Yesterday I took some time off from working on the blog to watch some of the videos I posted ( yes, most often than not I only get to watch the videos after I post them ) and I thought that the tv show Manimal would be better suited in a post about Grant Morrison´s comic ANIMAL MAN.
The thing is that when Brian Bolland´s birthday came around last month I thought about doing an Animal Man themed post but I didn´t have enough material. Because I already did one in 2020 and I put all my best into that.
Anyway, if I have learned one thing in life it is that sometimes when you can´t do what you want to do you have to change your point of view and start thinkint outside of the box. So while I didn´t have enough material for a Brian Bolland exclusive ANIMAL MAN tribute he only did the covers.
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Don´t get me wrong, his covers ARE spectacular and I bet in many cases the incentive to buy the issue. What is the main purpose of a cover - even if most comicbook publishers seem to have forgotten this lately. But that is the topic of a different post. Coming back to ANIMAL MAN, so after I decided to look for more interior pages I found a truck load of original art.
Which made me realize two things : firstably, Chaz Truog is the unsung MVP of the series. As I said in previous posts his art is not what brought me to the series and I will always wonder how the book would have been with - let´s say a different artist because I don´t want to say better one.
Okay, there are obviously some artist´s whose craftmanship is above the level of other artists and then there are what you would call " artist´s artists " who are on such a high level that they can make others rethink their entire way of approaching comicbook art with just one short story.
So while I don´t want to deny that at the end of the day it all comes down to personal preferences. I mean, without a doubt Jack Kirby was one of the best comicbook artits ever but when I started out reading comics I didn´t like his art. So yes, I would have preferred to have one of my favorites on ANIMAL MAN but I have to give Chaz Truog props because even if he just shows up and does the work he does all the heavy lifting.
The second thing I realized is that I have to get me some ANIMAL MAN as soon as possible because I don´t remember any of this. Now I do know the broad strokes of the stories but with the thousands - probably more like millions - of issues I read during my 40 plus years of comicbook reading I can´t recall every tiny tidbit. And this stuff is dope. Since the upcoming omnibus is piced very high I probably will get the Deluxe Editions but those are easier to read and not as hefty as an omnibus. Anyway, that´s enough of an introduction as I have to heed the call of the wild. Enjoy !
ANIMAL MAN was initially just supposed to be a four issue limited series so it´s no surprise that Grant Morrison really hit his stride with issue 5. What floored everybody was the fact that he immediately knocked it out of the park with " The Coyote Gospel ". It is considered by many afficionados to be not only his best single issue of this run but even more one of the best metatextual comicbooks ever written. And as great as the done in one is it´s just a sample in which direction Grant Morrison would take the title.
Speaking of limited series, we come to the impetus for this entire post Manimal or how it was called in Germany A Case For Professor Chase - which in german doesn´t even rhyme. Anyway, as beloved as the show became later worldwide when it first aired it didn´t have the success the tv execs expected so it was cut short and only lasted for eight episodes.
Fiction has always been fascinated with heroes who have animal powers.
For Buddy Baker a.k.a. Animal Man that means he can aquire the abilities of nearby animals while in Professor Chase´s case ( no pun intended ) he can transform into various animals. Which is nothing new since the power of animal transmogrification has been part of folklore for centuries, from vampires turning into wolves, bats or rats to lycanthropes and skinwalkers.
With Bravestarr we have a more conventional kind of animal powers as instead of controling animals or transforming into one the title character calls upon " spirit animals " enabling him to use the eyes of the hawk, the ears of the wolf, the strength of the bear and the speed of the puma.
While our previous examples of men with animal powers required special rituals or circumstances there are those who let themselves be inspired by animals to develop their fighting style. Probably the best known martial arts movie of that genre is Snake In The Eagle´s Shadow from 1978. I don´t know if it was the first martial arts movie that refrained from most of the typical brutality in favor of including comedy elements but I know that it became an instant cult classic in Germany and it also was the first Jackie Chan movie I saw. For Today´s audience the soundtrack by french musician Jean Michel Jarre may seem a bit weird but back in 1978 he was a big hit so naturally the producers wanted to combine two very successful things.
Another hero with animal powers who appears in Morrison´s ANIMAL MAN is B´wana Beast whom you might have seen on Justice League Unlimited.
He also was in the intro to one of my favorite super hero cartoon shows ever. My brothers never could get over the way Batman´s chin looks but I had a lot of fun with the series as it manages the delicte balancing act of not taking anything too serious while at the same time staying true to the characters, going in bold directions, fleshing out characters, giving them real depth and last but not least including a lot of DC Comics history from the Golden Age to the Bronze Age. It´s also not afraid to do a musical episode and those of you who have seen the episode with the Music Meister will back me up : it is one of the best episodes. And what´s even better, various countries have done their own versions of the songs so if you buy it on DVD or BlueRay you can enjoy the episode multiple times.
