This post was of course meant to be on the blog for Carlos Pacheco´s 56th birthday on November the 14th. In my last spotlight on Carlos Pacheco I included artwork from various series he has worked on so this time around I decided to feature a particular series and after going through my files I chose AVENGERS FOREVER because I finally had enough material for one of my beloved BLACK AND WHITE posts. For those who have never heard of the series - there are after all a lot of people who are now to the comic book adventures of Earth´s Mightiest Heroes because they only know them from the movies - it´s a 12 issue tour de force through the team´s history written by Kurt Busiek, penciled by Carlos Pacheco and inked by Jesus Merino that is not for the uninitiated. Because while this is one of the best Avengers mini series ever you should have a basic knowledge of Avengers lore. So I would not hand it to a complete Avengers newbie.
Not that somebody who doesn´t know much about the Avengers can not enjoy the story or the wonderful art by Carlos Pacheco and his longtime inker Jesus Merino ( yay, two paisanos for the price of one ) but it helps greatly if you know a bit more about Kang´s history and his relationship to Immortus, the convoluted origin of the Vision and how John Byrne tried to fix it in WEST COAST AVENGERS etc, etc. Because not only does Kurt Busiek chose a team of Avengers from different time periods to embark on this wibbly wobbly timey wimey adventure he also takes on the herculean task of explaining inconsistencies of Avengers history over the decades.
So this is an Avengers story that is indispensable for every true Avengers fan worth his salt. Or at least it was until Disney did away with most of the team´s history. There are several editions of this available and as usual I have multiple editions. First off I have the original US single issues all of them signed by the man himself. I was lucky enough to meet him during one of his visits to the International Comic Salon in Erlangen where he graciously signed all. I didn´t get a sketch though. I was only once able to get a sketch and that was a head shot of Wonder Woman in my first small sketchbook. But I already told that story in another post a long time ago.
Coming back to AVENGERS FOREVER, I also have the spanish hardcover by FORUM that collects the entire series in one book for the incredible price of 18 EUROS. Yep, like I always say, in Spain comics are produced for the readers not like in Germany where the books are almost exclusively aimed at collectors. That said I have two german versions, first off some of the softcovers that first came out here and which collected two issues. I got them from the FANTASY STRONGHOLD in Ludwigsburg when they were doing one of their special anniversary bargain sale offers. They had various bundles and thanks to my newly acquired accounting skills I knew that the best deal was to find 50 comics for 50 EUROS. So I threw in all the german issues of George Perez´s AVENGERS and AVENGERS FOREVER I could find.
I did not find the complete run but four out of six is not bad either. I also have the german two volume hardcover set that came out from Hachette in 2013 because my spanish edition is a bit worn out. I know that there is a US hardcover that also collects the complete mini series but it is a bit hard to find - especially since it is included in the first AVENGERS BY KURT BUSIEK AND GEORGE PEREZ omnibus. I did see a copy at the Comic Con in Dortmund but they sold it for more than the regular price. The vendor had a " Buy 3 Get 1 Free " or " Buy 3 Get The 4th One Free " bargain deal but I did not find 4 hardcovers I wanted and with my medical condition as well as the fact that we were traveling by bus I could not schlepp hefty books.
I have seen one or two copies of the US hardcover over the years but they were all misprinted. Which might not faze the regular comic reader but as someone who formerly worked at a printing company I simply cannot spend money on comic books that we would have demanded a refund on.
Anyway, that´s enough of an introduction from me as you are probably already bursting from anticipation to see some original Carlos Pacheco art.
Since this is neither the first time I have written about Avengers Forever nor Carlos Pacheco there are no links I could add and I am also not going to include any links to previous Carlos Pacheco posts - aside from the ones I included above - because there are just too many. But if you want to check out more click on the " pacheco " tag at the bottom of this post.
Speaking about previous posts, since it has been quite a while since my last post there is quite a backlog of important birthdays I missed starting with the late Jack Davis who had his anniversary on the 2nd this month.
Most people Today know him from his contributions to the famous Mad magazine but he started out as one of the regular artist on the best horror anthology ever published. I have to mention him as the name of this blog leaves me no alternative. I just shamelessly use any excuse to put more horror stuff on the blog and two years ago I managed to write a special double feature with two of those stories for the EC horror cult comics.
We continue with the birthdays from December the 8th which brings us a plethora of cult sirens of interest starting with Nicki Minaj a.k.a. Nicki The Harujuku Barbie a.k.a. Nice Nipples Nick a.k.a. Sexy Chocolate a.k.a. Minaj - A - Trois who turns 36. Since I don´t watch music television on a regular basis anymore it took me a while to discover her through her appearances on various award and talk shows. The rapping bi - sexual love doll from indian, african and jamaican descent that looks like Robert Crumb´s wet dream became famous for her mindblowing 40F - 26 - 46 measurements which she presents in most provocative outfits and risque music videos.
