Now the reason why I haven´t done a post for Todd McFarlane yet is that on one side I didn´t have enough material and on the other side I seldom do a post on the 16th of March. Because on March the 14th we have the birthday of hasian fitness guru Kiana Tom who got her first cult siren entry in 2014 which got reposted in 2016 and 2017 and on March the 15th we have the birthday of pop star Sabrina " bouncing action " Salerno who got her first cult siren entry also in 2014 with reposts in 2015 , 2016 and 2017 .
And since finishing up these posts takes a few days that means that even if I managed to do cover both in the same year I did not make a post on March the 16th. But we will come back to both cult sirens in the bonus material. In any case now I finally have my first post about Todd McFarlane.
Now what I meant with not your typical Todd McFarlane tribute post is that at first I wanted to go with the obvious choice which was SPAWN.
Which is a series which I have read up till issue 150 but I don´t have enough material for a full post and most of it is penciled by Greg Capullo.
Yes, Todd McFarlane did the inks on most of those pages but I want to save this material for either a Greg Capullo solo post with some of his underrated work on X - FORCE and QUASAR ( I am still hoping to get enough material for a DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF QUASAR post ) or a Greg Capullo / Todd McFarlane double feature.
So what was the second choice ? Of course THE AMAZING SPIDER - MAN.
Doing the research for this post I had completely forgotten what a huge impact Todd McFarlane had on the title. But again, after finishing the research for it I have so much material that one post will not be enough.
And as you can see by the picture at the top it´s also not what we will be talking about in this post. Because I was thinking about when I first saw Todd McFarlane´s art on a regular basis and became a fan. Oh, I know that he worked on such titles like INFINITY INC on DC and drew some parts of BATMAN : YEAR TWO after Alan Davis had left the title or the INVASION three part mini series. But that didn´t make such a big impression on me.
What did grab my attention was his work on THE INCREDIBLE HULK which had something to do with the fact that around the time Todd McFarlane started his run on the book Peter David became the new regular writer.
Now since I have always been a big Hulk fan I went back to my old posts to see if I could find where I have written about this previously but there are just too many posts about this topic. It would take me too long so I am going to try and remember how this all came to be. And for that a small recap is in order so let´s take the way - back - machine and head to 1984.
For a lot of people this was the year of Frank Miller´s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon´s WATCHMEN mini series ( not graphic novels as some people might want to make you believe ) but for me who had just recently found a place where I could get my hands on US comics on a semi regular basis it was the year when I fell in love with THE NEW MUTANTS, Walter Simonson led Thor and Beta Ray Bill against an army of demons, the Avengers opened their official West Coast offices, Spider - Man got his new black threads from a little thing called SECRET WARS although he was back in his old costume by the end of the year and the Hulk - now devoid of Doctor Banner´s persona - was banished from Earth after going on a rampage and trashing most of Marvel´s mightiest heroes.
He was sent to the Crossroads by Doctor Strange in the hopes he might find a place through this interdimensional nexus where he can live out his days peacefully by trail and error. The big brouhaha where Hulk cut loose was in issue 300 and the Crossroads storyline started with Hulk issue 301.
As I explained a bit more at length in my first Joe Sinnott appreciation post before the climatic battle in issue 300 writer Bill Mantlo had merged the psyches of the Hulk and Bruce Banner into a single heroic entity which even earned a presidential pardon and finally let the Hulk take his rightful place among Earth´s heroes. Bill Mantlo is one of the most underrated creators in comics who wrote some of Marvel´s best franchise comics like MICRONAUTS and ROM, SPACEKNIGHT and co - created characters like Rocket Racoon and Cloak and Dagger who are currently very successful in movies and tv. One day I have to write a longer post about his career.
Anyway, so Peter David was not the first writer who came up with the idea to merge Hulk and Bruce Banner into a single persona. But we will come to him later. For some reason the idea of a heroic Hulk did not sit well with Bill Mantlo or Marvel so they got rid of Bruce Banner and sent the Hulk on a series of adventures on far away planets. At this point I was getting my dosage of american comics from the foreign press newsstand at the main railway station in Stuttgart so I missed a few issues here and there but I followed Marvel´s green giant journey through .... well, not time and space but different planets until he landed on Earth again thanks to one of my favorite corporate wide Marvel crossovers SECRET WARS II and what must be one of the funniest misunderstandings in comics ever.
At the start of the CROSSROADS storyline Sal Buscema was still the regular penciler but with issue 311 Mike Mignola - who had been doing most of the covers since issue 302 - took over. Well, at that time John Byrne was still doing ALPHA FLIGHT ( and you can read how I started reading that title - or american comics in general since issue 20 of ALPHA FLIGHT was the very first US comic book that I bought at a foreign press newsstand - in this post ) and somebody came up with the brilliant idea to switch up the creative teams of ALPHA FLIGHT and THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Bummer.
