Finally : a Thorsday with Walter Simonson

Since I have already posted all the stuff from the Ragnarock story by John Buscema and Tom Palmer Today I bring you a special post in lieu of Walter Simonson´s 70th birthday at the beginning of this month. I said that I would do a THORSDAY post and on this blog posts don´t get scratched, they only get postponed. Even if it sometimes takes me longer to do it. Anyway, let´s travel back to a time when THOR was about manly things and writers knew that his uru hammer has no special healing abilities.

At this point there is probably not much that hasn´t been written about Walter Simonson´s groundbreaking THOR run thanks to the omnibus book that is one of Marvel´s most popular omnibus editions among fans. It´s also out of print so if you actually own a copy you´re one of the few lucky ones and currently there are copies sold on amazon with the price range going from 360 to 680 bucks. Anyway, I´ll not try to do the definite Walter Simonson Thor post and instead I will just indulge myself a bit, write about my reading of the series and return to some of my favorite scenes.

Now I didn´t start reading Walter Simonson´s THOR run with his first issue because the first issue from that run that I saw was by fill in artist Sal Buscema and it didn´t really thrill me. This was long before I started reading american comics on a regular basis. I know I had the stack my uncle who was a G. I. had left us which included a lot of CONAN issues by John Buscema which ruined me for all following CONAN series and also AVENGERS 81 which was the first time I saw the Vision. There must have been some american comics I bought at the newsstand at the bus station in Ludwigsburg. But I had no idea where to get american comics - yet. I was visiting an aunt and at the railway station they had a newsstand that said " international magazines " and because I saw that they had some comics I went over. As I said, the THOR issue didn´t look very interesting so the comic I ended up buying was ALPHA FLIGHT issue 20 because I was a huge John Byrne fan at that time. And it also introduced Aurora´s new costume which might have slightly influenced my decision to buy this.

Anyway, that was when I became aware that there were american comics sold at newsstands at the bigger railway stations in Germany which was the start of my reading of american comics. When I DID get my first Walter Simonson THOR issues they were already at the point where Thor went into hel and got disfigured by Hela which means that I read Walter´s first THOR stories as back ups in Condor´s DIE SPINNE or in some Sonderheft.

What grabbed me about Walter Simonson on THOR - besides the fantastic art - was his writing. Unlike what is going on in the current Thor books he didn´t contradict any of the old stories by Stan Lee or the mythology of the character, he just built upon it by bringing his own style to it which brought in many elements of the old norse myths but also new aspects.

For instance he was one of the first comic book writers who did away with Thor´s secret identity because he clearly realized that Thor doesn´t really need a secret identity in Today´s day and age to work. Moreso, giving Thor a secret identity is just a unnecessary burden for the reader and a crutch for lazy writers. There were good writers after Walter Simonson but not many that were as dedicated as one can see by how many gave him a new secret identity up to the fiasco with new Thor Girl.  

Now what are my personal highlights of that run ? One of the first is clearly the saga about Beta Ray Bill not just because it kicked off the run. On one side it presented an updated, more aggressive modernized version of Thor that served to draw in new readers while at the same time emphasizing the importance and values of the real Thor without making him boring or dated. That is something Today´s writer clearly learned nothing from.

Also Walter Simonson just didn´t hand the hammer over to Beta Ray Bill for a dozen issues before giving it back to the real thunder god ( as I´m sure things will return to normal once the whole novelty of the " new Thor Girl as a symbol of female empowerment " thing has worn off or it starts hurting Diney´s profits - whatever happens first ) he created a rival who was as noble as Thor and who had as legitimate a claim on Mjolnir.

Walter solved this problem in a clever way by Odin making a new hammer - with some help from the dwarves- called Stormbringer for Beta Ray Bill.

So instead of going for the cheap approach that throws everything that has come before into the garbage can Walter knew that any replacement was going to be just temporary unless you are willing to kill off Thor.

