That´s right, 38 years before double D delinquent Felicia Hardy donned a skintight, black leather suit ( with a cleavage that grew bigger and bigger before becoming smaller and smaller ) there was a female comicbook character called the Black Cat only this one was not a cat burglar ( which I guess we have Catwoman to blame for ) but a costumed crime fighter.
Juggling duties as a Hollywood starlet and stunt - woman by day and villain - bashing vixen by night Linda Turner used her motor - cycle riding skills as well as her Ju - Jitsu training to vanquish evil starting with her director whom she suspected to be a Nazi spy. Debuting in Pocket Comics issue 1 in August 1941 she was quickly shifted to the Speed Comics anthology before she got her own title Black Cat Comics in 1946. When the reader´s interest in superheroes began to wane the series adapted accordingly.
First by becoming a western title with Black Cat Western and then Black Cat Mysteries where things got definitely darker and Linda adopted a teen sidekick before Black Cat was booted off her own comic which changed its title once again to Black Cat Mystics which offered strange tales of fear and superstition. This is probably the best known series from Harvey Comics since none other than Jack The King Kirby contributed to it.
Speaking of contributions, the artist on most of these Black Cat stories ( back then creators were not openly credited in comicbooks so there may have been some other artists who ghosted for this ) was Lee Elias and as somebody who always says he likes to spotlight underrated, overlooked or mostly forgotten comicbook creators I tried to find out more about him.
Which wasn´t easy because the few biographies I could find were spotty at best. Granted, he was not one of the biggest or most famous artists in comics but as always the people who wrote his entries only focused on the work that is still sought after Today and ignored a lot of other stuff.
What is the same in all biographies is that Lee Elias was born on the 21st of May in 1920 and he emigrated from Manchester, England to the US where he started working in comics at Fiction House. He also worked for Timely Comics, Hillman Periodicals and National / DC Comics where he worked on such characters as the Flash, Tommy Tomorrow and Black Canary and on such titles like All Star Comics and All Flash where he co - created the Fiddler and the original Star Sapphire with writer Robert Kanigher.
Where most of the chroniclers skip over a lot of stuff is at Harvey Comics where only a few mention his work on the comic version of Milton Caniff´s Terry And The Pirates. All the others just talk about The Black Cat and while it is what he is best known for he did a lot of other work for them.
Because while I was looking for more of his art for that series I found a lot of original art for not only the covers but also interior art for such series like Chamber Of Chills, Tomb Of Terror, Witches Tales, Warfront, First Love, First Romance, Hi - School Romance or Love Problems and Advice Illustrated. In fact I found so much art that I can´t put it all into one post.
Okay, some of the series like the romance stuff may not interest Today´s comicbook readers but of his horror material at least Chamber Of Chills is currently reprinted by IDW so you might find a mention of it somewhere.
The next part of Lee Elias´ career is better documented as he left the field of comicbooks in 1954 after Lee Wertham used four of his panels from Black Cat in his infamous railroading of the american comicbook industry Seduction Of The Innocent as examples of " depraved " comicbook art.
That book is just the gift that keeps on giving. Lee Elias still worked on newspaper comic strips like Al Capp´s Lil Abner but his best known comic strip was Beyond Mars which he co - created with science fiction writer Jack Williamson. It ran from 1952 to 1955, was syndicated in Europe and Australia and you can get that in an oversized hardcover for 50 bucks.
From 1959 on Elias worked for DC Comics again drawing the Green Arrow back up feature in Adventure Comics and World´s Finest Comics till 1964 and on such books like Cave Carson, Adam Strange and House Of Secrets where he co - created the supervillain Eclipso. From the mid - 1960s to the early 1970s Lee Elias returned to England and came back to american comicbooks in 1972 working mostly on DC Comics horror titles Ghosts, House Of Mystery, Secrets Of Haunted House, The Unexpected and The Witching Hour while he drew titles like Omega The Unknown, Power Man, Power Man and Iron Fist but mainly The Human Fly for Marvel Comics.
He then worked for Warren Publishing on Eerie, The Goblin and his last project The Rook which lasted 14 issues until its cancellation in 1982. With that Lee Elias retired from comicbooks - again - but he took on illustration work and continued to teach at Burne Hogarth´s School of Visual Arts and The Kubert School. Lee Elias died on April the 8th, 1988 at the age of 77.
Okay, I don´t want to get you depressed but I feel Lee Elias doesn´t get the love he deserves. Now I can´t claim to be THE biggest Lee Elias fan on the planet - especially since I only saw his name in the credit boxes of a few comics here and there before I really started digging into it for this post - but I really love his style especially when you have a chance to look at his original art. Which is just gorgeous. Which is why I put as much of it as I can in this post. But I really think he deserves more exposure and I wish we could get The Black Cat in a neat omnibus or at least archive.
