And I mean how can it not be if it involves a sexy air hostess with more boeing ! than a 747, robots, dinosaurs and time travel ? I am naturally talking about NATASCHA by belgian comic artist François Walthéry who celebrates his 73rd birthday Today - which is how the schlamassel began.
Now before we go any further I want to point out that while the series was originally called NATACHA I first read it in the german editions where it was changed to the german version NATASCHA so that is how I will address it. There may be some instances where I will be using the original version but for the most part I will use her german name. So there is no need to point out to me that her " real " name is Natacha. I know it is but I am using the version I am familiar with otherwise it gets too confusing.
Walthéry started with the series PIP ET COMPAGNIE in the weekly Junior at the age of 16. One year later his submisson at the famous comic magazine Spirou was unsuccessfully but he landed a gig assisting Peyo on THE SMURFS so his work DID end up in Spirou in a very roundabout way.
Speaking about THE SMURFS, the cover above may not look familiar to my american readers since the first story in which a smurf is infected by an insect and turns into a hostile black smurf who infects others was skipped in the US. The story was slated to be published in America in the 1980s but because of political correctness they skipped in out of fear the story could be seen as a metaphor for racial wars even if no other country in which it had been published had the idea. When the story was adapted for the cartoon the black smurf was colored purple and when the comic was finally published by Papercutz they stayed with the new purple color.
Another book on which Walthéry assisted Peyo was JOHAN AND PEEWIT ( first translated into german as Edelhardt und Kuckuruzz and then as Johann und Pfiffikus ) which is a comic about a knight and his varlet in which the smurfs first appeared as supporting characters. As we all know the smurfs became mega successful, spun off into their own series, had a gazillion figures ( I was heavily into collecting in those days ) and even had their own animated feature film long before they got their cartoon show.
As for JOHANN AND PEEWIT it was not as successful as the smurfs but it was doing quite well and since it started before the smurfs it went on for quite a while. So that you could watch Peyo´s art style evolve over time.
Now on STEVEN STRONG - which is sometimes called BENNI BREAKIRON which is the translation that keeps the alliteration - Peyo was already drawing like we know him best. It´s a comic about a super strong boy who loses his powers every time he catches a cold and Walthéry also worked on this one. It is not as well known as the two other series by Peyo though.
But I always enjoyed reading them. Anyway, this might be strange for new visitors of the blog who only see me as a dyed in the wool super hero guy but I have a long history of reading franco - belgian comics and I remember reading all these comics as a kid. Now I did not buy all these comics since I never had an allowance until I started with my apprenticeship as a car mechanic where I could keep part of my apprentice´s due. But I read all of them ( and many more ) thanks to the public libraries which were always well stocked with the classic comics even though they were still seen as straightly kid´s stuff at that time. But back then those comics were my life and I was reading, drawing, thinking and breathing them. Especially drawing the smurfs and I wasn´t thinking about it becoming a career.
I just liked drawing them and since I never had an allowance I only got a few comic books whenever my parents gave me some change. So I drew my own little comics and since I also had not many toys I made my own.
Mostly by drawing figures on cardbox and then cutting them out and attaching the limbs with those metal clasps you use for letters. Naturally the cardbox rubbed against the metal and after a few weeks the toy was useless so I had to make a new one so I got quite good at this. Anyway, you can read more about how the comics by Peyo influenced me in this post also check out Lambiek´s entry on François Walthéry which is more extensive than wikipedia´s entry which is basically a bare bones version.
Coming back to François Walthéry, he enjoyed drawing beautiful women much more than little blue guys so at the request of Spirou editor - in - chief Yvan Delporte who decided the magazine could use another female heroine he created Natascha. He did the first preliminary sketches in 1967 basing her face on Celine alias Linette, a neighbourhood girl he knew while the body was modeled after french sex bomb Brigitte Bardot.
Although I suspect that a certain famous american actress also had a big influence on how Walthéry drew his curvy heroine. Don´t you think ?
Other inspirations for Natascha came from Dany Carrel, singer France Gall and Mireille Darc whom the older ones among my readers may remember from her revealing role in The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe which she reprised in The Return Of The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe .
Natascha has a long publication history and she first appeared in 1970 at the Kauka Verlag in SUPER SPASS and PRIMO under the name of Katja.
