Mournful Monday : a George Perez tribute !

What a way to start the week and what a way to start the month. I´m still reeling from Neal Adam´s passing last month and then the news drops that George Perez has died . Which in George´s case was not that unexpected but it still hits hard. What a year 2022 turns out to be for comicbook fans.

Longtime followers of the blog know what a huge fan of George Perez I have always been based on the sheer number of posts so I hope you can forgive me if I don´t include links to all of them in the text and you have to use the " Perez " tag for this one. Furthermore I want to include some links for those occassional visitors who might have missed them from the fine fellas at COMIC GEEK SPEAK. First up we have Book Of The Month episodes for THE NEW TEEN TITANS - THE JUDAS CONTRACT and THE INFINITY GAUNTLET. For CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS however they knew the Book Of The Month format was not going to cut it so they started a new series called The Crisis Tapes which is currently at episode 24 which is the second part of issue 6. And last but not least there is a top 5 episode where the comic geeks pick their own Top Five George Perez Projects .

Now I don´t know what´s up with the guys from LOS COMIC GEEKOS but none of the links on the George Perez related episodes work except for the spotlights on Donna Troy and George Perez . Before we head into my selection of George Perez artwork for this post - which wasn´t difficult to make since I already had a Best Of George Perez folder - I want to add at least some links of the posts I wrote about George Perez. Among the many series I covered are his iconic AVENGERS reboot with Kurt Busiek , his brilliant THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD reboot with Mark Waid , his epic FINAL CRISIS : LEGION OF THREE WORLDS ( where he drew every Legionnaire who had ever been a member ) as well as issue 34 of CREATURES ON THE LOOSE and Marvel Comics adaption of the sci fi cult movie LOGAN´S RUN .

After George Perez demise there were quite a few new videos about this legendary comicbook creater but with a blog name like TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN it is almost obligatory that I pick the one about his Superman comics. Granted, George Perez did not pencil that many issues involving the Man of Steel - at least not compared to the rest of his body of work - but he did a good amount of them and every time he knocked it out of the park. From his earliest JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA issues or when Superman guest starred in THE NEW TEEN TITANS, the team up between Superman and Omac in DC COMICS PRESENTS or later when he came on board to the creative team of John Byrne´s revamp of the Superman titles he always delivered. I remember how hyped I was when I found out that George Perez would join the likes of Dan Jurgens, Kerry Gammill and Jerry Ordway. Man, that was clearly the best time to read the Superman books.

I´ll have to see if I have enough material left for a good Maxima post since that was one of my favorite Superman storylines and I keep postponing it.

Anyway, George Perez produced enough Superman stories for DC Comics to bring out an ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN - GEORGE PEREZ hardcover which I was lucky enough to buy before he died because it is probably pretty expensive right now. The only thing I don´t like about the book is that DC Comics felt the need to include the New 52 stuff. I know, he did not do that much Superman stuff so they wanted to include as much of his material as possible but I would have been happier if they skipped it.

They could have easily replaced it with ome issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA ( especially the crossover with the Justice Society of America ), JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, THE BRAVE OF THE BOLD ( especially the issue with Wonder Woman and Power Girl ) or LEGION OF THREE WORLDS if they needed material to fill out the book.

I mean, what is the point of keep pimping the New 52 ? We are already long past the point where the New 52 stuff is relevant and it fact many of the stories have since then been retconned. So why does DC Comics keep promoting it ? Do we really have to include it in every fragging collection ?