Just when I got into ALPHA FLIGHT John Byrne left the title and no slight to Bill Mantlo or Mike Mignola but the book never got as good as when Byrne was penning it. On the Hulk side of it we only got six issues by John Byrne before he left to relaunch Superman over at DC. You can read more about John Byrne´s short HULK run on SILVER AND BRONZE AGE SUBJECTS and Gary M. Miller at DELUSIONAL HONESTY has an in - depth analysis in five ( ! ) parts about the Hulk book that might have been and the reasons why it didn´t happen in the end but the short version is that coming in John Byrne was promised a lot of things but then the Marvel editors told him that he couldn´t do this or that - like an all splash page issue which was later published as MARVEL FANFARE issue 29 - and so John Byrne left after six issues. We are lucky that he held out as long as he did because he managed to at least finish his initial story arc which is one of the best written, best drawn action packed six issues you will find with the HULK.
Which also brought a huge problem for Marvel. They hadn´t planned on John Byrne leaving the title so soon so they had to come up with a replacement quick and the next issues have a hodge podge of artists.
The always reliable Al Milgrom took on the double duty of regular writer until issue 330 and penciler on issues 320 to 324 and 329 with Steve Geiger penciling issues 325 to 327. Issue 328 is probably an inventory story ( since only the framing sequence relates to actual events in the Hulk continuity of that time ) written by Peter David, penciled by Dwayne Tuner and inks by Tony DeZuniga ( who at that point was like Marvel´s fireman appearing in issues whenever other artists were late ) and Todd McFarlane took over permanent duties with THE INCREDIBLE HULK issue 330 with Peter David taking up the mantle as regular writer for what should become one of the most revered and historic runs in HULK history with the very next issue.
Now I have mentioned in a few posts ( like my posts on Dale Keown´s run on HULK ) that I have mixed feelings about Peter David. There are some books he has written that I just love like X - FACTOR or SPIDER - MAN 2099 while there are other books like his CAPTAIN MARVEL series that I didn´t enjoy that much. With that said when he started on HULK it was like somebody else put it so eloquently the parting of the clouds after a long dark night. People always tell you that when you in the eye of the storm you don´t realize what monumental changes are occurring but as soon as I read issue 328 I knew this was something special and I wanted more of it.
The issues between the end of the John Byrne run and this had moved the story forward but it was just your standard super hero slugfest. Gone were the excitement and drama that John Byrne had brought to the table replaced by a writer and artist who only were going through the motions. But suddenly things were engaging again, the writing was smart, witty and thought provoking. This was a writer with a unique voice and a clear vision where the Hulk was going. Which is always when books are best.
And don´t get me wrong, Peter David taking over the Hulk was the best of the best. But Peter David paired with Todd McFarlane ? That was magic.
Now like with Todd McFarlane´s work on the Spider - Man books there will be a few posts about his run on Hulk but there are a few pages that I had to put into this post. Since it states on the blog header that I am writing about american comic books and the translated versions in Germany I have to include a cover from the Condor pocket books. You can see by the one at the top of this post that sometimes they just took the american cover and put it on the Hulk Taschenbücher. But sometimes they did their own covers by taking different parts of certain pages and combining them.
One post I am still planning to do is about unused covers so I want to include two by Todd McFarlane. The first one is one he did for issue 366 which ended up as an in house promo while the actual cover for issue 366 was penciled by Steve Geiger and inked by the incomparable Bob McLeod.
Issues 366 and 367 of THE INCREDIBLE HULK were a crossover with X- FACTOR that was a lot of fun because everything was so hyped up. Todd McFarlane´s Hulk was just a beast and Iceman was having trouble with his powers - again - and he put the Hulk into a f - wording giant block of ice.
The other unused Hulk cover by Todd McFarlane was for issue 346. Todd´s last full issue was the double sized issue 345 but he did some pages of issue 346. The rest of it was done by Erik Larsen and for some reason the people at Marvel decided to go with a cover by Erik Larsen. Now I like Erik Larsen and especially his series SAVAGE DRAGON - which I am constantly pimping - but I think Todd McFarlane´s cover looks better and they went with Erik Larsen´s cover since it ties in with what happens in the issue.
So I think I have talked enough about Todd McFarlane, Peter David and Hulk for Today and my next post about this subject will probably be the grudge match between Hulk and Wolverine. My next Todd McFarlane post though will be about his work on AMAZING SPIDER - MAN although I have no idea if I can get to it this weekend. By the way, I hadn´t noticed until now by the blog counter with the total page views has finally broken the 3,000,000 mark. So thanks to all my faithful readers out there for that.
