Yay, we are celebrating Man of Tomorrow Monday with Dan Jurgens and Butch Guice

I´m still recovering from my visit to the Stuttgart Comic Con Yesterday but I couldn´t pass up another " two for one " combo as Dan Jurgens ( 57 ) and Jackson " Butch " Guice ( 55 ) both celebrate their birthdays Today.

They both have done a lot of other comics but they were together on the Superman books during the Death of Superman storyline which was one of the most successful storyline because they not only killed off Superman, they also had a plan as to what would happen next. Butch Guice came on board in the aftermath and took over ACTION COMICS and at that time I was not the biggest fan of his work. But since I read all of the Superman books ( is that even possible Today ? ) I saw a lot of his work on this title.

Dan Jurgens was on the Superman books a bit longer than Butch Guice as he came in after John Byrne had left and he went from penciling one book to write and draw several. For comic fans there is the John Byrne era and then the following one Dan Jurgens era with the death and anything that followed like Superman in the all black costume and the long hair. Writing Superman was such a big part of his life that he was still doing Superman stories when he was working on Marvel´s Thor and Captain America. So here are a few more examples of Dan Jurgens´ and Butch Guice´s art :  

Since I didn´t post Yesterday there are still the celebrity birthdays of June the 26th to take care of starting with the youngest, Ariana Grande at 23. She wasn´t somebody I was interested in but after seeing her do musical impressions on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live I get the feeling I should probably listen to some of her music.



Strange coincidence department : our next birthday is Jennette McCurdy with 24 years and she was on Sam & Cat together with Ariana Grande.

Jennette, who´s first name vexes my auto correction for some reason, sure has grown up in all the right places since the iCarly show days.

Which makes it a bit less creepy if she was one of your guilty tv crushes.

I have to admit that I watched a few episodes of iCarly and I found the character Jennette played, Sam was more interesting. Which is often the case as the supporting characters get to be wild and crazy while the main characters have to be more straight. In any case as usual you never catch the interesting episodes and I somehow managed to miss this one.

Finding stuff on german morning tv host Nadine Krüger who celebrated her 39th birthday Yesterday was extremely difficult since every search gave me more stuff on Diane Krüger. I thought I had a good picture somewhere but it is gone. And since I couldn´t find a good video with Power Girl lookalike contest winner Nadine this picture is all I can post.

Strange coincidence department 2 : last Monday Nicole Kidman had her birthday, Today Chris O´Donnell celebrates his 46th birthday who is best known for playing agent G Callen on Navy CIS : Los Angeles and he tops Nicole in bad Batman flicks since he was in two. What I find one of the greatest injustices in movie history is that we had to suffer rubber Batnipples when we would have preferred to see Nicole´s nipples.

At first I wanted to acknowledge Chris Isaak´s 60th anniversary with a video from The Voice but then I decided to post a video with him. While I was still thinking if I should choose Baby I Did A Bad Bad Thing or Blue Hotel I found this one so I thought, why not go with all his greatest hits ?



Strange coincidences department 3 : in my last post was Carly Simon´s song Nobody Does It Better from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me and Today Robert Davi, who played a James Bond villain in License To Kill turns 63. Robert has been in a plethora of movies and tv series from The Fall Guy ( don´t worry, no Markie Post video Today ) to The Incredible Hulk to The Goonies, Raw Deal, Action Jackson, Die Hard and Predator 2. There also was a movie - I don´t remember the title - where he basically played the guy from Renegade : he was an ex - cop who was always unshaven and wore sunglasses and a long trenchcoat. He also had a motorbike but unlike Lorenzo Lamas he made the guy cool. I guess the only reason to watch Renegade was Lorenzo´s wife Kathleen Kinmont who could have made a fortune as a stripper with a hardbody like that.

Speaking of  stripper hardbodies, Robert Davi was also on Showgirls with Elizabeth Berkley where he played the sleazy owner of the Cheetah club. I bet they had a few lapdance sessions to help Elizabeth prepare for role.

Strange coincidences department 4 : I also mentioned Elizabeth in my first post about Paul Ryan´s Emergency Stop because on that day another one of her co stars in Showgirls, Gina Gershon celebrated her birthday. Well among the celebrity birthdays of that particular day was also german actor Theo Lingen. Now Theo was in some movies by Fritz Lang, among them M and Today it is Peter Lorre´s anniversary who played the killer.

