Which back then were not as big as they were fated to become later. But we will get back to that in a moment. Since I already explained my history with Joe Staton´s work and did a brief rundown on the most important series he illustrated we can come right to the genesis of this special post.
Knowing that his birthday was coming up I went through all the material I had collected ( as I also said in my first Joe Staton post I was hoping this could become a regular feature ) and on one side there was not enough material for a solo post about his work at Charlton or on THE CREEPER, DOCTOR FATE, E - MAN, MILLENIUM, PLASTIC MAN or WONDER WOMAN.
I found enough for a spotlight on DC COMICS PRESENTS, SUPERBOY and SUPERMAN ( which would have fit perfectly with the title of this blog ) the 80s HUNTRESS limited series and most certainly DOOM PATROL and METAL MEN. But none of that seemed special enough to fit the occassion.
The only two options left were to make another GREEN LANTERN post - which was no option at all since the last Joe Staton post was all about the Emerald Gladiator and I didn´t want to repeat myself - or go with the obvious : Kara Zor - El from Earth Two, DC´s mighty Maid of Mammaries.
Only back then she hadn´t such an overdeveloped chest. Since we have covered this topic ad nauseum I think we can skip this part for once and make do with a short history lesson for those who never heard of this.
Anyway, when Power Girl was introduced she was a new breed of super heroine because while she had a connection to Superman - of Earth Two - she wasn´t defined by it like Batgirl or Supergirl who basically just were female versions of the male super heroes they were modeled after. For starters she wasn´t called Supergirl or Superwoman. Secondly she wore a completely different dress that was not just a variation of Superman´s costume. It was white, red and blue and flaunted her femininity ( Kara´s cleavage was a circle at first but then was stretched out into an oval by some mysterious force until it became the magical cleavage window we all know and love ) like she flaunted it in the presence of her team mates.
But not in a sleazy way. No, back then women could be confident, capable and strong while being feminine and sexy at the same time. And Power Girl was a very strong personality ( and that´s no pun ) who made it clear from day one that she was as good if not better as her cousin. There also was some very sexual tension going on between the kryptonian sexbomb and Superman of Earth Two but since we already covered Superman´s weird sexual fixation on his underage cousin let´s not focus on that.
Power Girl was one of the new members to be inducted into the Justice Society of America and she became best friends with the Huntress who was the daughter of Bruce Wayne - Batman - and Selina Kyle - Catwoman.
Who were married on Earth Two. So the whole thing with Batman marrying Catwoman is not that shocking since it already happened back in the 70s.
Granted, it happened on another Earth. But throughout DC Comics entire history that was always the destiny that those two were heading towards, one way or another. Coming back to Power Girl, besides Kara´s stunning physique another reason why I instantly fell in love with her was the fact that she resided on Earth Two. Which was exciting for two reasons ( and for once I am not talking about Power Girl´s most prominent features ).
Number one, it had a lot of heroes I never heard of because they came before my time. And they were not part of the regular DC universe until Carmine Infantino decided in the groundbreaking story of " Flash Of Two Worlds " in The Flash 123 to put all the Golden Age heroes on another Earth and they began to have annual crossovers with their colleagues.
And number two, even those heroes that had a counterpart on Earth One like Superman, Batman, Hawkman or Wonder Woman were older versions.
So reading the stories from Earth Two was like reading about a possible future because while on Earth One most heroes were - how one podcaster put it so fitting - " frozen in amber " and had to maintain a certain status quo ( although not as rigid as now were almost no character development is allowed ) on Earth Two the heroes aged, married, retired, had kids and even eventually died. Yes, on Earth Two dead most often than not really meant dead. Which for me always made those stories more realistic - if stories about people with special powers and costumes can be realistic.
Last but not least there were some heroes who were like their Earth One counterparts in name only like Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of Earth Two. Yup, somehow when we are not fixated on Power Girl we come back to Green Lantern. Which is not surprising for longtime readers of this blog since I mentioned a few times that it was a comic series I followed for the longest time. But let´s not get into a long tangent about why I don´t read that series anymore. Alan Scott was always a fascinating character for me because he was unlike all the other Green Lanterns that came after him.
First of all, he didn´t wear much green. Because the source of his power was a green lantern. He was not a Green Lantern. So he wore green but also red and violet. Second he didn´t get his lantern from the Guardians of the Universe ( not to be mixed up with Marvel´s Guardians of the Galaxy which is a completely different team ) who resided on the planet Oa and administered space sectors to beings they deemed fit to ensure peace.