Coming back to B´wana Beast, he does have confusing powers : on one side he has an elixir that gives him enhanced strength, speed, hunting and tracking ablilties, on the other sidehe possesses a helmet that let´s him communicate with animals plus merge up to four different species to form a chimera. Thankfully Comic Tropes Chris is here to sort it all out for us.
For some reason DC Comics seem to have the monopoly on super heroes with animal powers while Marvel Comics has more super heroes who take on the traits of a specific animal like the Black Panther or Spider - Man and his animal themed rogues villain. On the DC Comics side we have heroes like Congorilla or - the best known ones because of their appearances on cartoons and tv shows - Changeling a.k.a. Beast Boy and Vixen. The last one is best known for her association with the infamous Justice League Detroit. I thought about getting the omnibus of this era of the Justice League of America because I don´t know anything about it but at first it was too expensive, then I had to move to Spain and now it´s out of print.
Speaking about DC Comics´ Vixen, longtime followers of the blog may already know this from my CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA - ONCE YOU HAD BLACK special or my tribute posts to cult siren Beyonce.
I cast her as Mari McCabe which went against the new JLA comic from that time since Ed Benes obviously based her appearance on Halle Berry.
And knowing what a big fan I am of Halle Berry you might think it obvious that I would do the same. But they do that with a lot of female black characters in comics and I don´t want to cast Halle in five different roles.
And I don´t use the term " black " to provoke. It´s just that " afro - american " sounds more like some pc nonsense to make it sound not as offensive while people have the same stereotypes in their minds.
Technical speaking Mari is " afro - african " since she was born in Afrika where there are also white people. And she doesn´t even wear an afro.
So, for playing the afro - african - american Justice Leaguer who is also a model I went with somebody who is hot, has starred in a few movies and is no stranger to the world of fashion. She even designs her own clothes.
So the bootylicious Beyonce got the role of Vixen in my fantasy casting for a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie, and boy she does bring out the animal in men.
By the way, somebody ought to tell the guys at DC that Vixen is not really a good name for a woman in Germany as it sounds like wichsen, the german word for spanking the monkey....to keep the animal terminology.
These sections seem to be my only chance to catch up because I am living under a rock out here. Not under a literal rock but more where happenings in the real world are concerned. So for those who may find themselves in a similar situation it looks like Beyonce made some pretty hot commercials for german sports outfitter Adidas. I have no idea if this is a recent thing.
Longtime readers know that Halle Berry is one of my all time wet sex fantasies so not only does she appear in my Justice League of America movie casting she had even four solo posts . But of course it was only a question of time before I added some new ones so in 2018 I wrote four more : the first one about Halle Berry in her best movies , the second one on Halle Berry´s comic book movies , part three about my dream comic book movie casting with Halle Berry and the unexpected bonus round .
Halle Berry did a remarkable sexy dance ( not a striptease as she didn´t take her clothes off ) in The Last Boy Scout , teased us in Catwoman and finally delivered in Password : Swordfish and completely redeemed herself in Monster´s Ball where she milked Thornton´s rock hard Billy Bob totally dry in front of the entire crew. Which nobody really got to see since they censored it more than three times - about which I wrote a special post .
Longtime followers of the blog might have expected me to include a music video with Beyonce but this one was a no brainer with the topic of this.
Now I don´t know if Serpent Of The Nile from 1953 has anything to do with animals besides the title but it does star Perry Mason Raymond Burr, Commander Krang Michael Ansara ( who also provided the voice for Mister Freeze on Batman - The Animated Series ) and Catwoman Julie Newmar as an exotic dancer clad only in gold paint and an early 1950s style gold bikini.
There are however plenty of animals in this animated feature film based on Kenneth Grahame´s The Wind In The Willows. There are actually quite a few of these - including one by Walt Disney which I sadly could not find in good quality - and if I can I will put some of them in my upcoming posts.
Apropos The Wind In The Willows, there also was a stop motion tv series.
Closing things out, one of my favorite cartoon shows growing up was Grisu the dragon and this is what taught us about diversity. Nowadays the SJWs put it in everything, especially cartoons but back then you could not talk about these things so they got their message across more subtle. For those who have never seen the show it´s about a little dragon called Grisu whose most burning desire is to become a firefighter. Of course everybody around him never tires of telling him that it is impossible for a dragon to become a firefighter but Grisu doesn´t let that deter him from his dream.
There are a few episodes where he even achieves his goal but one of Grisu´s biggest problems is that he breathes fire whenever he is happy.
Like I said this is one of my favorite cartoons because it tells us that we have to follow our dreams even if everybody tell us that it is impossible.
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Der Dachs lässt schön grüßen, möchte aber auf keinen Fall gestört werden.
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