Because let´s face it, being Thor is not something he can just turn off. Now being the god of thunder THAT may be seen as more of a job description and with any job it could be done by another person. Possibly. Even being the protector of Earth - which is something that has to do with Thor´s heritage since his mother is basically planet Earth itself - is something that could be passed down to another person. And this has already been done a few times in the past. But he IS Thor. That is his name and as much as some writers might try to convince you by coming up with clever plot twists - if you call whispering something in somebody´s ear so they are not worthy of lifting the hammer anymore clever and not stupid - just by giving Thor the name Odinson you can´t make somebody else Thor. You could legally change your name to Robert Downey Jr but that doesn´t mean you become him or get his good looks, his money or his acting abilities. And I bet Jason Aaron has no idea what Nick Fury has whispered into Thor´s ear and we will learn what it was as soon as he comes up with a version he´s happy with. Somebody online said that Nick Fury probably told Thor what the Marvel comic universe is becoming under the guidance of Disney and that´s the theory I am going to stick with.

Coming back to GOOD writing on THOR, Walter Simonson and Beta Ray Bill even back then Marvel realized what a great story it was because back then their trade paperback list was really short but one of the few you could get besides The Dark Phoenix Saga was The Ballad Of Beta Ray Bill.

Which you got for a measly nine bucks. My, how things have changed.

The next big thing was of course the confrontation with Surtur during which Loki almost acquired noble traits as he defended Asgard all alone against the fire demon at some point. Of course this was only because he had other plans for Asgard but nevertheless this was one of the few times we saw Loki fight side by side with his hated stepbrother and his adoptive father. Which in turn made it all the more dramatic when Odin seemingly fell in battle. At that point Walter Simonson was still an unknown quantity so the possibility that this was really the end of old Odin was very high.

Back then the death of Odin and subsequently Thor becoming the new ruler of Asgard hadn´t been done to death so logically the next story was about the successor of Odin which had a neat twist by presenting it like an electoral race in which Loki also was one of the candidates. Which wasn´t as ludicrous as it sounds since he had fought against Surtur to defend Asgard even if it was only for his own selfish needs. But even so a big part of the Asgardian populace began supporting Loki´s candidature.

Of course Loki used trickery to steer the outcome of that election in which he was aided by Lorelei who bent Thor´s will with her magic and womenly ways. She had earlier fallen under a love spell of Loki and tried her best to make his wishes come true. Walter Simonson came up with Lorelei to take the role the Enchantress had previously filled out which shows again his writing chops. There are just too many writers who take the easy way out and just reverse all the changes in a character they don´t like or which don´t fit with the story they are writing. You see this happen in comics a lot and in the end you have somebody like Magneto flip flopping so fast between being a villain, a revolutionary, a terrorist or a misunderstood hero that you loose track which version of him he currently is. It also might differ from series to series as Marvel doesn´t have editors who make sure characters stay consistent from book to book anymore.

Coming back to THOR, anybody who says that Walter Simonson is not good at drawing women should check out his really flawless rendition of Lorelei.

Of course I can´t talk about this story without mentioning which is either Simonson´s most brilliant or most ridiculous but in any case most famous creation besides Beta Ray Bill : the frog of thunder. Taking inspiration in old earthen fairy tales Loki comes up with an enchantment that changes Thor´s godly form into that of a frog when kissed by a maiden. And you thought Odin constantly stripping Thor´s godly powers or reducing them any other day of the week was a problem. Of course Thor wouldn´t be Thor if he gave up or yielded to despair - even in diminished form - and he somehow managed to lift the hammer and get the power of Thor back.

Thor frog headed back to Asgard to have words with Loki about who is best suited to rule which lead to one of the most hilarious Loki / Thor battles ever and the humor was a big aspect why this run was so popular.

Over the years one of the things Walter Simonson is known for is that he turned Thor into a frog and the character had such a big fan following throughout the years that Marvel created Throg - another frog who ended up with the power of Thor and who is a member of the Pet Avengers.