No, he just found a meteor and decided to carve himself a magic ring and a lantern and he even came up with his unique Green Lantern oath. Okay, after all the permutations DC Comics´ Green Lantern oath went through
In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil´s might beware my power, Green Lantern´s light !
does have a certain ring to it. But I always found Alan Scott´s oath
And I shall shed my light over dark evil, for the dark things cannot stand the light - the light of THE GREEN LANTERN !
very poetic. He also was the only one who realized the full potential of the ring. Unlike the other Green Lanterns who saw it as a weapon or as a tool ( or as a bit more than a toy where Kyle Rayner was concerned ) he really knew what it was. A magic ring. That can do anything that its bearer can imagine. And while Hal Jordan would catch bank robbers and gangsters with giant boxing gloves or nets Alan Scott would just go : " I imagine all the crooks cowering on the floor in fear. " and the ring would make it so.
For me he was one of the most interesting heroes in the Justice Society of America ( I can only recommend the Geoff Johns stories that are now compiled in two omnibus hardcovers to all readers as well as the part of the series that has not been collected yet ) and in my opinion DC made a huge mistake when they first shoehorned him into the regular Green Lantern continuity and history and then made him gay in the NEW 52. I mean, he already had a gay son. Did they really need to make him gay too just so they could put in the newspaper that now Green Lantern was gay ?
But that´s not our topic Today. This post is all about Joe Staton´s Power Girl and I think I have said all that is to say on that subject for this part so let´s get to the rest of the wonderful art in the next part of this post .
Before we come to the usual suspects in our litany of anniversaries there are a few links I want to impart to those readers who come here for the something something extra. Since Power Girl busted out to stardom as part of the relaunched Justice League I want to share a recommendation by iFANBOY for the first trade of Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire´s Justice League International. I wanted to buy the new omnibus but according to the consumer reviews on amazon DC didn´t put much care into the book. Maybe they will do a second printing with a bit more emphasis on production quality but in the meantime there are still the trades and floppies for those new readers who want to check it out.
Kevin Maguire really became a household name through that series and one of his most famous pieces of art is the cover for the first issue of the post Crisis Justice League America series. I did a post last year about all the variations he did on that cover over the years. There will be another post somewhere down the line, this time with homages by other people.
You can also find a special FLASH FRIDAY post on this very blog with the full issue of Kevin Maguire´s and Stan Lee´s re - imagening of the Flash as part of the Imagine Stan Lee Creating The DC Universe project. Which in my opinion is underappreciated by most comic book fans because they don´t understand what this project was all about. And that despite the fact that Stan Lee himself made it pretty clear from the get go. The goal of the project was NOT to fix the DC characters or " Marvelize " them. There was nothing wrong with the DC characters. The goal was also not to reinvent the wheel or create the biggest comic book saga ever. So naturally all the readers who expected to get the next Watchmen were disappointed.
So what was the goal of the project ? Just for Stan Lee to have some fun with the DC characters and re - imagine them in a new way for the readers so they can rediscover their heroes and remember why they are so loved.
Throw in a literal Who´s Who of the best comic artists alive at that time ( a lot of the involved artists did their last work on these books like John Buscema, Joe Kubert or Gene Colan ) and this is a series that is all about something you don´t find in most comic books Today : just having fun.
So I think if comic readers don´t like this book it´s their own fault. I can appreciate for what it is - and not what I think it should or could have been - and you can easily find the omnibus for a ridiculous low price.
Going on with Justice League related links MICHEL FIFE has a post on the best fights in comics which includes Guy Gardner´s epic beatdown at the hands of Metamorpho in the pages of Justice League Europe 11 by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Bart Sears who in my opinion did the ultimate version of Power Girl. Usually I would go into my whole spiel with lots of pictures and GIFs of mega busty blonde sexbombs but we will have more than that along the line. And since I especially split the post into two to make it shorter you can read more about Justice League Europe ( and definitely more about Power Girl ) in this post and also find some splash pages in this post from 2016 which he had to share with Mark Texeira.
For more on Bart Sears I wrote a second post in 2015 about all the other series he did besides Justice League Europe and last year I did a special spotlight post for one of the best comic books Bart Sears has worked on X - O Manowar ( which is another reading recommendation from Subzero ).