I for one am sick and tired of having to accept that with every DC Comics book that goes over the history of a character or super hero team there is a part of the book that covers the New 52 that is just complete crap but I nevertheless have to pay for it. For my part we should all just try to ignore it and write it off as a bad dream but from what I have seen of the current offerings from DC Comics I´m not certain if we made it to good water yet.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FAB FANTASTIC FOUR

On the other side of the street one of my favorite George Perez runs are his FANTASTIC FOUR issues although I seem to be in the minority. I don´t know why but generally speaking most comicbook afficionados only hold the usual runs in high regard - the first issues by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby followed by John Byrne´s revitalsation of the title maybe followed by one or two other creative teams of choice - and disregard most of the other runs while for me Marvel Comic´s THE FANTASTIC FOUR has always been one of their best titles up to a certain point. I mean, I won´t dispute how groundbreaking the initial issues of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are but I also liked the issues that followed with John Buscema at the artistic helm .

Longtime followers know that I first read those as DIE FANTASTISCHEN VIER by Williams Verlag and that they stopped publication in the middle of a storyline . At least they got to publish one of my - if not THE - favorite Fantastic Four stories of all time : the Overmind Saga . Coming back to the artists, after John Buscema leaves the title we have a lot of Rich Buckler issues and this is also where George Perez comes in. And while I am not the biggest fan of Rich Buckler and liked the issues by George Perez more I must say that Joe Sinnott gave the book a homogenic look up until Byrne.

So for me everybody who glosses over this period of the title misses out on some great storylines like when Ben Grimm reverts to his human form and is first replaced by Luke Cage, Hero for Hire and later has to wear an exo skeleton armor, the Fantastic Four travelling to various parallel earths including Counter Earth where we get a cosmic face off between Galactus and the High Evolutionary, the Frightful Four - including Thundra - taking over the Baxter Building and teaming up with the Molecule Man and an evil Reed Richards who takes the place of the real Reed Richards on the team while this one gets stranded in space, the triumphant return of the Impossible Man plus the definite Mister Fantastic / Doctor Doom battle in issue 200 after which Doctor Doom is dethroned as the ruler of Latveria.

And the grand finale of the Search For Galactus saga where the Fantastic Four have to scour the universe to find Galactus - who is believed to be dead at this point after getting a cosmic case of indigestion trying to eat the Impossible Man´s home planet Poppup - to fight against the Sphinx.

All this plus evil Doppelgangers of Marvel´s first family, a visit to Salem with Agatha Harkness where we meet her son ( literally the devil ) and a cool group of super villains not to mention George Perez passing through MARVEL TWO - IN - ONE where he illustrated such classics like The Project Pegasus Saga. After a few more issues by Bill Sienkiewicz between his Neal Adams phase on MOON KNIGHT and his run on NEW MUTANTS where he will become the outstanding artist we know Today we then arrive at the John Byrne run which I absolutely love although I only got into it at the tail end.

Going on, after John Byrne we got the Buscema Brothers two punch of John and Sal Buscema, once again inked by Joe Sinnott in which we have Johnny Storm marrying Ben Grimm´s eternal sweetheart Alicia Masters, Reed and Sue Richards leaving the team to raise Franklin Richards while the Thing becomes the team leader and Crystal from the Inhumans and Ms. Marvel Sharon Ventura take over Reed and Sue´s spots on the team roster.

After that we have a short transition period - as it happens so often on this title - before Walt Simonson takes over the reigns and finishes some storylines for which he began sowing the seeds during his AVENGERS run .

For me that´s another highlight. From there we get the incredible run by Paul Ryan - issue 356 to issue 414 and then we close up the first volume of THE FANTASTIC FOUR with two issues by mi viejo paisano Carlos Pacheco.

The second volume kicks off with a bang as one of my favorite artists of all times Alan Davis provides not only one of his best work but three of the best Fantastic Four issues ever - the first issue being even double sized.

After that we have a serious drop in quality as Salvador Rocca takes over but soon the title soars to new heights under the penmanship of Carlos Pacheco. Once again, this is a seriously underrated FANTASTIC FOUR run.

Then the late Mike Wieringo comes in followed by Mike McKone, Paul Pelletier, Brian Hitch, Dale Eaglesham ( another very underrated artist ) and Mike Allred. All great stuff in my opinion which is why I had almost every issue in my old comicbook collection in some way, shape or form.