There are a few things I´m not going to elaborate on here because I want to talk about these things in a separate post like the death of Skurge which is slated to get the DEATH IN COMICS treatment since I started that series or issue 380 in which Thor fights the Midgard Serpent and which was - almost - done entirely in splash pages. I also liked the last part of Walter Simonson´s THOR run where the art was done by Sal Buscema which would really get the short end of the stick if I included it here and which will be one of our next THORSDAY posts. But before closing the book on Walter Simonson´s Thor for Today I have to mention one of the best things from this run : Thor´s battle armor. When he was burdened with Hela´s curse that his bones would become as brittle as an old man´s or a fifty years old comic fan´s bones Thor created this armor and fused it with his body through magic lightning. Now that´s what I call hardcore ! 

I want to end this post with a quote from Duy´s Walt Simonson´s Thor : A Retrospective at THE COMICS CUBE which is a truly enlightening read as he meticulously dissects every aspect of maybe the greatest run in comics history : In a time when superheroes regularly got " deconstructed " and made to look fallible and all too human, Walter Simonson managed to show us, via the Mighty Thor, that superheroes can in fact resemble humanity - with petty squabbles, problems with love, and mourning their families - without once forgetting the grandeur and scope that they're capable of, the fantastic worlds they're capable of taking us to, and the sense of wonder that they can instill. Superheroes and gods are larger than life, and can make us feel larger than life as we read them.

And with that we have already started with the links for the post. Like I said, everybody has written about Walter Simonson´s Thor so naturally many of my favorite Thor moments pop up in Chris Sims´ The 10 Most Awesome Moments In Walter Simonson´s Thor over at COMICS ALLIANCE .

MARVEL COMICS OF THE 1980s has many posts on Walter Simonson´s Thor including the ones where I found the original art for the cover of Thor 350 , the Thor vs Beta Ray Bill fight and the cover for the The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill trade and they also have a post called My Favorite 1980s Marvel Slugfests that includes Thor´s battle against the Midgard Serpent from Thor 380 as well as Thor´s fight against the Celestials from Thor 387 to 389 ( which I wrote about in this post ). Both battles are included in John " The Mego Stretch Hulk " Cimino´s The Top 5 Greatest Battles Of The Mighty Thor at HERO ENVY , BLOG INTO MYSTERY has a post on Thor 352 and since I already dedicated an entire post to the female Thor I won´t bore you by re - posting that and instead I will let Robert Conway at REAXXION tell you How The New Female Thor Shows The Grip Feminists Have On Comics. Last but not least as a Zuckerle for my german readers DAS SAGTE NUFF, the german comic magazine about  Marvel comics from what comic historians call the Williams Era has two posts of Jack Kirby´s Thor with black and white pages and german text ( part 1 / part 2 ).

Today we have only four celebrity birthdays starting with Oliver Stone who turns 70. He is best known for his mvies about political topics like Born On The Fourth Of July, Nixon, The Day Reagan Was Shot or JFK but he also did more action oriented movies like Natural Born Killers, The Corruptor or Blue Steel with sexbomb Jamilf Lee Curtis. I tried to find an animated GIF from that movies but most I found are from her incredible striptease in True Lies. Jamie´s birthday is towards the end of the year and I have already decided to finally do a new version of her post with lots of GIFs.

Also celebrating his 70th birthday is Tommy Lee Jones who was in JFK and Natural Born Killers - among others like The Fugitive, The Client and my favorite movie with Tommy Lee Jones Under Siege because it has another hot striptease from my Top Ten Movie Striptease List, this time by Erika Eleniak. She celebrates her next birthday at the end of this month and you can also expect an updated version with more and better GIFs. 

Coming back to Tommy Lee Jones he also appeared in the comic related - I hate to admit it - Joel Schumacher fiasco Batman Forver and in a movie called Gotham which strangely enough was not comic related in any way, shape or form. Now you could say that the Men In Black movies are comic related since the idea was taken from a comic by Aircel which was bought by Malibu which was bought by Marvel. Anyway, I just saw Men In Black III and I have to say I was genuinely surprised how good the movie was.