Coming back to the best fight list it also mentions the battle between Orion and Darkseid from Orion 5 ( this complete series is also available as an omnibus and I can only recommend it even if the fact that they put all the short stories at the end is less than perfect ) by Walter Simonson who is best known for his run on The Mighty Thor which not only brought the hero back to his roots but is considered to be the best Thor run in history.
And while I don´t want to weigh in on that argument one of Walt´s most famous issues is Thor 380 an issue composed - almost - entirely of splash pages. Now if that´s your thing the aptly named COMIC LISTS has eleven additional issues of the best of the best of all splash page comic books.
After this brief intermission it´s time for a few anniversaries starting with those that I have missed since my last post and of the top of that list is Sal Buscema who celebrated his 83 birthday on January the 26th. He was one of my favorite artists growing up and even though I was not as excited to see his art as I was whenever his big brother did an issue he brightened many issues of Die Ruhmreichen Rächer - how the Avengers were called by the Williams Verlag. Something nobody in Germany seems to remember.
Nowadays they are so obsessed with spreading the Avengers branding that they even put " Avengers, Sammeln ! " into the newest issue of the restart. Which sounds all kinds of wrong. You either go with the original " Avengers, Assemble ! " or you go with the tried and true german version " Rächer, Sammeln ! " but you don´t do something half - assed. Although that seems to be the general direction the Marvel universe is heading to. Half - assed comics about half - assed heroes for half - assed readers.
Coming back to Sal Buscema he did most of the issues of Marvel - Team Up when I started reading comics so in most cases he did the first version of a lot of super heroes I saw. Throughout the years there have been many books he illustrated that I came to love like his fabulous Rom, Spaceknight series where I have a lot of the issues ( not all of them ) and still hope Marvel finds a way to reprint them so I can buy - and read - them all over again. I mean they managed to put Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu into four nice omnibus hardcovers so the least they could do would be a few Epic Collections. Speaking of Rom, Spaceknight that is one of the two issues missing in the Secret Wars II omnibus together with Micronauts because both of them are licensed properties where the print rights had expired.
Since I mentioned Marvel Team Up, Sal Buscema also did his share of world building in the webbed corner of the Marvel universe and last year I did a post on his amazing 100 issue run on Spectacular Spider - Man . Which I also would like to see in trade. I got the Spider - Man : Tombstone trade but that came out two years ago and I would like to continue reading.
The post also includes links to earlier Sal Buscema posts for new readers.
There is a tribute post about all the different books he worked on that I wrote in 2015, another post I did in 2014 where I talked about his run on The Incredible Hulk - ( which lasted 10 years ! ) where I also mentioned other favorite periods in Hulkstory, a second Hulk post where I listed which pages were missing in my french issues of Gamma and another Hulk post to pimp volume 7 of the Essentials which was offered for 8 bucks at amazon. I am still waiting that my favorite issues from his run on Hulk are reprinted in the MARVEL MASTERWORKS which start with the next volume that comes out. Last but not least I posted issue 1 and issue 2 of Amazing Spider - Girl where he inked over Ron Frenz and in 2017 I did a special Thorsday post about one of my favorite Mutant Massacre crossovers .
Which - strangely enough - I just recently bought as an omnibus hardcover as a birthday present to myself. Sometimes you really have to do things yourself if you want them done right. Anyway, the Mutant Massacre is promoted as " the first X - Men event and still the most brutal " but my reason for buying it was that this was around the time when I started reading the X - Men. And since I did not have access to a comic shop back then I had to buy the issues I got at the international press newsstand in Stuttgart or at various comic conventions over the years. So that part of my comic book collection is spotty at best but now I can read all of these issues - including some sweet issues of The Mighty Thor as well as the four issue mini - series Fantastic Four vs X - Men and X - Men vs The Avengers.
And while I could have done without the first one ( which I already have as part of the Epic Collection Fantastic Four : All In The Family ) the second one has some nice pre - Uncanny X - Men Silvestri art. Especially those pages with the female members of the X - Men in bathing attire.
His knack for depicting attractive females was one of the reasons why I love his run on the title so much. And speaking of attractive females.
Ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky turned 58 but since I never was a big ice hockey fan ( I have no idea if they showed any of the matches he was in on german tv ) the only thing I know about him is that he has an excellent taste in women since he married cult siren Janet Jones who celebrated her 58th birthday on the 10th of this month. I did a re - post of her cult siren entry in 2017 so click here to read more about the hot babes from Police Academy like Leslie Easterbrook, sexbomb Becky Mullen and hasian hardbody Chona Jason´s erotic cult movie Sinful Intrigue and wrestling shows from the 80s. Plus a drunk Sarah Shashi, a sexy Sabrina Setlur, a classic fight by George Foreman vs Muhammad Ali, Tales From The Crypt : Ritual and classic clips from G.L.O.W. and Catch Up with Joe Williams and Horst Brack, der Bestrafer better known to german comic fans as Robi.
The living blow up sex doll with legs up to her chin and a body that just won´t quit is best known for appearing in a white swimsuit in Police Academy 5 - Assignment Miami Beach alongside real live Power Girl Leslie Easterbrook who had her most famous scene in Police Academy 4 - Citizens on Patrol in which she emerges from a pool in a wet t - shirt .
Usually I just copy / paste the part about Becky Mullen into the posts but I am trying to keep this one short so I will skip it. For those who haven´t read any of my previous Andy Sidaris posts there is the main post where I wrote a bit about one of my unsung heroes , the Casting the Justice League of America movie Andy Sidaris special with a lot of stuff about Dona Speir, Roberta Vazquez, Cynthia Brimhall and the Tutti Frutti girls, the Ava Cadell solo post , the Dona Speir post ( with reposts in 2017 and this year ), the Sybil Danning post and the Becky Mullen post ( which I reposted in 2016 ) where you can find tons of links to other cult sirens like the annual re - posts of italian mega soccer MILF Simona Ventura , blonde sexsation Monique Sluyter and of course the obligatory Tutti Frutti girls.
Andy Sidaris was probably THE BEST director of action movies for adults and his cast read like a WHOS´S WHO of playmates : Roberta Vasquez , Ava Cadell , brunette Cynthia Brimhall, Dona Speir , Pandora Peaks, Julie Strain , Shae Marks, Samantha Phillips and Julie K. Smith to name just a few.
No longer with us to celebrate his anniversary is Paul Newman whom I always got mixed up with Steve McQueen. Probably because when I was growing up you got either one or the other in all the good movies. Of course now I don´t confuse Paul Newman with other actors because he´s the one in the movie Cool Hand Luke ( known as Der Unbeugsame - The Unbending in Germany which is the same title The Natural with Robert Redford got here ) with real life Power Girl Joy Harmon´s famous car wash scene. Never underestimate the effect giant, wet boobs that are pressed tightly against glass can have on the memory. Just ask Simona Ventura .
And since such a short animated GIF - no matter how good the quality - is ill suited to adequately show the full dimensions of Miss Harmon´s over - proportionate developed talents here is the best version of the scene.
Our next candidate is for my german readers since Fabian Harloff who celebrated his 49th birthday on January the 27th has appeared on shows like Notruf Hafenkante, Großstadtrevier or SK Babies. Generally all shows where saving civilians is involved which includes all the SOKO tie in shows which are a dozen. He also was the storyteller on Teletubbies which was very odd because I first saw him as one of the villains on Die Rote Meile.
The series was named after the red light district of St. Pauli in Hamburg and was a sequel to The King of St. Pauli. It follows the lives of strippers, prostitutes and their pimps but they are all portrayed like regular people not like in american tv series where people from this walk of life are always portrayed as bad people. I remember an episode of a series about beach cops on bikes ( that sounds as action packed as it was ) with people from the porn industry and they also made them killers because all people in adult entertainment are horrible people. Anyway, I watched every episode of Die Rote Meile because they had a very easy concept : one strip in every episode which was not interrupted by commercials. I don´t know if they could do that Today as they put commercials into everything.
Anyway, one of the best strippers of the regular cast is Sylvia Leifheit who has a secret identity in the series as she plays the typical devoted wife by day, secret stripper by night. Sylvia made me realize two things : firstly, while I usually don´t go for skinny chicks she is just oozing so much sex appeal that I would do her in a minute. And second, hair color can really make a difference because her character in the series is actually a blonde and despite having the same figure as a blonde she´s kind of a - meh - looking girl while as Luna with the black wig she´s a real firecracker !
A few years back I got the complete first season of Die Rote Meile on DVD at amazon at a pretty decent price and I´m glad I seized the opportunity because it really goes for ridiculous prices now. I can really recommend this show and Sylvia Leifheit alone is worth the price of admission.