With that we are finished with Yesterdays birthday and Today there are only three I have to mention. The first is Tobey Maguire who celebrates his 41st birthday. He was in what we now call " the good " Spider - Man movies. Except the last one. Let´s all forget the third Spider - Man movie, okay ? But in my opinion he embodied Peter Parker better than Andrew Garfield and which ten year old kid they will cast for the next.

J. J. Abrams who turns 60 has brought us many things like Alias ( the tv show, not the comic ), Lost, Fringe and the revamped versions of Star Wars and Star Trek but his greatest achievement in cinematography is getting Alice Eve to show her underwear. There are some people who complain that this particular scene served no purpose in the movie and was only shot so the producer could put it in the trailer. To which I have to say : Congratulations guys, you finally understand how Hollywood works.

By the way, if you have a sexbomb like Alice Eve in the cast and you don´t have her do a scene where she is at least in underwear or a bikini you have failed as a director. If all this talk gives you the impression we are not headed for a video about J. J. Abrams you are right so here is one with the lovely Alice Eve on Craig Ferguson. Those two are always funny.



Last but not least I have to mention french cult siren Isabelle Adjani who turns 61. I read somewhere that she had a clause in her contract that her nude scenes in One Deadly Summer were cut in the video version so more people would go to the movie theaters to see her nude. She has been in a few gems but if I had to recommend a movie for those who haven´t seen much of her work I´d go with Subway. Christopher Lambert is her co star, it has a terrific soundtrack ( I bet there is one song you know ) and it´s one of the most unorthodox movies I have seen in my life. In a good way.

I restrained myself from putting too many videos in the entertainment block because there were two more I wanted to add. First off you can´t have a Superman post without a Superman video and while the death of Superman parody from Saturday Night Live would have fit Today´s topic I already had a video from that show. And since the Nostalgia Critic´s review of the Man Of Steel movie has apparently been erased here´s a video with Comicbookgirl19 where she talks a bit about the movie but mostly about why the Superman comics Birthright and All Star Superman are so much better than the movie. I can vouch for All Star Superman but I haven´t read Birthright because I´m not a big fan of revisionist comic history. Okay, not really since I loved John Byrne´s revamp but that still works. They don´t have to redo Superman´s origin every five years.



As usual you find the best videos after you have finished a post which is the reason why Today´s cartoon video is neither the 75th anniversary of Superman tribute nor the first episode of one of my all time literature adaptions, Dogtanian And The Three Moskehounds. Instead here is an episode of Space Angel by Alex Toth who was spotlighted in my last post.



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Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

I want a Claremont / Byrne X - Men movie

If you are reading this you already know that the birthday post about Traci Bingham didn´t go up as planned - which might not be a bad thing - since this gives me the opportunity to do a more comic oriented post about the Chris Claremont / John Byrne / Terry Austin period of UNCANNY X - MEN.

There are few things all comics fans can agree to so this alone should tell you what a high quality the stories and the art of these stories have since they are collectively considered the gold standard all other creative art teams on the title strive to achieve ever since - successfully or not.

And if you have watched Comic Book Girl 19´s fantastic X - MEN : EPIC HISTORY videos ( and at this point I assume everybody who has only the slightest interest in X - Men has ) you know that one of the reasons why she started this series ( which will hopefully be continued so please go and support her channel ) is that while there have been a lot of X - Men movies in the last years that are really good - and another one coming with X - MEN : APOCALYPSE - up to this point there hasn´t been an adequate representation of the Chris Claremont / John Byrne X - Men.

I know there are some changes you have to make when you adapt a comic from the printed page to the silver screen and I applaud the efforts they have done to stay true to the characters but I still miss the version that I became a fan of when I read my first issues in the spanish translations.

Which - as was the norm back then even with spanish comics - was not at the start of the Chris Claremont / John Byrne X - Men run but rather in the middle of The Dark Phoenix Saga. Luckily I was able to find a few older issues so that I managed to get as far back as The Proteus Saga.

Which in my opinion doesn´t get nearly enough credit as it deserves.