Daimn, Nicki has gone on record that she demands to climax every time she has sex but with her massive mammaries and oral skills I doubt any guy would have a problem with that. And I´m not talking about her rapping !
Like I said, I´m not that knowledgeable about her and I may not be the biggest expert on what is art but I know what I like. While looking for a good video of Nicki I found a few which are probably not safe to post and I thought I would have to post The Ultimate Nicki Minaj Fap Challenge but then I came across Chun - Li and with such a title I just had to post it.
Our next cult siren from December the 8th is Teri Hatcher who celebrated her 54th birthday. She has been featured a few times on the blog since she played the BEST Lois Lane on tv so far. Teri was the first actress who made it believable that Superman would choose her over the ultimate sex bombs in the Justice League of America like Big Barda or Wonder Woman.
While there were a lot of hot women on the show Teri clearly was the main attraction showing off her bouncing boobies in a lot of sexy outfits.
She also was in Desperate Housewives where Teri proved she still looked racktastic . And who could ever forget the " I´m not a stripper ! " scene ?
Check out my last post on cult siren Teri Hatcher to read more about her comic book connections like her appearance in Tales From The Crypt or Tango & Cash where she showed her incredible body and dancing skills.
It´s back to comic books with Erik Larsen who turned 56. His Savage Dragon series is one I have pimped forever and a day but because of all the stuff with doing the first two issues of my new comic and going to conventions I am a bit behind. I have to pay my comic shop a visit one of these days so that I can catch up. With that said it is no surprise that I did my last post about Savage Dragon on Erik´s birthday last year. So far I have not done a casting call for the Savage Dragon movie ( well, one role has already been cast by Erik but we will come to that ) but I think Nikki Minaj would be perfect for the role of hooker / turned super heroine Rapture.
Likewise Christina Hendricks ( whom I cast as Maxima in my very first post about CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA MOVIE ) would be spot on for Rita Medermade, the redhead with the biggest boobs in the Savage Dragon universe with her gigantic megasized 39H ( !!!!! ) medicine balls.
For those who have missed the THORSDAY WITH ERIK LARSEN installments here are the links for my posts about Erik Larsen´s issues of THE MIGHTY THOR under Dan Jurgen´s penmanship ( issue 26 / issue 27 / issue 28 ) and the first one about Erik Larsen´s own version of the god of thunder in his SAVAGE DRAGON series to which I never got around to write a follow up.
Coming back to SAVAGE DRAGON since I have done a lot of posts about this series I´m not going to post all links but I´m including the latest ones : I already did a post with some of Erik Larsen´s best splash pages from his 200+ issue run and one that was all headshots ( okay, there is also the much clamored for blowjob scene between Horridus and Savage Dragon ).
But the most important one where I really went into detail about what actually happened in the issues was the one about SAVAGE DRAGON 200 a.k.a. the famous Threesome Issue ( which has links to my big SAVAGE DRAGON post in english and german ) where Malcolm Dragon and Angel finally get it on. The post explains the not brother and sister thing.
What I somehow always brainfart on is that officer Alex Wilde, one of the major sexbombs from Savage Dragon was clearly modeled after Halle Berry.
I know, she looks rather white on the page above but she´s of hispanic heritage and supposed to be colored with a much darker skin tone here.
Since the first issue Alex was the one I hoped Dragon would end up with but something always came between them getting together. And when I say " something " I mean of course writer Erik Larsen. First it was that they were both working together, than Dragon was together with the superheroine Rapture, than Alex was with the superhero Dart and they only ended up together when Savage Dragon returned to Chicago from a long absence. He was working with the S.O.S. and Alex was still on the police force so they were not co workers and could finally get down to it.
Anyway, Alex and Savage Dragon were just trying to get over their past relationships ( by having lots of conscientious sex ) so that didn´t last long. Later on it seemed as if Alex and Dragon were finally together.
But as always things were more complicated : the Dragon that was using Alex like his blow up sex doll was an impostor from a parallel universe.
And according to one of her ex - lovers this is her second nature : Halle Berry is a kinky sex freak. She used me as her boy toy. She deepthroated me for hours to give me a giant erection and then rode relentlessly on my rock hard member in a dentist´s chair with her huge breasts pounding against me until she had multiple orgasms. Sounds like my kind of woman.
In the bedroom I take control because looks are not enough to make a fella stay faithful : you must bang his brains out. You have to be a friend, be independent , be a lady and shy but you need to be a total sex freak in the bed and milk his dick - make him squirt until he´s completely dry.