When I watched it all I was thinking was " Oh god, let it be better than the second movie ! "  but this part was almost as good as the first movie. I have to give the original movie the higher rating because it introduced the concepts so all of that was not new in the third movie but man, was the story good. It seems they actually learned something from the giant failure of the second movie. Now after all this talk about Men In Black you probably expect me to post an episode of the cartoon show but since that was not very good - and I don´t want to post some random clip or a trailer from the movies - here is one of my favorite Tommy Lee Jones movies. It´s not a big budget movie or a favorite of the movie critics but I saw this when it was shown in theaters and it´s pretty decent entertainment.



Our third birthday of the day is crime novel author Agatha Christie who has probably done more than anybody else to entertain my mother ( with the probable exception of Perry Rhodan ) with her books and the subsequent adaptions through cinema and tv. Naturally I have seen my share of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple movies and tv shows and for me the quintessential Miss Marple actress is Margaret Rutherford and I can still watch Murder She Said ( which is called 16 o´clock 5 from Paddington in Germany ) anytime it´s on tv. Sadly none of her Miss Marple movies are on YouTube but I found there´s an anime series which apparently has her teaming up with Agatha Christie´s other famous detective Hercule Poirot.



We also have another famous writer in our Dearly Departed section, James Fenimore Cooper who fired up the imaginations generations since The Leatherstocking Tales, The Last Of The Mohicans, The Deerslayer or The Pathfinder were first published. He is the creator of the original Hawkeye who was the inspiration for everybody´s favorite archer hero.

By the way I still think the guys a Disney could have pulled off the real Hawkeye costume - with a few slight modifications - in the movies if they had wanted to. Which is the reason why more movie companies should hire cosplayer as costume designers. I mean, just imagine what this guy could do with the kind of budget big movies companies have access to.

Now if I told you there was a team up of Hawkeye and Wonder Woman before the Marvel vs DC series ( or was it DC vs Marvel, I´m never quite sure ) you would probably think I´m crazy but there was a Hawkeye tv series Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter. I only caught a few episodes and the good thing about series from that time period is that there is always good cleavage action going on and Lynda provided plenty of that.



Since most comic readers have Walter Simonson´s Thor comics in their collection - either as single issues, one of the various trade collections or if you´re really lucky as an omnibus - I´m pimping THE best Epic Collection of Thor so far, War Of The Pantheons which you can get at amazon for 25 bucks. Speaking about amazon they also have the highly recommended Epic Collection Avengers - Under Siege for 26 Euros and the 40 Dollar hardcover Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis : Heroic Age for 23 Euros which contains the first 6 issues of Avengers by John Romita Jr and New Avengers by Stuart Immomen as well as Avengers Prime by Alan Davis. 



Since this post is about Thor I want to end the post with fellow Avenger member Scarlet Witch cosplayed however by the lovely Yaya Han. I already posted the first video about this and I have to say I´m still baffled at how many people seem to be bothered by her cleavage or the size of her chest in said cleavage. First of Yaya is a very big chested woman to begin with and it´s not always possible to hide those big 40Ds. Secondly she has always had costumes that - shall we say manage to present her physical attributes in a positive way ? And this is by far not her riskiest costume.

Also her costume making skills are second to none and I´m still wondering when people will get over it and just enjoy Yaya Han´s cosplays like I do.



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Death in comics : Alpha Flight prelude

You probably expected the second part of MARVEL VISIONARIES - CHRIS CLAREMONT and I have to say it would have been easier to continue with that since I already have all of the pictures prepared. But I like to write about comics while they are still fresh in my memory and I just finished reading ALPHA FLIGHT CLASSIC 2 so it´s time to do my introduction to the little superhero team from Canada that could a.k.a. Alpha Flight.

Because there is at least one post in my DEATH IN COMICS series coming that deals with deaths - and resurrections - in the series and I have to explain a few things before I can go into that without any tangents. And any day I get to wax nostalgic about John Byrne´s work is a good day.