Being overshadowed by The Dark Phoenix Saga this four part story from issues 125 to 128 of UNCANNY X - MEN was a first step into the dark and realistic stories that were to follow during Chris Claremont´s and John Byrne´s tenure on the book. It also filled in a lot of back story with Professor Charles Xavier and Moira McTaggert and gave Chris Claremont a chance to explore the characters as they really went through the ringer in this one. Especially Cyclops showed why he was such a great leader and it is because of these issues that he became my favorite character in the book. This was before he was transformed into a giant dick, mind you.

Yep, Wolverine was still human back then and could be rattled by the experience of going up against Proteus who could bend reality to his will.

Which was a perfect opportunity for artist John Byrne to really let loose.

To back up on the story a little - and this is the part with the spoilers for those who still haven´t read the Chris Claremont / John Byrne run - when we open in issue 125 the X - Men have split into two factions and each of them thinks the other part is dead. Which is the result of a fight against Magneto in his base in Antarctica which was engulfed by lava and in the ensuing chaos the team was separated. Jean Grey and the Beast escaped into the antarctic wilderness where they were rescued by a helicopter. The rest of the team was trapped underground and ultimately landed in the Savage Land. Which is one of the stories I would have adapted as a X - Men movie and not only because Storm has a nice outfit in that one. 

You have the whole prehistoric world backdrop of a lost civilization at the earth´s core which has inspired stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle´s LOST WORLD ( which is adapted ad infinitum ) to Mike Grell´s WARLORD.

Ever since JURASSIC PARK dinosaurs in movies are doable and much more exciting than the go - motion puppets or lizards with prosthetics that were used in movies when I was a kid. So in this story you have the jungle backdrop, you have dinosaurs, you have topless tribeswomen even if John Byrne could not do full frontal nudity because of the Comics Code 

and you have Storm taking a bath which is sadly cut short by Karl Lykos, a mutant who transforms into a half human half pterodactyl creature. Who calls himself Sauron, so nice Tolkien reference there Mister Claremont.

Here is the color version of this gorgeous splash page from issue 115 :



Back then the art team combo of penciler John Byrne and inker Terry Austin were really knocking it out of the ballpark on that book with each issue. Here´s another awesome double page spread fron that issue :

Once again - to compare - here´s the original art of that splash page.

I know that I posted some of the art in my Days of Future Past long gone by post but then I only had the colored versions and I wanted to add the black and white art. Okay, back to missed opportunities in X - Men movies I would have probably given my right arm to see Janet Jackson in that role but I guess I´m the only one who would had cast her for that role.



The same goes for Traci Bingham, who was my other default casting for Storm before Halle Berry got the role. It really shows how business savy Pamela Anderson is because from all the babes that were on BAYWATCH she is the only one who was able to garner that attention into a long lived career. Even if she too did some questionable movies. And it´s not that Traci Bingham was less attractive but she somehow only ended up making bad movies and even worse reality tv after BAYWATCH ( which I covered a bit more in detail in her birthday post which I will hopefully get posted ).



Staying a bit on the topic of missed opportunities in the X - Men movies I have to say that even if I´m a big fan of Halle Berry ( I own CATWOMAN on DVD ) I was a bit disappointed that she didn´t get to wear the classic " swimsuit with leather boots " outfit. Halle would have totally rocked that.

Another costume that would have looked good on Halle Berry is the big 90s anime shoulder leather costume Storm had during the Blue Team / Gold Team era but I guess it was too new wave / punk for Hollywood.

Speaking of punk, there is also Storm´s punk outfit with the mohawk when she returned from SECRET WARS and lost her powers. She was totally bad ass, fought Cyclops for leadership of the X - Men and won. 

So from all of Storm´s long and interesting history almost nothing of that made it into the movie adaptions and somehow Halle Berry ended up with the worst of all the costumes from the comics even though they had such a variety to choose from. It´s a real shame that they couldn´t find more to do for such an award winning actress who still looks fantastic at 49. 

But back to The Proteus Saga ( which is what I was talking about before going completely on a tangent ) at the start of the story the x - Men think that Jean Grey and the Beast are dead while they think the rest of the X - Men are dead. The remaining X - Men have their adventure in the Savage Land in issues 114 to 116 and Jean and Hank have their own stuff to deal with so like in every good soap opera they keep missing each other until Nightcrawler has a run in with Beast. Finally the X - Men team is reunited.