Once again there is a whole litany of important celebrity birthdays we have missed since out last post but thankfully we get a double feature tonight. We start with the anniversaries for March the 14th as one of the hottest hasians on tv ever korean knockout Grace Park turned 45. She has turned guys crazy on Hawaii Five O and played the toaster every guy would love to use for breakfast in bed on the new Battlestar Galactica tv series.
One of the things that always bugged me on Battlestar Galactica was the idea that the humans created the cylons. Although it would explain why two of the models were such hot sexbombs like Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. On the other side the cylons would never had to go to war against the humans because if you have an unlimited amount of copies of Tricia Helfer and Grace Park there is no male human who can resist you. I guess those toasters were still lacking in basic knowledge about horny humans.
Because there was an episode of Third Rock From The Sun where they tried to gain control of the world´s governments by sending in a squad of women who all looked like hot swimsuit models and when you have seen this episode and know that the toasters on Galactica have hot models like Tricia Helfer and Grace Park it makes the whole war against humanity and death to humans and violence thing seem unnecessary and over the top.
Speaking about Grace Park, right now they are showing the episodes of Hawaii Five - O without her and Daniel Dae Kim in Germany. And I have really tried to give the new team a chance but it´s just not the same.
Keeping the asian sexsation theme going Kiana Tom celebrated her 54th birthday and the sexbomb who owes her exotic look to her mixed heritage of chinese, hawaiian and irish surely had no need of plastic surgery to make men drool on Flex Appeal, which is what she is best known for.
This earned Kiana Tom her very own cult siren entry which I reposted in 2016 and again in 2017 . I also cast her as the female post CRISIS Dr. Light in my first CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA MOVIE ( THE HOLLYWOOD EDITION ) post and I also mentioned Kiana in my second alternates post as part of a lesbian double dildo fourway sex orgy with porn star Miko Lee , fetish model Akira Lane and cosplay icon Yaya Han .
So far I had written six posts on Yaya - two of them are pretty safe but the other four are absolutely not safe for work - and I keep mentioning her on various JLA casting posts and any other posts involving asian 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 showcase a part of her incredible anatomy that I have ignored too often - her legs.
It´s been a while since I posted my last Yaya Han video so it´s time for a new one. From all the ones I have lined up this is a rather short one but we get to see Yaya Han in various of her most famous cosplay costumes.
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 I think she could be a body double for her.
At least it would be fun to put her body to the test for the sex scenes.
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.
Just look at the size of her hooters ! How did her husband let go of this asian penetration sensation ? Anyway, from what I have seen Jeannie´s soft lips would fit perfect around me and even if she probably could not swallow the whole shaft I´m game for some asian lubrication ejaculation.
Coming back to hawaiian heartbreaker and PLAYBOY centerfold Kiana Tom, as an actress her most famous part was in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER 2 or UNIVERSAL SOLDIER - THE RETURN how it is sometimes called were her short bit part at the beginning is the only redeeming value of the flick.
In the scene Jean Claude Van Damme and Kiana Tom´s character Maggie are running an exercise run against the universal soldiers. They are separated and Kiana Tom is captured by wrestler Goldberg. Now I don´t know where the logic is here as he´s supposed to be some kind of cyborg but he does what any healthy man would do in his situation. Namely tie the helpless Kiana Tom whose shirt reveals a really huge bulge to a tree.
But it gets even better as Goldberg ( named Romeo in the movie which might explain why he tries to get it on with Kiana ) rips open her shirt !
Now that´s what I call entertainment : we´re only six minutes into the movie and we already see Kiana´s bra - clad melons exposed ( sadly she doesn´t go bra - less although she definitely has the hardbody to pull it off, but since she doesn´t show more skin it is the erotic highlight ). It is just a quick glimpse, but you can see that Kiana really doesn´t have much to be ashamed of because those perfect heavenly hangers look amazing !
Which makes it even less understandable that she didn´t do a nude scene in Universal Soldier 2. It´s not like Kiana has any problems with nudity since she not only posed naked for PLAYBOY, no, she also confessed that she is such a perfectionist that she had to wait until the right time in her career where she felt her body was in the best shape it has ever been in.
Too many actresses or female celebrities get the urge to do nude pictures when they are older or they want to show that they are still hot but most of them didn´t think of doing naked photos in their younger years and so their new pictures are useless because we have nothing to compare it to.
But Kiana did it right, she made it at her physical prime and her pictorial is awesome ! It´s no wonder her issue completely sold out in one month.
As for her role in the film, Maggie is hardly used ( no pun intended ) and many reviewer bemoan that she didn´t get naked. I don´t know where the producers are coming from as they fumbled one of the biggest pulls of the movie when they decide not to make her a bigger part of the movie.