Then the Bastei Verlag published the series from 1984 to 1986 although not in the right chronological order. The albums were not lettered by hand and were only sold at newsstands. But they were less expensive then the later editions so I don´t know why I didn´t buy more. I guess I was more busy spending the allowance I DID have at that time on ELFQUEST and JOHN SINCLAIR. The Bastei Verlag published the albums 1 to 4 and 6 to 10.
The Reiner - Feest - Verlag published albums 11 to 13 from 1988 to 1989.
In 1991 the Carlsen Verlag continued the series with album number 14 and started reprinting Natascha from the first album on forward. But because the sales numbers didn´t meet their expectations they stopped after publishing albums number 5 and 15 in 1993. I did buy a few of those.
Readers had to wait for new material until 2004 when the Eckart Schott Verlag published albums 17 to 19 under their Salleck Publications imprint.
In 2007 they finally closed the gap in publication of Natascha with the 16th album. There was another long wait for german comic readers until 2013 when album 20 was released in a regular and a special edition. In 2011 they started reprinting the albums in the right order in new complete editions.
Coming back to Natascha´s french publishing history, she was not the first heroine in Spirou but the first adult one- to be followed by Roger Leloup´s YOKO TSUNO the same year - and the first emancipated woman at that.
The first female protagonist in Spirou was SOPHIE who was introduced in STARTER and got so popular that her creator Jean de Mesmaeker a.k.a. Jidéhem was able to first spin her off into her own short stories and then into full albums. Sophie became the first female character in Spirou that starred in her own series and while she was not the first belgian female comic character she was the first one who was not a supporting character or a sidekick. And she paved the way for others by showing that series with female characters in the lead could be popular with the readers.
While Natascha was a very emancipated character this was long before feminists began brainwashing women into hating their body and thinking being beautiful or enjoying sex was something to be ashamed of. As a result the voluptuous and short - skirted air hostess was quite a break in tradition within the conservative catholic Spirou magazine. This was not just because she was the first female protagonist since SOPHIE, but also because she was a young, attractive woman rather than a schoolgirl with the corresponding curves to the enjoyment of the adolescent readership.
And like in the VALERIAN UND VERONIQUE comics by Pierre Christin and Jean - Claude Mézières Natascha took on the " male " part and was the adventurous one while her male companion / on - off again platonic boyfriend Walter always failed when he tried to macho it up. He often played the part of damsel in distress and Natascha had to rescue him.
Aside from being a bumbling fool and the comedic relief on occassion Walter is still a very reliable character and always there when Natascha is in a cinch. He is also a big jazz fan and a comic book fan since he is the alter ego of Walthéry - his name is the shortened version of his last name.
Now because François Walthéry always enjoyed drawing beautiful women Natascha very often did not wear a lot of clothing and appeared in bikinis.
Now because Spirou was still a very conservative publication aimed at a mostly catholic reading audience censorship sometimes creeped in to make Natascha less erotic and often panels had to be redrawn or altered.
In fact, due to the explicit female forms of Natascha her first story was kept on hold for five years until it was finally published in Spirou in 1970.
Also on some of her album covers, Natascha's breasts had to be redrawn to make their roundings underneath her shirt less prominent. On the other side there was a special nude edition of the cover for L´ Epervier Bleu.
The first two albums of Natascha were written by the same writer but after that François Walthéry collaborated with a different writer on each album which gave the series a varied tone and theme. There also have been a lot of artists who are friends of François Walthéry who have helped him out in the backgrounds or pitched in with some additional artwork.
There also were some Natascha short stories by François Walthéry in which Natascha and Walter had erotic adventures much to the joy of the fans who waited decades to see this even if they turned out to be dreams.
A lot of these extra stories that came out in Spirou and other french publications were never part of the german editions of Natascha but they are included in the bonus content of the complete editions Salleck is currently publishing in Germany. So far I have volumes three to five.
I skipped the first two volumes because I already have some of the stories that are included here ( I still have all the old albums ) but I will probably buy them along the way because the bonus content is totally worth it.
Another reason why I only have three complete editions of Natascha is that I am also buying the complete editions of Roger Leloup´s Yoko Tsuno.
Which is another of my favorite series. I thought the creator had passed away but thanks to some research I did for this blog I found out that he is not only still alive but still writing and drawing new Yoko Tsuno albums.
