To explain this, I called this post unusual because so far I have done only one birthday post for Al Williamson and like with writer Ann Nocenti it was all about their contribution for Ann Nocenti´s DAREDEVIL run with artist John Romita Jr. which is my all time favorite run on the series bar none .
But after so many posts on this subject I have almost run out of original art pages from that series and I don´t like to do posts about inkers - although Al Williamson has also worked as a penciler - without some original art pages because I feel that they show off their work best.
And I already had enough material for half a post so I thought I would just go on the internet, look for a few more pages of original Al Williamson art and do the post. But where I at first had not enough material for a decent post now I had too much and had to decide what to include in this post.
Because as longtime followers of the blog know I don´t like to separate original art pages that are from the same series or the same kind of comics so that it was a process of elimination based on which stuff I just had to put into a special post. As some of my readers may know Al Williamson had worked in the comicbook business for a lengthy time so not only has he lent his pencils to such titles like NEW MUTANTS or DC COMICS PRESENTS he also was one of the many talented artists on EC Comics classic cult comics, mainly in WEIRD SCIENCE, WEIRD FANTASY and WEIRD SCIENCE FANTASY when the two books merged. Which will get a spotlight post.
What even I didn´t know was that apparently Al Williamson had worked in the field since the comic dawn of time and on books I never heard of. So I also put aside all the original art pages from his work on BILLY THE KID ADVENTURES COMICS and JOHN WAYNE ADVENTURE COMICS and let me tell you finding the color pages for these comics has been real detective work.
For some of them I didn´t even find the color versions and I am including two pages from JETPOWERS - or maybe JET POWERED but definitely JET POWERS - in this post. Other stuff that will get a spin - off post is his work on JANN OF THE JUNGLE for Atlas Comics later Marvel Comics ( which I think can be found in the ATLAS ERA - JUNGLE ADVENTURES MARVEL MASTERWORKS ) or the BLAST OFF one shot from Harvey Comics which apparently collected four short stories penciled by comic legends like Jack Kirby, Reed Crandall and Angelo Torres all inked by Al Williamson which were produced for other books but didn´t see print for various reasons.
And then there is FLASH GORDON. Where do I begin ? Even if I only wanted to post his adaption of the Dino DeLaurentis movie that alone would take me several posts. And there´s more. He also worked on Gold Key´s FLASH GORDON comic series and I found a ton of original art pages in the book AL WILLIAMSON`S FLASH GORDON : A LIFELONG VISION OF THE HEROIC. Which is out of print so I don´t have any qualms of posting this.
So after I have told you what is not going to be in this post what is left ?
Well, you could say that you get only sloppy seconds OR you could see it as an eclectic mix since I kept all the original art pages from his adaption of Ridley Scott´s science fiction cult classic BLADE RUNNER for Marvel Comics, Harvey Comics ALARMING ADVENTURES plus Dark Horse´s TARZAN and Gold Key´s THE TWILIGHT ZONE. And if the last posts have been any indication I will have to spread out the celebrity birthday section across various posts so the next Al Williamsno spotlight post may pop up quicker than you think. I might even reinstate the FLASH FRIDAY series although instead of the superhero The Flash these will be all about Flash Gordon.
Since I will be writing a few Al Williamson posts I am only including the links that were instrumental in making this post and besides HERITAGE AUCTIONS and COMIC ART FANS I have to thank MARS WILL SEND NO MORE where I not only found the splash page of King Of The Ants but the entire story. The PENCIL INK BLOG has the cover plus a page of interior art from Alarming Adventures issue 1 , Alarming Adventures issue 3 and The Twilight Zone issue 51 . Speaking of the cult tv show with Rod Serling, there is a post about The Twilight Zone on CHRISTOPH ROOS for my german readers, you can find another story from Alarming Adventures on ATOMIC KOMMIE COMICS and last but not least discover how great Al Williamson was - as an artist but also as a person - on TY TEMPLETON`S ART LAND .
We are continuing our anniversary countdown on March the 18th with french director and producer Luc Besson who celebrated his 60th birthday.
He created cult classics like Subway, The Big Blue, Taxi, The Transporter, Wasabi, Leon : The Professional or The Fifth Element and the reason why I am mentioning him is Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.
Because it has been a while since I last mentioned the series VALERIAN UND VERONIQUE 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 comic book and how difficult it can be to bring such a classic to the big screen that was groundbreaking back 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 nowadays is the belief 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.
The decision if somebody is included in this section depends to a high degree upon if I have anything to say about them - in the best case a story with a personal connection - and if there is any material like GIFs, pictures or videos that I can include. So there are many who would deserve to be acknowledged in the pop culture section but where I can´t find anything worth posting. Especially with spanish sexbombs from my misspent youth. But just the other day I found some videos of spanish actrez, tv host, singer, dancer, choreographer and scriptwriter Ana Victoria Garcia Obregon who turned 65 so I can finally write about her.
