One reason for that may be that I didn´t have enough good material and every time I had original art I posted it the next time I mentioned ROM.
Another reason is that because Marvel Comics lost the licensing rights there has been no reprints of the series. Which is why the colored pages in this post are not so good. The series ROM SPACEKNIGHT was written by the great Bill Mantlo who once again built an entire universe. For anybody who has not read anything by Bill Mantlo do yourself a favor : start here.
But ROM SPACEKNIGHT not only gets my utmost recommendation because of the story but also because of the art : Sal Buscema did the first 58 issues and Steve Ditko did the rest. Now after a period Sal only does brakdowns but it is still clearly his art. He has different inkers throughout the series so the look changes a bit from story to story. One of the reasons why ROM SPACEKNIGHT is one of my all time favorite series is that it was one of the first american series that made its way to the newsstand in Ludwigsburg when I was still in school. It was already in the 30s with the numbers but I was just thrilled to read any american comics. The fact that every three or four issues they had a different inker made it even more exciting to read. Later when I started going to comic conventions ROM SPACEKNIGHT was one of the series that were always available through the dollarbins - or Deutschmarkbins in this case - and dealers couldn´t get rid of it fast enough. I don´t think I have completed the full 75 issue run but I have at least the final issues from 35 to 75 or something like that. I am not sure if they are still available and if they are if they are still as cheap as they used to be. In the meantime a lot of people have rediscovered their love for series so they might go for big bucks although since I doubt they will pop up in any Marvel movies soon they might not get the top price.
IDW currently has the rights for the ROM property and many say that the chances for an omnibus are not good because there are tons of Marvel characters who appear throughout the series but I think that there must be some way to come to an agreement with Disney. I mean, who would have thought we would ever get to read Shang Chi, Master of Kung - Fu in omnibus format ? I have checked out the Free Comic Book Day issue of ROM but so far I am underwhelmed. I don´t know if the original series was just too good but the most interesting thing was the Action Man story. I also had some hope that they would get Sal Buscema to do an issue or two but so far all he did was a variant cover. I am not sure but as far as I know Sal is not working on any monthly title right now so he would be available.
As always I have to include a few links to my older Sal Buscema posts for my new readers. Sal was one of my favorite artists growing up and 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 ever saw.
Throughout the years there have been many books he illustrated that I came to love and he 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 three years ago and I would like to continue reading. Come on Disney, make it happen.
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 the Hulkster´s history, a second Hulk post where I listed which pages were missing in my french issues of Gamma and a Hulk post to pimp volume 7 of the Essentials which was offered for just 8 bucks at amazon. 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 .
This wraps up Today´s spotlight on Sal Buscema and ROM SPACEKNIGHT.
There are still a few pages of original art left that I couldn´t fit into this post but not enough to warrant a second part - as I did so many times in the past. But I´m sure that I can make good use of them when I write another post on the series, this time with all the other great artists that graced the pages of this comicbook. Or as soon as I find more original art.
Time to come to the always popular celebrity birthdays starting on February the 4th which was the 50th anniversary of Gabrielle Anwar.
I thought I had first seen her in Acapulco H.E.A.T. but it really wasn´t before Burn Notice that I saw her on a regular basis. Now I know that a lot of people say that they don´t understand what that show is all about but since I already explained everything there is to know about Burn Notice at length in this post let´s get to the real reason why I mentioned Gabrielle.
Cult tv bikini sexbomb Charisma Carpenter is best known as Cordelia Chase on Buffy and the spin off Angel although Today´s kids may better know her from her recurring role on Veronica Mars which means they missed a lot of scorching bikini scenes with Charisma´s huge 34D beach balls.
One of these days I´ll have to get the first season of Veronica Mars to find out how it all started since I came in at the tailend of that season - as usual. Besides Veronica Mars Charisma Carpenter was also in episode 11 of season 5 of Burn Notice where she showed she still can deliver the goods.
In Germany only the first three seasons of Burn Notice have come out on DVD and right now I´m halfway through season 2. I´m not sure if I should wait any longer to see if they will do the rest someday or just get them through imports. Now that I´m invested I want to know how it plays out and there is even a spin off with Bruce Campbell´s character Sam. In any case Charisma´s funbags alone are worth the price of admission . Daimn !
