TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN: 2024

Saturday, December 21, 2024

It's a Legion of Super - Heroes Christmas !

As Christmas comes closer and closer one tends to think about which topics one might tackle in the last few days leading up to the holidays - since you never know if you will get a chance to do a proper Christmas post - so I have decided to do the long promised Adam Hughes Legion of Super - Heroes post ( yes, this is also not the Adam Hughes post that I initially was going to make but we are slowly getting there ) although with a little twist here - as longtime followers of the blog have come to expect from me - by including the story Star Light, Star Bright, Farthest Star I See Tonight ! " by writer Paul Levitz, artist Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and inker Dick Giordano from issue 11 of the DC Super Special Series.

This is one of the few stories by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez that is still part of my comicbook collection as it is included in the second volume of the LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES : BEFORE THE DARKNESS hardcover whose main part is about THE REFLECTO SAGA and about which I reflected ( pun very much intended ) in this post . Now being that the story as well as this issue has been reprinted a few times I thought that there would be better scans available but it appears that we will have to do with these.

Okay, now we come to the part with The Legion of Super - Heroes by Adam Hughes. Or better said LEGIONNAIRES by Adam Hughes since he didn't work on the main Legion book and rather on the sister series.

Keeping in mind that LEGIONNAIRES chronicled the adventures of the younger Legion while the other Legion book was all about the grown up Legion ( there was a very complicated storyline in which the grown up Legion found a secret cave full with younger versions of themselves in suspended animation and the smart thing they did was leave it open if those were the original Legion members and all the old versions were clones that were allowed to grow old or if the young versions were the clones because that way the fans could believe the version that they were more in line with ) it was only logical to put somebody like Adam Hughes on LEGIONNAIRES since he is especially adept at drawing girls.

And I'm not saying that he would not have kicked it out of the ballpark if they had put him LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES proper because this guy can literally draw anything but he was just more suited for this book.

Now as well a fit as that may have been except for the seventh issue Adam Hughes only drew a few pages on the following issues. One of the things that prevent Adam Hughes from doing interior pages full time is that his kind of quality takes time so you either put him on a project where he can take his time to finish it or you put him on a monthly title and are content with however many pages he can produce each month.

It just takes him a lot of time to draw this which is why it is even more frustrating when he does a title with two of comicdom's hottest female characters like BETTY & VERONICA and instead of the ultimate wall to wall babefest with scorching pin up after pin up of these comicbook babes you get drawings that you could easily put in a children's book.

I mean, I didn't expect something like his work on PENTHOUSE COMIX ( which granted was not nearly as explicit as I remembered but we will come to that if I ever manage to write my post on that ) but that was just embarrassing. But I guess this is the kind of work Adam Hughes has to put out now if he doesn't want to get cancelled for drawing beautiful women in an appropriate appealing way like Milo Manara or Frank Cho.

Anyway, coming back to Adam Hughes on LEGIONNAIRES thankfully that was way before feminists and SJWs ruled the world or instead of an issue filled with nubile Legion Busenwunder in bikinis we would have gotten the politically correct bodyshaming fat women in way too tight spandex the comicbook companies are trying to ram down our throats nowadays.

Yes, that particular issue of LEGIONNNAIRES came out in 1993 so we score another point for the 90s, the " worst " decade in comicbooks.

And to demonstrate how much we as comicbook afficionados have lost since then I have included a few pages. Not all of them because that would be too easy and also because with all the pages from the following issues combined we have just around the right page count for a full post.

xmas tree

xmas stuff

xmas links

xmas videos

xmas elf

xmas lobo

xmas martians

xmas alone

xmas slay

xmas specials

xmas holiday

xmas soundtrack

xmas cartoon

xmas message

xmas elke sommer

xmas schlefaz

xmas gruft

xmas difference

xmas michelle

xmas star

xmas puppenkiste

xmas legion

xmas open

xmas zone

xmas unicorn

xmas banner

xmas quote of the day

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Midnight Sons Mittwoch with BLADE ( 2 ) !

Yesterday's JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE post got a bit out of hand - like they usually do every time Power Girl is involved - but even before I had to call it a day and continue that another day I knew that after all the preparation I did just one Bart Sears tribute post would not be enough.

And so since Yesterday's post was about DC Comics in Today's Bart Sears post we are taking a stroll to the other side of the street to look at some work he did for Marvel Comics including - but not exclusively - BLADE.