Which of course rekindled my love for his books. Also unlike the complete editions of Natascha I have actually read all the complete editions of Yoko Tsuno I bought. The only downside is that the stories are not published chronologically and that every hardcover has a certain theme like her adventures in Germany, her adventures in China or her wibbly wobbly timey wimey adventures traveling through time or space. Which makes it impossible to read her adventures continuously but on the other side makes reading the individual hardcovers that much more satisfying.
Another minor complaint is that I see the additional material like the bonus material on a DVD so I don´t like it that it is included in the first part of the book but apart from that I am enjoying re - reading one of the fantastic books of my youth that inspired my imagination at a young age.
I also got the first collection of Andreas´ CAPRICORN since I am a big fan of his RORK and CROMWELL STONE but I was a bit disappointed with that and I don´t know why. I read the GRATIS COMIC TAG issue of the series and really liked that but somehow the art doesn´t look as good in the original size. I was so hyped that I had discovered something like a lost series of Andreas but now I am not sure if I will continue buying the hardcovers.
And as longtime readers might remember I have also started to buy the complete editions of VALERIAN AND VERONIQUE after I realized that the series is officially finished and I haven´t read the last four to five albums.
I had a little setback when I ordered my first volume of the complete edition of VALERIAN UND VERONIQUE because the information about which albums were included in that volume on the website of the shop was not correct so I ordered the wrong volume. I wanted to start at a particular point - with the albums I remember reading last - but now it starts one volume too early. I could have sent it back and gotten the right volume but it was just too much trouble and when I realized that I got the wrong volume I was so shocked that I dropped it and it got damaged. And I don´t want the comic shop to think I want to take advantage of them by sending in a damaged book. Also sooner or later I have to buy all volumes.
Since this is the second time that I am mentioning the series VALERIAN UND VERONIQUE in this post I want to put up the links for the previous posts where I waxed philosophic about it for my new blog readers and I think the best place to start is this post where I wrote a bit about the book and how difficult it can be to bring such a classic to the big screen that was groundbreaking in it times - before I had actually seen the movie.
Which I already had when I wrote this post so I could give my impressions of it. And I have to say I really liked the movie. Maybe that disqualifies me as a real comic book fan but somehow I can differentiate here. If you see the movie just as a comic book adaption of Valerian and Laureline then it does fail in great parts, namely in everything that has to do with the two protagonists. The actors don´t look anything like the characters in the comic book, they are way too young ( an unfortunate trend in nowadays is the believe that only young main protagonists are interesting to a wide audience as if experience disqualifies you from being interesting ), they don´t behave like them and they don´t make sense in any way. They even changed Laureline´s background story, if they knew it in the first place.
Apart from that the stories were taken right out of the comic and are told in the way they unfold in the comic book ( which is something american audiences are not familiar with ). So seen solely as a comic book adaption it fails because while it tells the story how it is supposed to tell it the movie fails with the main characters which is the most important thing.
On the other hand if you know next to nothing about the comic book - and I guess 99 percent of the audience did - it´s a very entertaining, fast paced movie with a good story, a few unexpected twists, outstanding special effects that create a fascinating universe ( people like to talk about world building and here it is achieved wonderfully ) that actually looks like the universe of Valerian and Veronique even down to the aliens with actors who clearly had a blast. So I have no idea why the film failed.
Of course I could be a bit biased because not knowing that Rihanna was in the movie I didn´t know about her sexy dance performance beforehand and let me say she is outstanding ( and you can find the first part of her GIFs from this in the post I linked to above plus links to more GIFs and a video of the scene ). Her part alone is reason enough to see the movie.
And last but not least you can find more high quality GIFs from that scene ( like the ones above ) in this post which has another video of Rihanna´s sexy performance as well as one about the original comic and a recount of all my troubles ordering my first volume of the german collected edition.
Coming back to NATASCHA, I had the pleasure of meeting Walthéry at one of the many conventions we went to last year trying to peddle my new comic books ( they were so many that I am not entirely sure during which one ) and I even got an original drawing of Natascha in a bikini no less.
For me François Walthéry is one of the big comic masters and his Natascha is one of the comics I am trying to emulate with my new comic. I always try to bring the sexiness into the stories but where he pulls it off without getting smutty - even if he shows a lot of nudity - I always end up with porn. To top it all off his art is so detailed and elaborate and it is crazy how many panels he can put into one page. I know that his comics are four times the size of mine but I still wish I was only half as good as him.
The first part of Today´s video section is all about Natascha starting with a clip from Stripteken with François Walthéry. It´s in french but I have no idea in which language the subtitles might be - swedish, dutch, belgian ?