We stay with tv sexbombs who know how to fill out a bikini with buxom Brandy Ledford who turned 51. TV audiences now may know her from Modern Family while my generation might remember her on Married With Children, High Tide, Walker Texas Ranger, Outer Limits, Viper or her recurring roles on Fast Track, Invisible Man, Whistler or Andromeda.
Like I said, people from my generation MIGHT remember Brandy Ledford from any of these shows but what we really instantly recall is that she went under the name Jisel for a time and was the Penthouse Pet of The Year 1992. Because she was not only in a plethora of nude pictorials she also provided the best parts of various PENTHOUSE videos like Penthouse Pet Of The Year Play - Off 1991, Penthouse : Dream Girls, Penthouse Pets 30 : 60 but most importantly Penthouse : Fast Cars, Fantasy Women. I remember back then it was a big deal when PENTHOUSE started releasing videos and they were always quickly grabbed at the video rental store.
Now one reason why I wanted to pay homage to one of the biggest sex symbols from my teenage years is that I always brainfart that she also was on BAYWATCH HAWAII . Probably because Krista Allen always distracts me.
The bodacious Krista Allen played Clark Kent´s hot new teacher on SMALLVILLE, Jim Carey´s new neighbor with the big boobs in LIAR LIAR and the sexy oracle on CHARMED ( she was also in a series called Black Widow which had nothing to do with the Marvel character ) but she is probably best known for her role of Jenna Avid on BAYWATCH HAWAII.
BAYWATCH was really big in the 90s and it is like THE ultimate babe tv show. No kidding. No other show had more actresses who were featured in Playboy or playmates. If there was a hot babe during the time the show was produced you can bet that she´s in - at least - one of the episodes.
David Hasselhoff is my hero for putting hot babes like one of my favorite born for porn tv sex bombs of all times, nubian sex goddess Traci Bingham ( Traci Banghim ) on prime time television even though he never took them up on various casting couch sex offers ( at least that´s what he says ).
Well, if that´s true he was probably the only one who didn´t get any as buxom blonde Pamela Anderson paints a different picture of the set of Baywatch in an article from 2003 . Pam admitted having steamy sex liaisons with all of her hunky lifeguard co - stars and often enjoyed some SEXtra - curricular activities with her cast mates in their trailers." I dicktamed all male cast members at least once. Heck, with the ultimate porn star body I had back then I could have any man I wanted and I used my fellow co - star David Chokachi like a breeding stallion. I vented all my nymphomanic deepthroat urges on him and literally turned him into a sex freak. Just ask Carmen Elektra, whom he used as his personal blow up sex doll during her short tenure on BAYWATCH. But everybody was having sex behind the trailers, in the trailers, around the trailers. " Colleague Geena Lee Nolin adds the cast's motto was " If the trailer's rocking, don't come knocking. "
Now I don´t know if this was still going on when BAYWATCH HAWAII was on but surely none of the female cast members would play second fiddle on this sex orgy merry go round. Kama Sutra instructor in spe Krista Allen for example played Emanuelle in eight made for tv movies . Because she did it when her incredible porn star body was in prime condition she was able to believable portray the french sex machine with the high moan factor who merciless milks men dry until they can´t remember on which side the doorknob is. The show had some strange 3D effects - because that was the new thing at that time - and the stories were not that great but it was all worth it to see Miss Allen get her freak on. Whoa, did she ever.
As for Brandy Ledford, she appears on a few top ten lists in regards to gratuitous scenes in movies since she started her career with the only nude scene in Demolition Man ( the scene is a bit weird and looks like it was only thrown in as an afterthought ) and besides her bonerinducing outings as a PENTHOUSE PET OF THE YEAR she also appears in Killing for Love where she delivers one of the best sex scenes in movie history .
That scene is what I always pictured happening behind closed doors between Dinah Lance a.k.a. Black Canary and Oliver Queen a.k.a. Green Arrow. Even though in the comics Dinah Lance´s natural hair color is black and the blonde hair is only a wig. Which is one of the reasons why she brushes off everybody who hits on her with blonde pick up lines. Anyway, I still imagine Brandy Ledford as the one who polishes Oliver´s long shaft.