Now you may ask yourself why I went into that much detail ( especially since I still have to finish up six posts including this one ) and the reason is that it´s my not so subtle segueway to our next video which not only goes over the entire history of the Fantastic Four during its runtime of almost two hours it also does an in - depth analysis of the team and its members. I guarantee you this is the best Fantastic Four video EVER !

Coming back to DC Comics, one of George Perez´ more widely recognized runs - about which I still have not done a post - is his critically acclaimed post Crisis re - imagination of Wonder Woman that brought her back to her roots of greek mythology. This was more my brother´s series than my so I read his issues. A few years ago I finally took the plunge and got the first WONDER WOMAN BY GEORGE PEREZ omnibus but I was on the fence if I should get the following volumes since George Perez was slowly phasing out on the art duties. You know the rest : I had to move to Spain and like most of my comicbook collection I had to find a new home for it. So now I´m even less sure if it is worth to continue and rebuy the first volume.

For me nobody in Hollywood has eclipsed Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman so far which I have elaborated at length in various posts. I wrote the first one way way back in 2011 which I split into two posts. A very short one on Lynda Carter and a longer one on the Wonder Woman tv series of which I did an updated version of with a lot of high quality animated GIFs in 2016.

In 2019 I did a Wonder Woman post with a lot of stuff about Lynda Carter but also some original comicbook pages and in 2020 I even managed to write two Wonder Woman posts, one about Don Heck´s tenure on the book ( which also includes Nubia or how she is more often called Black Wonder Woman ) and one about the Wonder Woman comic Rich Buckler did for Power Records. I still don´t know if this was from a pre - existing comicbook or if Rich Buckler did this exclusively for Power Records. If anybody out there knows please let me know in the comments below.

ENTER THE DOUBLE DRAGON or ALL YSSA WANNA DO IS ZOOMA ZOOM

Speaking of cult sirens who are just oozing sex appeal, we wade into the murky waters of martial arts fighting game movie adaptions with Double Dragon starring repentant born for porn blow up sex doll Alyssa Milano.

Sexbomb Alyssa Milano ( who got two entries on this blog, the main post and the bonus round with her best episodes on CHARMED ) is of course best known as the most charming, sexiest and all around greatest of all the Halliwell witches, Phoebe Halliwell on the cult tv show Charmed.

According to some interviews she gave later she wasn´t so keen on some of the sexy outfits but Alyssa was the main reason why guys watched the show, it was all to see her shaking her hips as a sultry belly dancer with her tits hanging out or an almost naked mermaid. Also Alyssa was busy taming male co - stars Julian McMahon and Brian Krause as her personal sex slaves.

I did a re - post of Alyssa Milano´s cult siren entry on her birthday in 2016 - and finally did a superpimed version with a plethora of GIFs in 2019 - and it is weird that she is trying to make herself the feminist figurehead of the whole Me Too movement with such actions like a proposal of a sex strike.

I wonder whom she is trying to make forget her nude roles, us or herself.

From the moment she showed her perfectly shaped tits to the world on Outer Limits - thanks to the lower restrictions of the Sci Fi Channel - it was clear this blow up sex doll was born for porn which she proved with her completely uninhibited sex scenes in Embrace Of The Vampire .

Now some people are probably tired of me constantly bringing up such nymphomanic men milking machines like Alyssa Milano but the truth is that she is the only good part of the movie. Neither Robert Patrick nor Mark Dacascos are used to the fullest but the worst part is that hasian sexbomb Julia Nickson - Soul is criminally ignored for most of the movie.

Ah, all the asian penetration nude scenes that were never explored. She has more protagonismn in the Chuck Norris comedy Sidekicks which you can find in my recently finished FRANK ROBBINS INVADERS spotlight post.

Coming back to Double Dragon, while it is a certified train wreck I still bought the VHS tape ( yes, this was long before DVDs or Blue Rays were invented ) in Spain and the main reason ( okay, the REAL main reason was teenage xxx hardbody Alyssa Milano so more like the second reason ) was that in the german release version the film was cut beyond recognition.

