It´s Comic Titans Thursday with Gene Colan

I have taken a little break from doing new posts because I was busy finishing the post addendums from Sunday and Monday but I absolutely had to do a special post to commemorate Gene Colan´s birthday.

Originally I wanted to do an all TOMB OF DRACULA post but then I decided to include more stuff from other series. And to make it more interesting to my foreign readers I´m including a lot of splash pages from the german versions of the comics by publishers Hit Comics or the Williams Verlag.

We´re surely starting the new month with style. This is my 745th post which means that we´ll soon reach post 750 and after that post 800.

Hopefully I can use these to do another Best of the Best post which I didn´t do at this year´s blog anniversary or my birthday which is when I usually do them. Although it will probably be quite difficult to select the deserving posts because the overall quality has increased so dramatically - at least I like to think so - that it´s hard to find any that stand out. Still I hope I can manage to give those readers that only pass here sporadically a reason to turn up more often by showing them what they missed while at the same time enticing new readers to become followers of my blog. 

We start Today´s birthday checklist ....... well, not at all with Today´s birthday. As I had to take the aforementioned break from posting new stuff to finish the last two posts there are still birthdays from last month to address starting with a few from Tuesday, August the 30th where we first have sexbomb Cameron Diaz who turned 44. The busty blonde is as easily at home in comedies like Bad Teacher as in action movies like Charlie´s Angels ( which would be way better if they had cast a woman who can actually believable portray a special agent instead of Drew Barrymore and concentrated more on the story with the agent played by Demi Moore in the second movie ) thanks to her sparkly personality and having legs up to her chin but she also has some comic book movie credit from the awesome Green Hornet and The Mask in which she debuted.  

Now I know that the general public doesn´t necessarily feel the need to check out the original source of comic book movies - much like most movie goers who are rabid James Bond fans don´t read the Ian Flaming novels - so I figured they might be surprised to learn how different The Mask movie is from the various comic book mini series by Dark Horse.



Michael Chiklis celebrated his 53rd birthday who is currently on Gotham ( and the less said about the series the better ) and had a cameo on an episode of Axe Cop. He also was the main character in the ultra realistic and brilliant The Shield - which has nothing to do with Marvel´s supreme espionage division of the same name - and The Thing in what people now call the GOOD Fantastic Four movies after the horrible fiasco of the latest attempt to reboot the franchise. To tell the truth the most faithful movie adaption of the comic is still the Roger Corman produced flick from 1994 which since then has become a much sought after bootleg cult classic. As I have already posted it a few times I´m not going to repeat myself here.

And we´re staying with cult movies as german comedian Helge Schneider celebrated his 61st birthday who has appeared in the western Texas - Doc Snyder hält die Welt in Atem and in the James Bond parody 00 Schneider - Jagd auf Nihil Baxter. I admit it took me a while to get his personal style of extremely deadpan humor and anarchistic antics but thankfully my cousin insisted on giving him a chance. He is an acquired taste and I have his latest 00 Schneider - Im Wendekreis der Eidechse to look forward to.

On a more comic - or better comic book - related note award winning french comic artiste Jacques Tardi turned 70 best known for his World War II comics and chronicling the adventures of occult investigator Adele Blanc Sec which has been adapted as a quite entertaining movie in 2010.



Underground comix legend Robert Crumb celebrated his 73rd birthday who really deserved to have a post dedicated to that but after a quick survey of my material on him I realized that while I DID have enough for such a post it was not of the necessary quality that would have warranted.

Kind of comic related is Mary Shelley´s anniversary since she created THE most famous monster of pop culture that has been adapted in comic form a few times. You could probably do a whole series about that alone.

With that we come to Yesterday´s birthdays which are only four, starting with teen pop sensation Debbie Gibson who turned 46. She was the Britney Spears before the was a Britney Spears around the time I was in Realschule and while I was too old to be part of her target audience I appreciated it when - like pop star Tiffany - she posed nude for PLAYBOY.

Anyway, I actually bought one of her albums Out Of The Blue which I found at a rummage table of music cassettes ( ask your grandparents what those are ) together with Mary J Blige´s What´s The 911 as I constantly needed new fuel for my walkman. Fallen Angel is the only song that I remember.



We haven´t talked tv series yet which is going to change with Jonathan LaPaglia who celebrated his 47th birthday Yesterday. I first saw him in one of my favorite sci fi series ever Seven Days where he starred alongside the incredibly hot Justina Vail who played the sexy russian Dr. Olga Vukavitch. By the way, am I the only one who thinks that name might be a bit unfortunate for her character because it totally sounds like a porn name ?

The premise of Seven Days is that based on alien technology found at the Roswell site the US government builds a time machine that enables them to send a chrononaut exactly seven days into the past to avert national disasters. Which sounds easy, right ? For some reason the series never got very popular and was canceled after three seasons which have not been released on DVD. I still get a kick out of it whenever Johnathan appears on NCIS, The Sopranos, Bones, Castle, Burn Notice or The Mentalist.