Just in time to go up against Moira´s parasitic offspring Proteus who has left a trail of dead bodies in his wake and resides in Moira´s abusive ex.

Because of his reality warping powers the X - Men have a hard time but in the end it´s Colossus who manages to vanquish the villain thanks to his vulnerability to metal. It´s a really character defining moment for Piotr.

To read more about The Proteus Saga Duy Tano at THE COMICS CUBE has a post that covers all this, BRONZE AGE BABIES has single posts on all the issues ( 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 ) and SCANS DAILY has a post on Shreds of Humanity, a back up story by Ann Nocenti and John Bolton in issue 32 of CLASSIC X - MEN, which is the series where I could finally read all the issues by Chris Claremont that were missing in my collection in their original version. This was long before Marvel Comics had so many trades.

Coming back to the UNCANNY X - MEN run by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, one of the reasons why I got hooked so easily by the series was that John Byrne really knew how to draw hot babes ( remember this shot of Jean Grey ? ). It was just at the time when I became interested in girls but was too young to buy the PLAYBOY so comic massitas were my porn.

Especially the issues with the Hellfire Club although I wasn´t so sure at that time what the whole deal with Jean Grey´s outfit was since you could see more of her when she was wearing a bikini. Yes, the full appreciation for the Emma Peel inspired corsage and leather boots came years later.

But more than that these were really great stories and it´s a shame that most of it never made it into the movies. Now I could say that there are millions of poor movie goers out there who will never get to experience the greatness that was the new X - Men in its full effect because while some may actually set foot in a comic shop to get The Dark Phoenix Saga most of them don´t realize that there are also preceding stories like The Phoenix Saga or The Proteus Saga which are also part of that big opus.

Yes, I said " I could say " because I think that if you are too lazy to read the comics it´s your own fault with all the different versions like digital comics or the hefty omnibuses in which all these stories are available.

And this is all I´m going to say about this topic Today but I´m sure there will be more posts about the Chris Claremont / John Byrne run on X - Men in the future. When I have finished with this post I will try to finally get the Traci Bingham post online although I will probably change some of the pictures as I have used some of them for this post and I try to avoid posting the same pictures over and over again if possible. Next here will probably be my post about how Power Man and Iron Fist met Doctor Who.

As usual there are many websites to give thanks to and mention which were helpful during the making of this post or I found them while looking for something completely different and they still have something which might interest my readers. The impromptu outdoor danger room session from UNCANNY X - MEN 127 is the topic of two posts, one at SCANS DAILY and one at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES which also has posts on The Top Five " Bang ! You Dead ! " moments in X - Men comics , The Many Dead Loves of Wolverine , That Time Wolverine " Fought " a Little Lisping Girl Robot Bomb and the anniversary 50th issue of WOLVERINE by Marc Silvestri.

For a bit more background info SUPER MEGA MONKEY`S MARVEL COMICS CHRONOLOGY has a post on UNCANNY X - MEN issues 111 to 117 and iFANBOY has the famous page from UNCANNY X - MEN 142 where a sentinel kills Wolverine. Many thanks and kudos go out to all you guys.

We start Today´s video section with the first issue of The Proteus Saga and you can find the other issues ( as well as many more ) on YouTube.



I talked a lot about Chris Claremont so here he is on Comic Culture.



Another video with Amy Dallen about ... well, it says in the title that it´s about WOLVERINE & THE X - MEN ( which was one of the few good series left at Marvel before they relaunched it ) but the biggest part is about Amy going to the zoo to look for new students for the mutant school.



Since most of the videos from the X - MEN cartoon are of a questionable quality due to their restrictions Today´s cartoon related video is the Nostalgia Critic´s examination of the first episodes of the cartoon. And I have to agree, without the rapping wannabe juvenile delinquents from the german version the title song is totally Airwolf. By the way, not only was The Proteus Saga adapted in the cartoon - although in a much diluted version - one of the characters was Morph who was on EXILES and met another version of Proteus in one of the alternate realities they visited.



This is from an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon I just watched and it´s the best musical impressions ever. Ariana is not " grande " where her height is concerned but her voice is " grande ".



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