And before we start I should probably mention that there are going to be some spoilers. So if you want to avoid those better get all three volumes of the ALPHA FLIGHT CLASSIC trades and read them before continuing.

ALPHA FLIGHT ORIGINS or IN THE ALPHA THERE WERE THE X - MEN

Now when I say introduction I don´t mean that I´m going into all the details how the glory that was John Byrne´s ALPHA FLIGHT came into being or an exhaustive post on the history of the team and its members.

There are other websites out there who do that far better than me and you can find the ones I came across during my research for the post in the link section as usual. No, if you know this blog a bit you might expect a post that´s a touch more personal and the only history I´m exploring here is my own history with this book. As many comic readers and Marvel zombies at a time when that was a term of endearment and pride I first saw James Hudson a.k.a. Weapon Alpha´s debut in UNCANNY X - MEN 109 ( which I probably read in the spanish version by Edicionés Vertice or those awful pocket books by the german publisher Condor Verlag ) when he tried to repossess Wolverine´s ass back for the canadian government.

That didn´t work out too well and all James Hudson managed to do was injure Moira MacTaggert, which peed off all the X - Men but especially Banshee and Wolverine and he narrowly evaded capture thanks to a trick that should not be revealed to comic readers for more than six years. 

Yes, as incredible as it sounds to Today´s comic readers UNCANNY X - MEN 109 was published in February of 1978 ( back then they still came out only every two months ! ) and ALPHA FLIGHT 17 which retold that story from James Hudson´s perspective hit the newsstands during December 1984.

Leave it to John Byrne to recycle almost an entire X - Men comic in the pages of Alpha Flight. But then we´re talking about a guy who had the balls to sell Marvel almost an entire issue of blank pages with word balloons and sound effects. So it should surprise no one that he reused the cover of UNCANNY X - MEN 109 for the cover of ALPHA FLIGHT 17.

Now I think that was around the time when James Hudson changed his hero nom du guerre from Weapon Alpha to Vindicator and as anybody who has ever had to deal with the government or its institutions or officials knows they never forget and they can hold a grudge like nobody which obviously was true for the canadian government in the Marvel universe.

Because in the pages of UNCANNY X - MEN 120 and 121 he was sent back to America to bring those canadian taxpayer´s investment in Wolverine home and this time he was aided by a team of canadian superheroes.

Or at least part of the team that should appear in the pages of ALPHA FLIGHT as neither Marrina nor Puck had graduated from Beta Flight yet.

This also didn´t end well for Banshee who was still suffering from a raw throat after blanketing the entire island of Japan against an earthquake beam of Moses Magnum. He lost his powers for quite some time and it took him years to recover. What ever happened to the luck of the irish ?

Back to Alpha Flight, it seemed like it was the end for the team - and it was at least in the pages of THE UNCANNY X - MEN. But being a canadian himself John Byrne could naturally not let this team of homies from the great north rest and on August 1983 they got their own ongoing series.

ALPHA FLIGHT ISSUE 20 or THIS IS THE PART WHERE I CAME IN

Now I would like to say that I was there from the beginning but the truth is that I read most of the first year in those cheap spanish trades that basically were five single issues glued together with a cardboard cover.

The reason why I wanted to write this special prologue post is that the very first american comic I bought of a newsstand was ALPHA FLIGHT 20 which not only introduced villain Gilded Lily but also Aurora´s new look.

She adopted this new look to further distance her from her twin brother Northstar with whom she had a falling out at the time. I don´t think it was yet revealed that Northstar was gay but somehow it was in the open.

Back then her powers were that she could fly and move at great speed and when she and Northstar touched hands they generated a blinding flash of light - which they had no control over. So when Aurora wanted to become more independent from her brother fellow teammate Walter Langkowski a.k.a. Sasquatch was more than thrilled at the prospect of getting rid of her pesky brother ( he was shagging Aurora at that time and I´m sure there´s a joke somewhere in there ) and decided to pimp her powers.