So for those who can´t get enough of Kiana Tom you might want to check the infamous Bodyshaping Bikini Workout ( part 1 / part 2 / part 3 ) that YouTube already took down once as long as you still can. Probably because besides Kiana Tom you also get the no less stunning Kimiko Tanaka who is an exotic mix of american indian and japanese. So you get two exotic sexbombs wearing tiny bikinis for the price of one which must have lead to countless guys getting the mother of all nosebleeds because of oppai overload. Plus in the second part Carla Dunlap substitutes Kiana Tom.
We come to the anniversaries for March the 15th and a ragazza all my longtime readers are very familiar with since it was nothing less than the 51st birthday of my favorite cult siren - quite literal - italian singing sexbomb of the 80s extraordinaire Sabrina " Bouncing Action " Salerno.
Sabrina was mostly known for two things ..... well, actually three things : the twins ( obviously ! ), lots of wardrobe malfunctions of the tiniest outfits that were riding up or wet t - shirts and see - through bikinis.
At the time Sabrina Salerno, the cult siren with the obligatory bouncing action was at the height of her popularity in Germany thanks to her worldwide number 1 smash hit Boys Boys Boys ( which was especially popular in those countries that showed the uncensored version of her video where her tiny bikini top could not contain the singing sexbomb´s huge melons ) and various articles in teen publications like Bravo and Popcorn and nude pictorials in adult men´s magazines like Penthouse.
So they had to invite her to Formel Eins which was the music tv for german teenagers. The show was a total train wreck, they always cut the videos because the producer of the show was in Bavaria and they are very catholic and prudish down there. When Sabrina was there as a guest they didn´t play her video and told her she had to do a live performance. Which was obviously more than they bargained for because Sabrina began to shake rattle and roll her boobs up and down like there´s no Tomorrow.
Of course they were appalled but they could not do anything against it. The camera man tried to prevent the worst by doing a lot of close ups and just filming Sabrina´s head but as you can see it didn´t help that much.
Since I don´t get to write that often about Sabrina I want to include two more videos. The first is Sabrina On Stage which was one of the few rare VHS tapes with live performances by Sabrina. When I was a teenager this was very hard to come by ( not hard to cum by if you catch my drift ).
The second one is Delirium a.k.a. Photo of Gioia from 1987 with italian sexbomb Serena Grandi ( in this case nomen was omen as her titanic twin torpedoes were really very grandi ) which is still known Today because it contains a famous nude scene by young aspiring actress Sabrina Salerno.
We make the jump from Italy to America and from the 1980s to Today as wet dream Alexandra Daddario turns 33. I have to say that I don´t know much about her aside from that she always pops up when I am looking for GIFs of other babes which might´ve something to do with her 34D chest.
I always thought she was one of the vampire chicks, from these shows girls love like My Bleeding Vampire Diary, My Secret Teenage Vampire Love, Vampire High School Teens or Vampire High School Host Club but after reading her imdb entry I must be mixing her up with some other girl.
I still haven´t watched True Detective so I can´t say if Mr. Skin was right in voting her nude scene the best of 2014 but she definitely has the two breast reasons to watch the newest remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Our last birthday shoutout goes to somebody who´s better known to people of my generation, german pop culture icon Elisabeth Volkmann best known for Klimbim where she starred alongside blonde sexbomb Ingrid Steeger who celebrates her birthday on the first of next month.
While Ingrid always played the nymphomanic sexbomb next door - or at least her slutty sister - with the killer body but not much brains Elisabeth was the smart but totally kooky ( is there really no better translation for überkandidelt ? ) aristocrat with the playmate - worthy measurements.
I thought I had to take Elisabeth Volkmann out because while there are some episodes of Klimbim on YouTube they are all in bad quality. There also are only two full episodes of Zwei Himmlische Töchter and I already posted them. But then I went over Elisabeth Volkmann´s resume - which is longer than my arm - and lo and behold, she also was in an episode of Die Rote Meile or like it was later called Die Rote Meile - Club der starken Frauen ( The Red Mile - The Strong Women´s Club ) for whatever reason.
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.
Now there sadly are no episodes of Die Rote Meile on YouTube but Elisabeth Volkmann also appeared in an episode of Das Kriminalmuseum ( The Museum of Crime ) and since we had Graf Yoster gibt sich die Ehre in our last post we are continuing the theme of classic german crime series.
Speaking of classic crime series, I have already posted some of the black and white Dick Tracy movies so here is an episode from the cartoon show.
Since it will probably be quite a while before I get to make a Spawn post here is Comic Tropes look at that seminal independent comic book series.
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