Halle did her erotic dance in Last Boy Scout , teased us in Catwoman and finally delivered in Password : Swordfish but mostly Monster´s Ball .
Longtime readers know that Halle Berry is one of my all time wet sex fantasies so not only does she appear in my Justice League of America movie casting she had even four solo posts . But of course it was only a question of time before I added some new ones so this year I wrote four more : the first one about Halle Berry in her best movies , the second one on Halle Berry´s comic book movies , part three about my dream comic book movie casting with Halle Berry and the unexpected bonus round .
Staying in the DC universe, Jerry Ordway - whom I mentioned in my last post - did the comic adaption of the Batman movie with Micheal Keaton which had curvaceous Kim Basinger or like she is known in Germany Kim Blasinger as Vicky Vale ( by the way Vicky is not really a good name for a woman in Germany - unless she works as a porn star or a prostitute ).
As it just happens Kim Basinger celebrated her 65th birthday and among the many films she starred in is the semi - animated Cool World by Ralph Bakshi. Now I am no expert on acting but you know that someone is phoning it in when a toon has more sex appeal than the real thing.
Coming back to Kim Basinger, apart from this little lapse she comes across as very attractive in most of her movies ( for one of her best nude scenes you definitely have to check out The Getaway ) and maybe I´m weird but her famous striptease in Nine And A Half Weeks never did much for me and I found her bed scene in My Stepmother is an Alien more arousing .
Our first Master of Kung Fu in this section is the late David Carradine who has more comic connections than his monologue on Superman in Kill Bill.
Which I found to be partially wrong. I mean, when you look at Superman from a superficial story driven view he is right but when you talk about the post - Crisis Superman from the John Byrne comics or Lois & Clark - The New Adventures Of Superman Clark is the real person and Superman is the disguise. Okay, you are probably wondering what those other comic related roles are. Well, David naturally became famous as Shaolin Kwai Chang Caine on the 70s cult show Kung Fu but he also appeared on other small screen series like The Fall Guy with 80s cult sirens Markie Post and Heather Thomas, Gunsmoke, Ironside, Amazing Stories, Matlock, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Doctor Quinn - Medicine Woman with Jane Seymour, Profiler, Acapulco H.E.A.T. with Alison Armitage, Medium with real live Power Girl Patricia Arquette, Alias with Elektra Jennifer Garner, Charmed with Alyssa Milano, Danny Phantom and the first Human Target series with Rick Springfield. On the big screen his movies include The Long Riders, Lone Wolf McQuade, Bird On A Wire, Martial Law with Cynthia Rothrock as well as the midnight classics Evil Toons with french übersexbomb Monique Gabrielle and also Animal Instincts with 90s soft sex icon Shannon Whirry.
He also reunited with actor Jan - Michael Vincent on the set of that movie with whom he had previously shot an episode of the cult tv show Airwolf.
Finally he played tycoon Nerio Winch in the Largo Winch tv series from 2001 which is based on the french comic series. I´ve only seen the movies from 2008 and later so I don´t know if the tv series is worth checking out.
What I know him from is mainly Kung Fu, but not the tv series since my father had control of the remote control but rather the german comic magazine of the same name. Caine also appeared in the pages of Zack but Bastei´s magazine was much more popular among people interested in martial arts. At first it mainly featured Caine but more and more other series crept in and to anybody from my generation who read those issues the names of Shi - Kai der Rebell, Zendo der Hai, Eisenfaust John Patrick, Jeff Blake, Aikido der Kämpfer des Goldenen Buddhas, Steve Dallas der Tiger von Sacramento or Panthera Herrin der Tausend Dschunken instantly bring back nostalgic feelings of a simpler time when all heroes needed to mete out justice were some karate chops, the ocassional kung fu kick and a bit of eastern philosophy. The series had some legs and lasted 155 issues from 1975 to 1981. Man, I really have to do a post on that but until I have found enough material you can check out the post on CHRISTOPH ROOS .
Coming back to Kill Bill, the female lead in that movie was Uma Thurman who was Ice in my first ever Casting the Justice League of America post . I thought about a post in honor of her magical boob window cleavage which was so impressive that it granted her an entry in my Search for Power Girl series on my old boob blog but I already did that in 2012 and there has not happened anything worthy since then that I haven´t already covered.
At the beginning she played a minor role but one of the producers must have realized what a waste it is to have somebody like Markie on the cast without letting her " show what her Mama gave her " like they say Today.
Like most growing teenagers I watched that show religiously but the biggest part of its appeal for me were sexbombs like Heather Thomas and Markie Post who didn´t appear as often in a bikini as I would have liked.
80s Power Girl Markie Post is probably the best known cult siren on the blog because not only have I done many re - posts of her original post .
