !
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