Who has gotten a nice little boost in the general public's awareness thanks for thousands of people finally checking out that corner of the pre - MCU Fox movie universe in preparation for the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine movie. Which was much better than I expected. But hasn't every Deadpool been like that so far ? I don't know why I expected less.

Anyway, if I recall right Marvel did a BLADE special with Bart Sears after the phenomenal success of the first BLADE movie and Bart Sears based the character on the likeness of Wesley Snipes. I don't know how long it took to use that momentum to do an ongoing series with this creative team. I think it didn't last long and never got into double digit territory.

Now the main part of this post is from Christopher Priest's CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON series and I can't say much about this book because I still haven't read it. As a Bart Sears fan it should have been on my pull list but for some reason or another this fell through the cracks.

For those who are thinking of getting it I have to mention that Bart Sears does only the first four issues. And I'm not saying that because any of the following artists are bad. But if you want to get the series for the sweet Bart Sears art you might consider buying a trade instead of going for the omnibus. Not that I know if there's an omnibus of the material out there.

Now Christopher Priest should be well known to comicbook afficionados because not only did he write comics under his old name Jim Owsley, he also did one of the best runs on BLACK PANTHER that is still held as one of the greatest of all time. As artists he had Mark Texeira in the initial run - who celebrates his birthday on the same day as Bart Sears - and later mostly Sal Velluto and I have written quite a few posts on that .

Anyway, one thing I found a bit strange in CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON is the romance between Captain America and the Scarlet Witch.

Not that Wanda Maximoff is not one of the main Bettie's in the Marvel universe whom all the bad guys wanted as a damsel in distress or lair candy how they used to call it back in the day when the super villains kidnapped hot heroines in the hopes that the good guys would take plenty of time to show up so they could get to know the girls better.

I mean, we are talking about a woman who is so hot that an emotionless android rebelled against his programming to have sweet mutant sex with her, one of her teammates came literally back from the dead to bang her brains out and even her own father faked amnesia to use her as a blow up sex doll. I think they have done away with that idea since then but there is still the fact that her own brother only got together with the inhuman Crystal because he thought she would be more like his sister.

Whatever that meant. Plus Ultron kidnapped her just as a personal love slave. Because if you look at it it made sense that he kidnapped Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne to build his own society since he suffered from an odd Oedipus complex so he saw Hank as his father whom he wanted to surpass and kill and Janet as his mother with whom he wished to have hard sex. And that is not something I am making up because that is well established in the Marvel Comics so I hope blogger doesn't slap this post with an age restriction just for stating well known facts. Coming back to Ultron it also made sense to kidnap Vision and as part of that extended family Wonder Man and the Grim Reaper but with the Scarlet Witch being the wife of his own creation things become a lot more obscure.

Ultron - who we later learned was Hank Pym's unfiltered psyche - was reasoning to himself that the only reason why he included Wanda in the list of Avengers he abducted for his science project so he could bend the Vision to his will by torturing his big - breasted wife. But there is no logical reason why he had to submit her tireless pornstar body to a battery of gruelling and humiliating sex - periments during which he penetrated her with increasingly bigger and bigger robotschlongs, a growing number of ultraflexible adamantium tentacles that could bend in every direction and all kind of crazy vibrating robot dildos with hidden extra features to stretch her out. That he did just for his own pleasure.

Anyway, I get that the Scarlet witch is one of the hottest Busenwunders in the Marvel universe. Plus if you get Bart Sears on a book you should at least include some hot Sexbomben otherwise the man who did the breast version of Power Girl and is therefore best known for drawing extremely big breasted women is just wasted. No, I get that. My problem is more with the pairing of Wanda with Steve Rogers although that may just be based on me being more used to see her with the Vision or Wonder Man.

And while I think that on one side the inclusion of the Scarlet Witch is highly unlikely one thing that also bugs is that despite bringing her onto the book there are not a lot of good pin up pages with her. I mean if they go to the trouble of including her they should get a lot of mileage out of the whole deal. I mean, her old costume - which she is wearing in the series - is basically a pimped up PLAYBOY bunny suit so there should be no problem having her in some sexy poses. Okay, closing up this post we have a bunch of random Bart Sears artwork all based on my personal preferences and what I consider cool. Let's see how long it takes me for the next Bart Sears spotlight post since I haven't even delved into one of his best independent series ever which is Valiant Comics X - O MANOWAR.