The first time I encountered the O.G. Black Cat was on this post from M.O.D.M. that offers three adventures from 1950 featuring Linda Turner a.k.a. The Black Cat, Dan Garrett a.k.a. The Blue Beetle and Lady Luck to show that the common belief of experts that Superheroes died out after World War II is not entirely true and more a gross over - simplification.
Which in turn led me to this post with the story " The Phony Crusade " from Black Cat issue 22 from April 1950 and the famous or infamous Black Cat judo instruction pages on AND EVERYTHING ELSE TOO as well as The Fine Art Of Self - Defense in Five More Easy Lessons Courtesy of Lee Elias´ THE BLACK CAT on MICRO - BREWED REVIEWS and the preceding post which has more helpful background information on The Black Cat.
Now whenever I post something from the Golden Age of Comics finding the color pages that go with the original pages is difficult but in the case of Harvey Comics their entire catalogue is in the public domain so if you want to read all the issues of Black Cat you can find them on THE DIGITAL COMIC MUSEUM . The downside to that is that we will probably never see somebody reprint the books since there is no money in it for publishers.
Okay, you think you have survived all the links for this post but just to illustrate what kind of stuff I run into while researching a post I thought I would add all the pages I came across while writing this. Come on, it will be fun. You know Marvel Comics Frankenstein, you know DC Comics Frankenstein but have you ever heard of Prize Comics Frankenstein ? If not you can get educated over at HERO HISTORIES , PAPPY`S GOLDEN AGE COMICS BLOGZINE and last but not least DEN OF GEEK which takes a look at all the different versions of Victor Von Frankenstein´s famous creation.
You might also want to check out NOTES FROM THE JUNKYARD for two in - house covers for Lois Lane from the australian publisher Planet Comics and marvel at SEQUENTIAL CRUSH with Unlikely Romance - Night Nurse # 4 !
Well, I thought I was especially clever in giving fitness guru Kiana Tom ( who is best known for giving entire generations of horny teenagers huge erections on FLEX APPEAL with her 36D - 23 - 35 measurements ) another cult siren re - post while making another post on the same day where I could put Today´s birthdays since Kiana´s post is so crammed to the top with hasian blow up sex dolls that I could not also fit the anniversaries.
But I guess there´s no avoiding the topic of hasian sexbombs in this post since korean knockout Grace Park turns 46. She has turned guys crazy on Hawaii Five O and played the toaster every guy would love to use for breakfast ( and other things ) in bed on the new Battlestar Galactica.
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.
I am currently watching the series but mainly because the storyline with Adam Noshimura is keeping me invested. He seems to have a brand new girlfriend so I am a bit worried about what happened to Kono since he is not the kind of guy who would just move on if the love of his life is still around. But I guess I will find out what happened to her sooner or later.
There is also the rumor that none other than Chuck Norris, Mr. Walker Texas Ranger himself is going to appear so I have to hang on until then.
Which is not as tough when the episodes are about Danny Williams or Steve McGarrett. With the new members - they are trying to make them interesting but for me it still looks like two kids trying to play with the big boys. I´m only sorry that I missed all the episodes with Rob Morrow since I am a huge fan since Northern Exposure, one of the best tv series EVER.
GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE or BETTER THE DEVIL YOU DON´T KNOW
Now the reason why I included this part is that it gives me a chance to write about one of my new favorite tv shows Lucifer where Tricia Helfer appeared in season 2. Now I don´t want to say too much about that because I don´t want to spoil anything and I want to write more about the show itself anyway.Which as some people may not know is based on a comicbook that spun out of the Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman.
As somewhat of a Neil Gaiman devotee I have written a few posts about him but if you never heard of Sandman you may check out my latest two posts on the series. Anyway, I always try to watch any adaption of Neil Gaiman´s work to movies and tv but after American Gods turned into a gay sausage party I was a bit reluctant to watch Lucifer. What didn´t help the matter was that - as Hollywood always does because Hollywood knows better than all the creative people who invented the damn thing in the first place and all the people who worked on it since - they made some changes to the story. This is not a spoiler because they say it in the first episode but our main protagonist is Lucifer Morningstar, a.k.a. the devil.
And because he sees himself as the good guy - which is the reason why he uses the name of Morningstar instead of one of the other names there are for the devil - he always dresses in white. But of course the tv people had to change it to black and totally screw up how Lucifer presents himself.
I don´t know why the movie and tv people always have to put characters in black that don´t dress in black in the comicbooks. It´s just ridiculous.
Shouldn´t they be going for diversity ( pun intended ) instead of making everybody look the same ? Anyway, so there was that and I wasn´t going to give the Lucifer tv show the light of day but then he had a cameo in the CW´s Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover event ( kudos for keeping that guest appearance under wraps ) where he looked like an interesting character. So I bought the first two seasons as a Christmas gift last year and because I don´t like to give presents unseen I watched the episodes.