And for more on such baywatchable babes like Erika Eleniak ( who is of course most famous for her incredibly steamy striptease in UNDER SIEGE ), Krista Allen ( best remembered for getting her freak on as french blow up sex doll EMANUELLE in 8 made for tv movies ) or natural born go go dancer Carmen Elektra check out my latest BAYWATCH SPIN - OFF POSTS.
We are staying with gorgeous ladies on screen with Tom Tayback who celebrated his 69th birthday. Okay, he´s not a gorgeous lady and he only starred in four movies but the reason why I instantly recognized him is that one of them was Greg Hyppolite´s Undercover Heat with über bodacious Athena Massey as sex starved undercover cop Cindy Hannen.
Even if the story is nothing new - a female cop has to go undercover as a callgirl to find a serial killer - Undercover Heat is one of the best erotic movies I have seen because it has the perfect blend of crime, suspense, erotic and humor that few directors of this genre achieve. It also has a nice pacing of five minutes of story development followed by five minutes of erotic scenes and so on. But the biggest reason why this movie is so entertaining is the stunning Athena Massey and her spectacular body.
The character Athena plays is a somewhat repressed woman who never had much time besides her police work to explore her sexuality but as she goes undercover she makes up for that in spades. The plan going in is that her superior will send her clients so she can keep her cover and give him regular status reports. But as they sometimes come too late - to their appointments that is not as in relayed ejaculation - the sex depraved bombshell is already busy sexperimenting with the other potent studs.
There is even a threesome with a client and his big breasted wife so this movie has it all. So this is my recommendation for the day and if you haven´t seen it yet you definitely have to check out Undercover Heat.
You might think that we have definitely arrived in the more safe for work area of pop culture with Frank Zander who celebrated his 78th birthday.
He is the bedrock of german Schlager and pop songs with unforgettable hits like Der Ur - Ur - Enkel von Frankenstein, Ich trink auf dein Wohl Marie, Oh Susi ( der zensierte Song ) or Hier kommt Kurt the very first german rap song. And for those interested in obscure trivia I might add that starting in 1978 he had various hits under the pseudonym of Fred Sonnenschein und seine Freunde. His friends in this case were golden hamsters and like with Alvin and the Chipmunks their voices were altered electronically. Now one of those hamsters was voiced by Hugo Egon Balder, one of the hosts on Tutti Frutti alongside brabuster Monique Sluyter .
But the blow up sex doll from the Netherlands was not only in PLAYBOY multiple times she also was a big factor in my obsession on blondes with giant breast like Power Girl with her impersonation of Marilyn Monroe .
Regular readers of this blog already know that I cast her as Fire a.k.a. Beatriz da Costa in the Andy Sidaris Special of my popular Casting the Justice League of America movie series and I also kept mentioning her in all kind of post like the annual re - posts about italian mega soccer MILF Simona Ventura until I decided to give Monique and the Tutti Frutti girls their own post which I re - posted in 2016 in a new and better version.
And I just wrote a spin - off post with all the usual links to Janet Jones Gretzky and real live Power Girl Leslie Easterbrook who had the most famous scene in Police Academy 4 - Citizens on Patrol in which she emerges from a pool in a wet t - shirt. And while the obligatory Andy Sidaris actresses / playmates / sexbombs like Roberta Vasquez , Ava Cadell , brunette Cynthia Brimhall, Dona Speir , Julie Strain , Shae Marks , Julie K. Smith and Samantha Phillips are mentioned the main part is about blonde brabuster Monique Sluyter and the obligatory plethora of Tutti Frutti girls .
Now usually I just include a short part with them in the posts but this time I did a somewhat longer version so I could include all the new download links I found while writing this post. I just recently included a whole slew of new ones but those are just for compilation and mixes while these new ones are not only for entire episodes - which are always ultra rare - but for german episodes which are even rarer . Some of them even include my favorite Tutti Frutti girl ( whom you can see just below ).
Coming back to Frank Zander, he also wrote the anthem for soccer club Herta BSC, since 1997 he does personalized birthday CDS singing a special birthday song with your name and since 1995 he gives a Christmas dinner for the homeless in Berlin. His trademark is his raspy voice which is due to a tonsilitis he got in the beginning of the 70s. He also worked as an actor on such cult comedy shows like Bananas and has done voice acting on everything from Asterix to The Last Unicorn. Although my favorite song from him is the german title song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Which for me is still the best cartoon adaption of the comic book heroes. Is it just nostalgia or did we have the golden age of cartoon series in the 80s ?