I am skipping a lot of birthdays that I already covered in previous posts but I have to include Dann Thomas who turned 67 just Yesterday. As you might have guessed from the name she is the wife of Roy Thomas and has worked in comic books from 1981 to 1994 which were my years of finding my place in american comics and evolving my tastes in reading material.
Which as you also might have guessed involved a lot of the comic books she wrote. I am outing myself here to some extent where the age is concerned but does anyone remember the Arak, Son Of Thunder series that came out from 1981 to 1985 ? Well, guess what. That was based on a concept she suggested, namely a native american discovering Europe.
The series was written by Roy Thomas and the artists were co - creator Tony DeZuniga and Ernie Colon whom you might recall I just mentioned in my post about the spanish comics from my misspent youth. Yep, we keep coming back to the same people again and again here. The series was also published here in Germany where it was part of Ehapa´s line Die Grossen Phantastic Comics that included Don Lawrence´s Storm, Mike Grell´s Warlord, Brian Bolland´s Camelot 300, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld and Taar. Although the series lasted 50 issues only a dozen or so found their way here and for some reason they called it Arok instead of Arak.
One corner of the DC universe where she did the main writing work with her husband involves a group I have become more interested in recent years : the Justice Society of America and their legacy characters. The reason for that is that I did not even know that Young All - Stars existed, I had read Infinity Inc but the series never made it to Germany and so I only had access to the few scattershot issues my brother bought in Spain and I still haven´t found the Johnni Thunder series. I´ve however read America vs the Justice Society which is the best overview of the team´s history.
What was a bit disappointing for me was The Last Days of the Justice Society since the story the trade was named after is the smallest part.
Now because of the reviews on amazon I knew going in that the bulk of the trade were all the issues of Secret Origins featuring the Justice Society of America but I still would have preferred it if there had been more issues of a real JSA comic. By the way, the only Secret Origin story that was missing was the one about Power Girl and at first I was miffed at this. Then I found some art online and was glad I got to skip that chapter.
You won´t hear her mentioned in the current ramblings of all the SJWs about getting women into comics, female comic characters and Wonder Woman but Dann Thomas was actually the first woman to receive writing credit on Wonder Woman with issue 300. If you haven´t checked it out yer the anniversary issue is a 72 page whopper with art by such greats as Gene Colan ( who was the regular artist at that time and I still regret not buying the spanish hardcover collection of his work on that comic book ), Rich Buckler, Ross Andru, Dick Giordano, Keith Giffen or Tom Mandrake.
At Marvel the couple co - wrote Doctor Strange : Sorcerer Supreme, Avengers West Coast, Saga of the Sub - Mariner and Black Knight and while you can find most of them very easily Saga of the Sub - Mariner was a more elusive beast - at least for me. I could not find it up until Today.
The thing is I had only seen issue 10 at a con a very long time ago - which I grabbed up immediately - and I never saw another issue anywhere else.
What hooked me right away is that unlike Elektra Saga which just reprints the Daredevil issues in which she appeared or Wolverine Saga which is just a catalogue of Wolverine´s story with some art from various comic books Saga of the Sub - Mariner is actually a completely new story that retells the complete history of Marvel´s king of Atlantis - at least up to that point. It is superbly written by Dann Thomas, beautifully penciled by the aforementioned Rich Buckler and inked by the great Bob McLeod whom you also don´t find much in Today´s comic pages. What is it that such a master of the craft can´t get work yet every time you open a new Marvel comic you have to fight not to vomit because the art is so bad ?
Now I can´t tell you how chances are to find single issues but there is a trade called Sub - Mariner & The Original Human Torch that includes the complete 12 issue series plus the 4 issue mini series Saga of the Original Human Torch from 1990 ( I just keep pimping comics from the 90s ) by Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler - again - and Danny Bulanadi. If you find the trade anywhere go and get it. This has my utmost reading recommendation.
You probably expected me to post a video with Yaya Han as Power Girl but since I already posted all of them you get the next best thing. She does not have Yaya´s giant 40D oppai but with her huge 32DDD melons she can easily hold her own and she even has Power Girl as a part of her name.
As with other topics I have covered a few times there was no movie that came to mind that was connected to Today´s ramblings. So instead here is another horror anthology film that I didn´t get to post around Halloween.
On the other side I have already posted an episode of C.O.P.S. and while Bart Sears has not worked on the comic book adaption of Street Sharks ( at least to my knowledge although I have no idea if such comics exist in the first place ) the premise of this cartoon is even more outlandish.
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