Now while the process managed to retain Aurora´s power of creating a flash - although not as bright as before - the unexpected side effects was that when she ans Northstar now touched both their powers were canceled out for a brief period. It also reduced her speed from potentially above light speed to two times the speed of sound but managed to change her genetic make up to cloak her from mutant detection devices. So I guess you have to take the good with the bad. In any case with the new powers came a new look which has always been one of John Byrne´s strong suits.

I won´t lie, part of the reason why I decided to buy this comic instead of an issue of THOR written by some guy I never heard of ( I think his name was Simon Walterson or something ) with art by Sal Buscema was Aurora.

Don´t get me wrong I was a diehard John Byrne fan at that time as most readers of american super hero comics were and it didn´t exactly hurt that she was mostly wearing a bikini in this and the following issue. 

Although I didn´t get to read issue 21 until much later since it was still a few months until I had found out how to get issues of US comics through the foreign press newsstand at the main railway station in Stuttgart.

When I became a regular customer the next issues of ALPHA FLIGHT I could lay a hand on where between issues 25 and 27 which was long after Guardian´s death in issue 12 ( yes, James Hudson had changed his name again ) and smackdab in the middle of their rematch with Omega Flight. 

Like with most comics from this period I´m not entirely sure in which order I read them and where I bought them. But it´s a safe bet that I found ALPHA FLIGHT 21 either at the Comicbörse in Stuttgart or the International Comic Salon in Erlangen because those were the main sources of american back issues for me at that time. What I DO know is that I definitely got issue 25 at the newsstand as well as issue 28 which not only was the end of John Byrne´s run on the title who switched with the creative team of INCREDIBLE HULK, Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola.

ALPHA FLIGHT 28 also crossed over with one of my favorite companywide Marvel tie - in stories, the granddaddy of them all : SECRET WARS II.

Granted, it only crossed over for all of two pages but it was apparently enough that the money grubbing bastiches from Disney - or was it still Marvel at that time - chose to include it in the SECRET WARS II  omnibus. Which means that I get an extra issue with gorgeous John Byrne art out of the deal. It looks like Gordon Gecko was right : greed really works.

And that´s where this post ends and we will continue talking about ALPHA FLIGHT 28 either in an upcoming SECRET WARS II post or in an upcoming DEATH IN COMICS post since there are still many ALPHA FLIGHT issues to cover concerning the death and possible return ( curious ? stay tuned ) of James Hudson a.k.a. Weapon Alpha a.k.a. Vindicator a.k.a. Guardian.

Next up is the final installment of my Hollywood casting the JLA movie which includes actresses from Italy, Argentina and J.A.G.s Catherine Bell.

Now I know some people will be relieved about that but don´t skin the cat before the baby has fallen into the well or something like that because we still have the JLA CASTING : SPECIAL SUBZERO EDITION coming up which are eight more posts, not counting the Andy Sidaris special and the Janet Jackson post which I decided to retroactively post on Janet´s birthday. So you see we still have plenty of hot cult sirens to uncover before continuing our regular more comic related posts with the second part of MARVEL VISIONARIES - CHRIS CLAREMONT. Or something completely different.

Before coming to the usual bells and whistles at the end of the post I want to do something I haven´t done in a long time, namely pimping a book. I recently purchased three books from Fantagraphics new artist centered EC collection and one of them, Sucker Bait and other stories by Graham Ingels is still available at a bargain price of 16.53 EUROS at amazon.de. 

The regular price tag on this book is 28.99 Dollars so it´s almost at half price. As usual you should not wait too long before ordering it because there are only two copies left. Now if you don´t know who Graham Ingels is you can check out this page from Fantagraphics which has a video of the book or you can read this post by Jason Sacks on COMICS BULLETIN which has many art sample pages from the book by Graham Ingels :

Graham Ingels is the poet laureate of the EC horror comics. His stories are some of the most iconic of the entire line, full of newly revived corpses, horrific villains and some of the scariest moments that have ever been put down on the comics page. When fans think of EC horror, chances are that they think of " Ghastly "'s phantasmagorias.