This next video has more art from Natascha, a smooth music track and some general information about the bande dessinee written in french.
And for those who don´t understand french here is a video in spanish about the series. So far I have not found videos in english or german.
Walthéry also developed the series RUBINE with writer Mythic and drawn by Dragan De Lazare and later Boyan under the supervision of Walthéry.
The comic book series follows the adventures of a sexy female cop in Chicago which was heavily influenced by the american tv series Lady Blue.
Before we come to the second part of Today´s video section we once again have some links since I had to use a few websites to write this essay and get all of the information right. Many thanks go out to the usual suspects at wikipedia and lambiek but there are a few other websites I want to mention that might have something of interest for my readers.
As with the video section part I could not find many posts in english and german about our topic so this is exclusively for my spanish readership.
There is a general article about the series by Jesus Jimenez on RTVE and you can find a 30 minute episode about Natascha on the GCOMICS podcast ( thanks for the uncensored page guys it is the only one I could find ).
They have all kinds of interesting episodes about famous comic book pioneers like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster , Jean Giraud , Rene Goscinny , Herge and the start of Tintin , Tintin during World War II , Herge and Tintin magazine , Alan Moore the writer of Watchmen , Grant Morrison , Jose Luis Garcia Lopez , Ricardo Barreiro , Jije , Yves Chaland , Osamu Tezuka , Masashi Kishimoto creator of Naruto , Rumiko Takahashi creator of Ranma 1 / 2 , Edgar Jacobs the creator of Blake and Mortimer , Jaques Martin creator of Alix and Rodolphe Topffer called the inventor of comics .
They also do spotlight episodes about Hal Foster´s Prince Valiant , Paolo Serpieri´s Druuna , Rick Master , Michel Vaillant , Tanguy and Laverdue , Dan Cooper , Buck Danny , Cadillacs and Dinosaurs , Fables , Britain´s Marvelman a.k.a. Miracleman , Biggles , Dragon Ball , Ghost in the Shell , Monster , Sailor Moon , Astroboy or Nausicaa in the valley of the wind .
Furthermore you can dive into the depths of american comic books with the origins of Aquaman and Batman , Flash and the multiverse , the death of Superman , John Byrne´s Man of Steel and Hulk , Batman , the Justice League of America , Catwoman , Plastic Man , the best Elseworlds titles , the Infinity Gauntlet , Onslaught , Frank Cho´s Shanna the She - Devil , Marvel´s What If universe , Marvel´s Timely era , Marvel´s Atlas era , the Marvel Age of Comics , the DC / Marvel crossovers , the classic EC Comics , Image Comics , Future Quest and also the Charlton Comics superheroes .
Other episodes tackle such subjects like Conan the barbarian , Halloween characters in comic books , comics about cars , comics go to the doctors , movies versus comic books and speaking of which also Robocop from the movies to comics , Terminator and the comics , Aliens and the comics , He - Man and the comic books , Batman the animated series , Mazinger Z and the mecha genre , the Clamp Studio , Akira , Predator and Predator 2 .
Being a podcast from Argentina you might want to check out the episodes about El Vengador Alado the first argentinian superhero , Caballero Rojo another argentinian superhero , horror comic books in Argentina , the first animes and mangas in Argentina or topics like stereotypes in mangas and also What is science fiction / cyberpunk / steampunk / manga / anime ?
Coming back to the topic of Natascha you can find extensive reviews of the first volume and the second volume of the spanish complete editions on COSASDESUPERHEROES and apropos extensive, Dafne Ruiz on the blog TEBEOSFERA gives us a brief history of belgican comics that is not so brief.
After this avalanche of links we continue with the second part of Today´s video section. And while there is no Natascha movie there is an episode of Joe Bob Briggs Monstervision about the Twilight Zone movie. In the movie there is a story that takes place on a plane. In the original tv series William Shatner played the part while in the new version John Lithgow is the passenger who sees a monster sabotaging one of the plane´s wings.
Speaking of John Lithgow, he also appears in the episode Goldilocks and the Three Bears from the Faerie Tale Theater alongside Tatum O´Neal.