Now I was ready to hate the series but I loved it and the main reason for that is Tom Ellis who plays Lucifer and who really kills it. He can perfectly do funny, sexy, angry, serious and everything inbetween and the one brilliant thing is that they made the whole show about Lucifer and his Daddy issues because that is something we can all relate to. The rest of the cast is equally brilliant - including Tricia Helfer - but Tom Ellis is just too much. Plus he is a really great singer. So far I have watched the first three seasons and I have heard that a lot of people think the third season is the worst but I was just too happy to see Tom Welling again ( who also appeared in SMALLVILLE and the aforementioned CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS crossover ) to care. I guess one big thing why I enjoy Lucifer so much is that I never actually read the comicbook so I don´t know what else they have changed. In any case this series has my seal of approval.
We stay with comics as Mike DeCarlo turns 63 whom I always get mixed up with the late pin up and Archie artist Dan DeCarlo. Mike had his most prolific time in the 80s where he inked Greg LaRoque on Legion Of Super Heroes, George Perez on The New Teen Titans ( The Judas Contract ) and Crisis on Infinite Earths and Jim Aparo in several key Batman storylines : Ten Nights Of The Beast which introduced the KGBeast, A Death In The Family in which the readers voted to kill off the second Robin Jason Todd and A Lonely Place Of Dying which was a crossover with just New Titans how it was called back then that introduced the third Robin, Tim Drake.
Another comic veteran is retired comic artist Stephen R Bissette who celebrates his 65th anniversary. That´s right, I said retired because in 1999 Stephen saw the generational shift coming that put so many of his fellow contemporaries out of work so he left comic books to pursue lecturing and editing and publishing Green Mountain Cinema, a trade paperback journal devoted to the independent cinema scene in his home state of Vermont.
When he was still doing comics a lot of his work went into the horror genre he is best known - and rightly so - for his collaboration with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on DC´s re - imagined Swamp Thing.
Now you probably expect me to pimp Alan Moore´s run on Swamp Thing as the best thing ever but while it is a must read for every comic fan that is worth his salt I am not going to say you should start with this. I know that it is en vogue to bow down to Alan Moore and it is almost sacrilegious to not constantly praise him but if you are just starting out with reading comics don´t start with this version. Because you will do yourself a great disservice if you don´t check out the original Swamp Thing issues by Len Wein and the late great Bernie Wrightson. You have to read those issues to understand how groundbreaking the initial first stories were and to see what an impact they had on horror comics so that for years nobody got a real handle on the book until Alan Moore came around. So far I haven´t had the time to do a remembrance post for Bernie Wrightson but there definitely will be a post on the now almost forgotten OG Swamp Thing.
Music legend Quincy Jones celebrates his 87th birthday and I tried to go over the complete list of his songs but after being halfway through my mind just switched off. I also don´t have the energy to go through all my bookmarked videos from YouTube a third time but luckily Quincy also was the producer of mega successful 80s hit show The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air.
Of course a big part of that show´s success and continued appeal around the world ( there are probably only a few people on the face of the planet who can´t recite the lyrics to the title song in their sleep ) is Tatyana Ali who grew from a cute little girl into an incredible sexbomb over the course of that series and who got to show her musical skills.
Much to the chagrin of the show´s producers she really bOObed all out in later movie appearances like The Clown at Midnight or Fall Into Darkness .
Now Will Smith has gone on record that the relationship between him and the insanely do - able Tatyana Ali has always been like the relationship between a big brother and his little sister but I don´t believe that he never put her booming tireless teenage body to the test not even once.
Either that or the relationship between a big brother and his little sister and what happens between them at night in the bedroom ( or under the shower during the day ) is a lot different where Will Smith grew up.
The only other explanation is that whenever Tatyana Ali got Will hard enough to cut a diamond he vented his pent up sexual energy on one of the other blow up sex dolls on the show. Like dicktamer Yunoka Doyle who played Ashley´s " bosom buddy " Keesha on with a big emphasis on the " bosom " part. She probably spent the rest of the day after the shooting had ended screaming at the top of the lungs as Will banged her brains out.
Tatyana Ali still looks terrific ( she has one of the breast natural racks in Hollywood - period ) as you can see below ( daimn, that´s some cleavage ! ) and you can find more celebrity birthdays from the 14th of March in this Gil Kane post that is all about his covers for Marvel´s monster comicbooks.
In honor of our crime - fighting, karate - chopping, man - handling and rough - riding Black Cat I´m going full on western with the rest of Today´s videos and you can´t go wrong with somebody named Apache Indian.
Speaking of indians, in our feature film The Cariboo Trail with Randolph Scott we have another case of the man stealing the land from the indians.
And I couldn´t end this post with the best space cowboy anime Cowboy Bebop. I think this is the episode where Faye joins out motley crew.
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Whatever happens, happens.
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