Ah, those germans really like to cut the movies and they sure as heck did a real number on this one. Now you might think that a bad film like Double Dragon might only benefit from removing some scenes but nothing could be farther from the truth. Because they did not cut only the bad parts.

No, instead they deleted scenes that were pivotal for the plot - such as it was. Okay, the film does not make much sense in the uncut version but at least it´s easy to follow. In the german version you can not even do that.

Even I can´t keep up with all the weird and crazy cartoons that came out in the 90s so I hope my readers will be lenient that I didn´t know there also was a Double Dragon cartoon show. Although judging from what I have seen in the following video I  don´t think I have missed out on much.

What I DID know was that there is a Double Dragon comic because - once again - it was on my brother´s pull list and I read his issues. It wasn´t that big of a deal but you can´t fault Marvel Comics as they pulled out all the stops on this with the covers provided by Larry Stroman, Arthur Adams , Steve Lightle, Tom Raney, Carl Potts and Kevin Maguire while the interior art was done by Tom Raney, Kirk Jarvinen, Steven Butler and Sal Velluto .

MICHEL VAILLANT MIT DEM BLEIFUSS BREMST ER ZU SPÄT IST ALLES FINITO DOCH BREMST ER ZU FRÜH HAT ER DAS RENNEN VERLOREN !

From pulse pounding, high kicking kung fu action we switch gears to high octane race tracks with Michel Vaillant. Today´s generation has probably never heard of him but when I started getting interested in four colored entertainment every kid in Germany knew who he was since his newest exploits appeared regularly in the cult comic anthology magazine Zack ! .

Being a bande dessinee - and a successful one at that - The Adventures Of Michel Vaillant was produced for french tv in 1967 with Henri Grandsire in the lead role which ran for only 13 episodes. Unlike the Michelle Vaillant cartoon I don´t think the series was translated for german tv audiences.

In 2003 there was even a Michel Vaillant movie ( which had the awful title Michel Vaillant - Every Victory Has Its Price in Germany although that is still better than the spanish movie title 24 hours at the limit which does not even let movie goers know that this is a Michel Valliant film ) as there were a lot of adaptions of bande dessinees due to the comic movie boom.

While my general opinion of the movie is good I was a bit underwhelmed because I was not sure which audience the producers had in mind. On one side you can clearly see that there is basic knowledge about the world of Michel Vaillant necessary to fully enjoy the movie while on the other side most of the characters are not really as well fleshed out as in the comics.

From all the tv shows about cars Viper is the one nobody remembers even though it has some comic connections. The series was created by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo who worked on The Flash with John Wesley Shipp and Bruce Bilson who had also worked on that show directed some of the episodes of Viper. 78 of the episodes were written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo and 13 episodes were even written by Howard Chaykin.

I Can´t Drive 55 is one of the very first bookmarks that I ever made and I knew that if I just wait long enough I will get to use the video eventually.

 

Closing out the road rage part of this entertainment / cult sirens / pop culture trivia section we have Joe Bob Briggs Monstervision presenting Stephen King´s Maximum Overdrive ( german title Rhea M - It Started Without A Warning which could mean anything while the spanish title The Rebellion Of The Machines gives you a better idea what this is about ).

I WANNA SCOOB WITH YOU BABY SCOOB SCOOB DA BOOB SCOOBY DOOB

Staying on the subject of cars, one of the most recognizable vans not only in pop culture but american culture in general must be Fred Jones Mystery Machine. And since I still haven´t started my Velma Dinkley series I want to include a few Scooby Doo videos. Man, Velma really is one horny BILF.

If you wonder what the heck a BILF is I can tell you that the letter " B " stands for " bookworm " and I´m sure you can figure it out on your own.