Since I mentioned the smurfs in this post I finally get to post this video with Ariel Winter who provides the two breast reasons to see Smurfs - The Lost Village and I´m not talking about Smurflilly and her best friend here. I haven´t watched the movie yet but the whole idea of a secret tribe of female smurfs brings up a lot of creepy questions. Like why is there a secret tribe of smurf women ? Is there a reason why they split from the male smurfs ? Did Papa Smurf know about this and if yes did he still let Smurfette bear the brunt of the entire smurf town´s sexual attention ? Speaking of getting a lot of sexual attention by horny males.
A TALE OF TWO TITTIES or THE ( ARIEL ) WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT
As always I am late to the party as I missed the whole outrage about Ariel Winter getting a breast reduction because she already had a 37F breast at the tender age of 15. Which is a bit weird because whenever I write one of these cult siren entries where it states that the person in question got a really gigantic rack at a really young age there are always a few who do not believe it and say that it is an urban legend and that girls that are so young don´t get very big breasts. I mean, how big can boobs get ? Well, this time it happened in front of the whole world so nobody can deny it.
Everybody saw it - except for me. Because I could not get through the first season of Modern Family thanks to the non linear story telling. I really tried to get into it because I always saw those clips of Sofia Vergara on the internet with her overdeveloped double airbags bouncing around and spilling out of her generous cleavage that give you an instant erection.
And Ed O´Neil is in it who was just brilliant on Married With Children. So what could go wrong ? Well, here´s where the poop hit the ventilator : I can´t follow the episodes. First of all in the old comedy shows you had something like a clear linear story. Something happens that sets the story off, the people try to deal with it and in the end there is the resolution.
On Modern Family several things happen but they are not related and just random stuff and in the end the episode is just over without any kind of resolution or having dealt with anything. You only know that the episode is over because the next show starts. And on DVD you just see it end.
Also they are constantly talking into a camera but it never is explained who they are talking to or what the tape is for so you have the creepy feeling you are a voyeur going through somebody else´s home videos.
So I could not continue watching Modern Family and wouldn´t you know it, right after this the show becomes a babe party with a revolving door of sexbombs. First you have latin mega MILF Sofia Vergara who not only has a tireless body that drives men crazy ( if you look in the dictionary under ultimate latin wet sex dream there is a nude picture of Sofia Vergara ) and an insatiable sex drive that can tame any rod, the bigger the better. No, she also turns any schlong party into an impromptu ejaculation sensation / squirt marathon with her massive mammaries which is the reason why I cast her as buxom brazilian boob queen Beatriz da Costa a. k. a. Fire in my first post about Casting the Justice League of America movie . Although her breasts seem to have shrunk from a 40DD ( !!! ) in 2015 to a mere 37F.
Then there is the sexy Sarah Hyland who had some hot bikini scenes in Modern Family and who could ever forget her übererotic performance at Lip Sync Battle that put the Pussycat Dolls to shame ? With those natural born stripper moves she got the porn star genes for an adult movie career.
And then there was Ariel Winter who finally turned the show into a boner bonanza. With a name like that you either have to become a porn star, a wrestler or a character in the Frozen sequel. And while Ariel sadly didn´t do porn it seems that nobody told her boobs about her nixxed skin flick ambitions because they started growing at an exponential rate each year until she had the same huge breast size - 37F ( !!! ) - like Sofia Vergara.
God, her giant melons were pushed almost up to her chin by this dress !
Now I know that there are people out there who want me to condemn any woman who reduces her breast size. And as a confessing fan of big boobs there is a part of me that weeps for every woman that has her breasts made smaller not just because I will never get to britzki her ( which in most cases is not really a factor since I would have no chance to do that with most women anyway ) but also because there are so many women out there with small breasts who would give anything for big breasts. There are so many women who are not happy and must suffer.
But - but - I have always said that women should decide for themselves if they get breast surgery no matter if they want smaller boobs or bigger boobs. Because at the end of the day it is their body and they have to be happy with it. It should be the only criteria but I know that sometimes there are outside forces that influence such decisions. Also I have had surgery a few times in the last ten years and I can tell you no matter what kind of operation you have it´s no picnic. So if somebody like Ariel Winter does want to get her breasts reduced she must have a good reason for it.
Anyway, since I haven´t had a chance to post any of the many Ariel Winter videos in the last year here are two more for comparison. Here she is with her pre - surgery 37F gazongas at the 2014 SAG Awards and let me tell you there is nothing that sags where Ariel´s twin torpedoes are concerned.
And here she is after the breast surgery at the 2016 SAG Awards still looking good even if she´s " only " a 36D now which is still bonerrific .
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I´ve seen that before.
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