You can find a more complete list of birthdays from February the 4th in last year´s BAYWATCH spin - off post and from February the 1st up until the 5th in this post on Ron Frenz´ run on AMAZING SPIDER - MAN . Which brings us back to comics with the anniversary of Rich Buckler on February the 6th.
Now I would not say that he has always been a favorite artist of me and that´s mostly because I had no idea how big his contribution to comics has been. I knew his name and a few of the comics he had provided art for but it was only through the research on this blog that I found out how many of my favorite stories he helped bring to life. So since it is one of my favorite things to bring attention to those artists who are underrated, underappreciated or even largely unknown I made a folder specifically for Rich Buckler´s art and did spotlight posts for him in 2017 and in 2018 .
Both Rich Buckler posts contains more celebrity birthdays from February the 6th and since I have nothing important to add we will skip them this year. As a last word on Rich Buckler here is a video from Comic Tropes about the short lived ATLAS COMICS company for which Rich Buckler also worked. I wish I could say something insightful about their series but because their life span was so short and original american comicbooks were not available to me when they were published I never read any.
Another indispensable birthday is cult siren Dona Speir who turned 56 on February the 7th. Her exceptional talents include breasts as big as her head and just as visible. She also has the smooth, muscled legs and firm, ripped glutes of a person who makes her living with her physique. Her face is framed in a mane of brightly cast blondness. She is best known for her role of secret agent Donna Hamilton, the go - to gal in Andy Sidaris' flashy series of spy - chick erotic thrillers since 1987. The highly successful, often imitated, never duplicated Sidaris formula can be distilled to bombs and bullets and boobs and beaches and Bond gadgetry and hot tubs that double as think tanks. The intangible that pulls it all together ? Dona Speir.
The first time I mentioned Andy Sidaris was way back in 2013 but it took me until 2015 to do my first spotlight post on him and afterwards Dona got her own cult siren entry in 2016 with re - post in 2017 and again in 2018 .
There are also more celebrity birthday from February the 7th to be found in the Dona Speir posts and since I already covered Today´s celebrity birthdays in my second WEBSLINGING WEDNESDAY WITH RON FRENZ post from 2017 at length we are almost finished. So far we haven´t got a video about movies and since I have already mentioned Andy Sidaris twice I´m including Monster Mash´s mini review of Psycho Cop 2 and Sorceress. For those who have seen Psycho Cop 2 some of the actresses may have looked familiar like Melanie Good, the hot stripper / killer from China O´Brien 2.
Psycho Cop 2 has another sexbomb with 41D Penthouse Pet Of The Year 1993 Julie Strain who also appears in Sorceress and Sorceress 2 ( with Andy Sidaris regular 36D Penthouse Pet Of The Month February 1993 Julie K. Smith ). And no matter what you have heard Julie Strain is not dead.
Julie Strain debuted in FIT TO KILL, where she played the evil Blue Steele, then she portrayed bad girl Jewel Panther in ENEMY GOLD and bad girl Black Widow in THE DALLAS CONNECTION . The movie is also known under the title DEADWORKS and features two sexbombs who were in a few of Andy Sidaris´ later movies : Julie Strain and Julie K. Smith a.k.a. Julie & Julie the double rack attack. There are two great scenes ( among others ) in DALLAS CONNECTION : in the first one Julie Strain is tying a guy to a chair and stripping to make him ultrahorny - before killing the poor guy.
And because she wanted a recurring role in DAY OF THE WARRIOR and RETURN TO SAVAGE BEACH Julie Strain became federal agent Willow Black.
Which brings us full circle again because it´s all connected. Because Julie Strain not only starred in over 100 movies - including the Andy Sidaris movies mentioned above - she was also married to Kevin Eastman who created the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES with Peter Laird and was Editor in Chief of HEAVY METAL. Plus she was the inspiration for the main character in the 2000 animated HEAVY METAL movie sequel F.A.K.K. 2.
To bring things really full circle here is an extensive overview of the ROM SPACEKNIGHT series since I didn´t really write that much about the book.
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