Speaking of ultimate blow up sex bombs apt for a doggy style dicktaming weekend, in our next video we have formerly homeless woman turned successful OnlyFans model Toni Camille trying on a few hot cosplay outfits including what may be the best Velma Dinkley costume ever. A lot of her better videos have an age restriction so I´m glad this one is okay to post.

We continue delving into deep Scooby - Doo territory as Scott Niswander from NerdSync takes an educated look at the Scooby - Doo movie villans and if you like in depth examinations of everything Scooby - Doo related ( but also comicbook related ) that have a runtime of up to more than two and a half hours ( !!! ) you have come to the right place, mein Freundchen.

Regular visitors of the blog know that I am a big fan of crossovers - at least if they are done right - and the more outlandish and crazier the better.

Which is why one of the few DC Comics titles I have been reading in the last years is a crossover book. But those who know me a little might not be surprised that it´s not your regular run - of - the - mill crossover title.

The twist here is that the main characters here are the members of the Scooby gang who team up with all kinds of other Hanna Barbera cartoon characters - especially if they go into the territory of super heroes - but also the regular DC Comics super heroes from Deadman and the Phantom Stranger to Aquaman, Hawkman, the Flash or Batgirl, Batman and Robin within the pages of the aptly named Scooby - Doo Team Up. And for all who think it absurd that a character like Batman should team up with the Scooby gang here are five examples where they team up in the cartoons.

Now Scooby - Doo Team Up ended in 2019 with issue 50 and I thought that was it. But then while looking for more Scooby - Doo videos I stumble upon The Batman & Scooby - Doo Mysteries which was another team up series that ran from June 2021 to May 2022 and just ended with issue 12.

How in the world did I miss an entire 12 issue series ? That´s a full year worth of issues, not to mention at least half a dozen of special issues.

Closing things out with everything Scooby - Doo related we come to the real reason why I decided to include so much stuff about this franchise : Mystery Incorporated, a new tv series that is starting on YouTube like Cobra Kai before Netflix picked it up. The show does a realistic version of the characters like Riverdale with Archie and Sabrina the Teenage Witch ( although I have only seen the first two seasons of Riverdale and the first season of Sabrina ) with a supernatural spin on it. At the moment only the first episode has been produced and they are looking for more funding.

Episode one looks really impressive and you can tell that this is a labor of love for everybody involved in the project. Let´s hope episode two gets made very soon because I can´t wait to find out what will happen next.

What happens next on this blog is that Brandon Tenold takes a look at the cult horror comedy Student Bodies ( spanish title Thirteen And A Half Murders german title What Is The Dead Guy Doing On The Clothesline ? ).

I wasn´t sure if I had seen this movie but I vividly remember the scene where Kristen Riter´s character ( try finding stuff about her without ending up with the chick from Alias ) goes undercover as Olivia Newton John from Grease with her boobs almost popping out of her small top.

Which is the best known scene as well as the only redemming quality of the entire movie. It is the main reason why anybody remembers it at all.

By the way that was Kristen Riters best and only movie role and whatever happened to her is only one of the mysteries surrounding Student Bodies.

Thankfully Mike Justice on THE EERIE MIDNIGHT DETECTIVE AGENCY has separated fact from fiction and unraveled all of the urban legends for us.

From cult horror comedies we come to cult horror with The Omen.

In my last posts I have included quite a few episodes of Classics Of World Literature one one side because that is something I have not touched on before but on the other side as part of my farewell to my old homestead which I am missing more and more because with each day I spend in Spain my life goes more and more to hell. Anyway, regardless of all my personal misfortunes these videos can also serve as a segueway to the following presentations which is why I chose Herman Melville, writer of Moby Dick.

That´s right, get out your sealegs ya scurvy dogs for Pirates Of The Coast ( for the german title they flipped the thing around and went with Coast Of Pirates ) from 1960 as we continue our ongoing Lex Barker retrospective.

New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Writing and drawing comics for the sheer joy of it - that´s true bliss.