Along with his brilliant depiction of the dead, Ingels was equally adept at drawing the lives of the living ( and those who were soon to be dead ), nearly always in the midst of a spell of fury, confusion or fear. Leafing through Fantagraphics's glorious collection of twentyfive of Ingels' 110 EC horror tales, Sucker Bait reveals page after page of characters screaming at each other, or crouching in fear, or screaming in unfathomable horror. The most fearsome images may have been Ghastly's famous animated corpses, but the real terror was in the faces of those dealing with evil.

Link time : COMICS IN CONTEXT has a short recap of of the Alpha flight series with covers from the John Byrne run although it seems the site hasn´t been updated since 2006 - which explains why it says there are no trades of the book. BIFF BAM POP also talks about Titanic Teams : John Byrne´s Alpha Flight and my spanish readers might want to check out  Javier Mesón´s Alpha Flight post on EL COLLECIONISTA DE TEBEOS .

If you want to read ahead and know more about Alpha Flight the good folks at MARVEL COMICS OF THE 1980s have chronicled the 2nd year of John Byrne´s Alpha Flight in 5 posts ( part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 ) with many pictures which come in handy in upcoming posts.

FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA : A RATHER LENGTHY VIDEO SECTION 

Our first video is an X - Men / Alpha Flight fan film I found a while back. Not the worst fan film I´ve seen although it needs a bit of polishing.



Speaking of fan projects here´s the trailer for a Captain Future movie by a german production company. So far there has been no further news but even if it will be extremely difficult to fulfill the expectations of Captain Future fans worldwide I´m hoping for the best. This really has potential.



I mentioned the cult horror comics from EC and usually I post the TALES FROM THE CRYPT movie from 1972 which always gets taken down and then I have to re - post it. Well it seems that in 1973 there also was a THE VAULT OF HORROR movie and I hope I have more luck with this.



My next video is in lieu of the passing of Yvonne Craig ( you can find a full post on COMIC BITS ONLINE ) who was most famous for portraying Batgirl on season 3 of the 70s BATMAN tv show. Since I couldn´t find Mars needs women and I´m not so sure about Ski Party here is 7 Women from Hell where she co - starred with Cesar Romero who played the Joker. 



Now this is the point where I usually post a cartoon video, mostly a really bad one from the 80s or 90s. But Today I want to do things a bit different.

After seeing this video by Nostalgic Critic I want to feature some of what I consider to be the best kids cartoon shows. While I agree that there are some really good cartoon shows for kids out there I disagree that shows like ADVENTURE TIME or REGULAR SHOW are among them. So far I have seen some episodes and they not only have some of the worst art I have ever seen I am not sure that kids are really their target audience. While it may be that they contain longer more complex storylines all episodes of ADVENTURE TIME or REGULAR SHOW I have seen so far have to do with dating, girls or a combination of both which is definitely not something kids would be interested in. At this age most boys think girls are yucky and most girls have other things on their minds than boys. I think this is something adults think are interesting for kids, those that have forgotten their own childhood. It´s like in those countless movies people make about their school years that have to do with trying to get the first kiss which is a complete mindfudge because most of my time in school was all about comics, books, sweets, tv shows and toys. Yes, there came a time when I became interested in girls but by that age I wasn´t a kid anymore.

I was what you call a teenager, so these new shows are not really for kids but rather for teenagers. Also, while I don´t think kids will freak out if there is a gay character on a tv show there is a thin line between being unafraid to show a particular sexual lifestyle in a tv show and the gay / lesbian / bi - sexual brainwashing that is going on in the moment and ruining not only young kids minds but also characters like Hercules.  



So the first show for kids I want to recommend is a bit older but one of my favorites : BOB MORANE, based on the french comic which was based on the novel series by Charles - Henri Dewisme. I didn´t know this but there even was a black and white tv series produced in the 1960s.



Back to the cartoon series, here is the first episode in french because all german versions have been deleted by YouTube. Thanks very much, guys.



Now I know that not all of my readers are fluent in french so here is Bob Morane Against The Yellow Shadow a longer video with english dubbing.



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