While she is probably best known - if at all - to american audiences for her appearances on Bo Derek´s Bolero, Who´s The Boss ? where she played Tony Miceli´s italian cousin Ana, General Hospital or The A - Team she has been scorching up spanish tv screens since the 80s. In my last post I wrote about the summer I discovered Brittany Daniel in Sweet Valley High and one of the few things that helped me survive the time until that series were on were the big game shows on spanish tv which always had at least one incredibly hot sexbomb like Marlene Mourreau ( about whom I already wrote more in my latest birthday post about spanish comicbook legend Francisco Ibáñez so I won´t go into more detail here ) or Ana Obregon.
In the case of Ana Obregon she was on two big spanish game shows, first El Gran Juego De La Oca ( where aforementioned exhibitionist Marlene Mourreau was a frequent guest and spanish sexbomb Ivonne Reyes started out ) and Que Apostamos ? which is the game show we´ll talk about Today.
The concept for the show was based on german game show Wetten Dass ? but since they didn´t have a constantly horny bore like Thomas Gottschalk on the show who was constantly groping the female celebrities and trying to hit on them it was much more entertaining. Plus they had a lot of hot female guests and then there was Ana Obregon. Most things were like on the german show where they invited international stars who bet on the outcome of some really weird trials. Although I think that on the spanish show they played for real money while on the german show they played for charities and when the celebrities lost they had to do a dare. Like in one episode of Wetten Dass ? Salma Hayek lost a bet and had to wear a dirndl which she totally busted with her giant - sized pregnancy boobs.
The entire press wrote that she had a wardrobe malfunction and one of her breasts fell out but since it wasn´t caught on camera I´m not sure if it wasn´t just a publicity stunt. In any case, I wrote more about it in this post as I missed the show because Thomas Gottschalk was so annoying and it took me a few decades until I found the episode on the internet.
Okay, back to Que Apostamos ?, another thing that was different from Wetten Dass ? was that at the end of the show two of the regular cast members - or at least one of them - had to take a shower. Fully clothed, not what you think. Sometimes who had to take a shower was decided over the course of the show but in most cases it was decided by vox populi so Ana was picked a lot of times. Not every time. Sometimes it was the conductor of the orchestra, a celebrity or contestant who took this place and sometimes it was Ana´s co - host. To whom I have to give kudos because he took the hit for Ana on a few occassions when she was coming down with a fever. Which she always was. She never wanted to get wet and came up with all sorts of lame excuses or tried to bribe or charm one of the guests to take her place. But of course the producers of the show knew what their audience was clamoring for and Ana got soaking wet.
Ana really looks best when she´s wet and I wonder what her casting couch audition was like that they made sure to include some way to splash her from head to toe in the show. Since it was her forte I have included the episode from Que Apostamos ? with Ana Obregon´s best shower finale.
Another show that helped me through some difficult times was Ana y los siete ( Ana and the Seven which was a play on Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarves ) which was created and written by Ana Obregon and of course she was the main protagonist. The show was the spanish version of The Nanny and since Ana Obregon is much hotter than Fran Drescher the Dad picked her up in a strip club and Ana had a striptease in every episode.
That´s the one thing that really didn´t work for me in The Nanny : how can any sane guy be even remotely interested in a below average looking woman like Fran Drescher who has one of the most annoying voices I have ever heard ? Especially when he has living blow up sex doll with a body that makes porn star envious - originally they wanted to call her DD Babecock but that would´ve been too on the nose - at your beck and call ?
I mean actress Lauren Lane could easily pull off Power Girl´s magical boob window and who would pass on the chance to handcuffed to the bedpost of such a sex goddess whose biggest desire is to bang your brains out ?
Sometimes these shows make no sense and I think that it´s poetic justice that the trusty butler got to dicktame this blonde sex freak in the end.
While you can find another comicbook related birthday from March the 18th in this SCHWARZ WEISS SONNTAG WITH USAGI YOJIMBO post from 2018 we come to a new entry for my german readers with austrian singer - songwriter Wolfgang Ambros 68th birthday which was on March the 19th.
I am also skipping the celebrity birthdays from March the 20th that I already covered in this DEJA VUE post about the movie posters for John Carpenter´s THE THING to pay homage to one of the big humanitarians.
Even though this post will be dated at March the 21st we will continue with the corresponding birthdays in my next post because it seems I have never done that day and there are jut too many to ignore. There are also a few categories I have to cross off so our cartoon video of the day is a rare internet find : an animated commercial for the Isetta by Rolf Kauka.
Rolf Kauka was often called the german Walt Disney and his creation Fix & Foxy convinced a lot of german parents to let their children read comics who found Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck too american. Besides the long running Fix & Foxy his publishing company Kauka Comics gave readers other creations by Rolf Kauka like Die Pichelsteiner with artist Ricardo Rinaldi and Andrax with artist Jordi Bernet. He also brought international famous comics like Asterix & Obelix, Boule & Bill, The Smurfs, Spirou, Gaston Lagaffe, Lucky Luke or Tintin to german comicbook audiences.
Speaking of german audiences, Today´s feature film is The Black Shield Of Falworth with JaMILF Lee Curtis´ parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.
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The only thing evil can´t stand is forgiveness.
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