I also keep mentioning her in other posts and her original post is in the Top Ten Posts widget that appears on every post. Since I have done so many different versions it is not so tragic that I did not do a re - post last year even though I did the last version of her cult siren entry in 2016 .
Sexbomb Alyssa Milano ( who got two entries on this blog, the main post and the bonus round with her best episodes on Charmed ) is of course best known as the most charming, sexiest and all around greatest of all the Halliwell witches, Phoebe Halliwell on the cult tv show Charmed.
According to some interviews she gave later she wasn´t so keen on some of the sexy outfits but Alyssa was the main reason why guys watched the show, it was all to see her shaking her hips as a sultry belly dancer with her tits hanging out or an almost naked mermaid. Also Alyssa was busy taming male co - stars Julian McMahon and Brian Krause as her personal sex slaves.
Before she starred in Charmed Alyssa appeared in an episode of Outer Limits where she didn´t leave much to the imagination thanks to the lower restrictions of the Sci Fi channel. She was well on her way to become a sexsymbol but of course we wanted to see more of her. And male viewers got their wish when Alyssa got her freak on in Embrace of the Vampire where she did her breast performance going full frontal.
I did a re - post of Alyssa Milano´s cult siren entry on her birthday in 2016.
Apropos Alyssa Milano, a literal plethora of Hollywood stars guest starred on Charmed including a lot of Today´s celebrity birthdays so I decided to skip those where it is the only reason to include them ( as we already have all the links for her ) and feature our third but not last master of Kung Fu. He co - starred with David Carradine not only in two Kung Fu series but also a movie although the actor known only as Mako is best known for playing the wizard in Conan and Conan the Destroyer. Which gives me an excuse to post another video segment with Joe Bob Briggs.
One reason why I chose Mako for Todays post is that I could do an entire post on all the cult sirens he co - starred with. His over 160 credits even include the Wonder Woman tv series with the incredible Lynda Carter .
This year I didn´t get to write a new birthday post about her but I hope I can add something to the blog next year. As a little something something for all the Lynda Carter fans out there here is Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw from 1976. The movie is famous because it has Lynda Carter´s only nude scene so I wanted to post it before it gets deleted from YouTube again.
Continuing with super hero shows where Mako made an appearance he also was on The Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, and J.A.G. with 34D bikini hardbody Catherine Bell a.k.a. " the juggs of J.A.G. " who hasn´t been in a super hero movie but whom I cast as Catwoman in the Hollywood edition of my Casting the Justice League of America movie series. She had a lot of success with military roles as she also was in Army Wifes but now she is very busy with The Good Witch. So far I have only seen the first movie because I don´t know what the series is called here in Germany. The germans always give tv series the weirdest names and if you don´t know the name you can´t find them. Anyway, I still haven´t gotten around to give Catherine Bell her own cult siren post - which she deserves on the merit of her famous scene in a blue bikini alone - but as always posts on this blog don´t get canceled, they only get delayed.
Coming from a cult siren who has the body to appear in Playboy to one who actually did, Mako was also in Silent Assassin with Playmate of the Month in June 1986 Rebecca Ferratti whom I just mentioned two posts ago and who likewise appeared in Embrace of the Vampire. Last but not least he co - starred in Sworn to Justice with the aforementioned martial arts icon Cynthia Rothrock, and while it is not her best film martial arts - wise it is easily one of her breast movies ( another missed playmate ).
Which brings us back to where we started - the whole Kung Fu schtick - and another movie with Mako. I know that we already have two movies in this post but Sidekicks is a personal favorite of mine and something of a guilty pleasure. The movie stars Jonathan Brandis and our fourth and final Master of Kung Fu Chuck Norris who was trained by the great Bruce Lee himself. I know that not a lot of people like this movie but I always found it entertaining. Which may have something to do with the fact that I also had a hyperactive imagination as a child ( well, technically I still do ) and imagined myself as the hero in my own adventures. Even if the damsels I rescued were not nearly as hot as hasian sexbomb Julia Nickson. Rowwr !
Originally I thought I had the cartoon video covered with the history of Ralph Bakshi - connection to Kim Basinger and all that - but you can´t watch the video on the blog. Because the creator of the videos ( there are actually four parts on YouTube ) has decided that you can only watch them on YouTube. So I have to respect that as a creator myself but that leaves me with the problem to find another video. Preferably one that ties in with something in this post. Because there is so much martial arts stuff in the fun block I wanted to include one that I have not posted before.
But I just could not come up with a lot of martial arts cartoons and some of them - like Dragonball or Street Fighter - are more for special posts .
Also all the videos I posted from Samurai Jack so far have been deleted. In the end it came down to two choices and I have definitely posted more episodes from Samurai Champloo then I have from Samurai Pizza Cats.
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Hadoken !
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