It´s back to movies and comics with Richard Gere who turned 67. His list of movies is too long to post and I thought I had already said all there is to say about the movie Breathless and the Silver Surfer when I mentioned it on the birthday of his co star Valerie Kaprisky just a short while ago.

Well, being the perfectionist that I am I went back and for some reason there is no information on the comic Richard Gere reads in the picture above. It´s Silver Surfer 18, the last issue of volume one written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Herb Trimpe. You can find posts on this issue on JACK KIRBY MUSEUM , MARS WILL SEND NO MORE posted the complete issue, LONGBOX GRAVEYEARD has a post on the first volume of the series and COMIC BOOK DAILY investigates why the series failed.

To wrap up Yesterday´s birthdays a shoutout goes to James Coburn who starred in a gazillion of western series as well as in Our Man Flint and the sequel In Like Flint - if you ever wanted to know where this expression came from. He also appeared in The Muppet Movie and did the voice of Looten Plunder on the Captain Planet And The Planeteers cartoon show.

Finally we come to Today´s celebrity birthdays and I only have one video left which is really sad because Gloria Estefan celebrates her 59th anniversary. I followed her from the days when she was still part of the Miami Sound Machine although I have to say I like her spanish albums best. Although I might be biased in that regards since it´s my native tongue.

The inventor of Tae Bo Billy Blanks turns 61 who starred in many martial arts movies like the Jean - Claude Van Damme vehicles Lionheart and The King of Kickboxers which is called Karate Tiger V in Germany. Billy also appeared in Kiss The Girls with Morgan Freeman, The Last Boy Scout with Bruce Willis and Halle Berry who does her unforgettable erotic dance ( you can´t really call it a striptease since she doesn´t take off any clothes ) and China O´Brian II. Speaking of taking off clothes, while I´m a big Cynthia Rothrock fan the best part about the last movie is sexbomb Melanie Good with her incredibly long legs who is better than good. Or is it she is good at being bad since she plays a stripping contract killer ?

Barry Gibb celebrates his 70th birthday which makes him the last Gibb brother standing. The Bee Gees became a world wide phenomenon with Saturday Night Fever but you can say that the Bee Gees provided the soundtrack for an entire generation. They still have a big influence in pop culture since their songs are among the most covered songs of all time. 

Lily Tomlin who turns 77 has co starred with quite a long list of a list stars like megabusty Dolly Parton in Nine to Five, Steve Martin in All Of Me, Bette Middler in Big Business, Ernest actor Jim Varney and sexbomb Erika Eleniak ( who had her most famous striptease in Under Siege ) in The Beverly Hillbillies, Bruce Willis in The Kid and Teri Hatcher in Desperate Housewives. Speaking of Teri Hatcher, I have finally started watching Lois & Clark - The New Adventures Of Superman and one of the last episodes I watched was Pheromones My Dear where Teri appears as a hot harem girl.

I´m halfway through the first season and I hope I can finish it before my latest DVD order which includes season three of The Nanny ( which includes the episode where Power Girl Lauren Lane who plays C. C. Babcock wears a black dress with an incredible cleavage ), the sixth and final season of The Dead Zone and season three of Burn Notice arrives.

One series I haven´t started watching is The Munsters and Today is also the anniversary of Yvonne De Carlo best known for playing Lily Munster.

I have a few videos about The Munsters bookmarked but I chose this documentary because it actually has Yvonne De Carlo appearing in it.



The last two birthdays I have to mention are people who have had a big impact on pop culture : Rocky Marciano, not only the inspiration for the Rocky movies but also one of the best boxers of all times and Edgar Rice Burroughs whose Tarzan, John Carter, Warlord of Mars and The Land That Time Forgot books inspired countless adaptions in comics and movies.

Whew, that was quite a long entertainment block but I know that some people skip that part because of the high level of sexy women so I like to put some easter eggs in it for all the faithful readers who tough it out and fight through it all. I wrote this a bit in advance so hopefully Tomorrow´s FLASH FRIDAY post will go down with a hitch. Expect things to get fast.

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20 days later - the all butt edition

It´s the last day of February so I better get a move on if I want to do three posts this month. I wanted to do a post on Monday to celebrate Norm Breyfogle´s 52nd birthday but I was just too bummed out and busy with watching the 84th Annual Oscar Awards - especially the part with Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz celebrating Big Culo Day.


Some people said that was inappropiate but hey, we´re talking the Oscars here not the Noble Prize or the Humanitarian Award. Like Billy Cristal said, it´s a show where millionaires give each other golden statues and there have really been worse moments at the Oscars.

At least Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz have some meat on their bones not like Angelina Jolie. Boy, she looked ultraskinny and that´s with the 20 pounds television adds.


And what was up with the whole leg thing ? That really didn´t help. I had the impression she was auditioning for the female version of Kelley Jones DEADMAN. Now who looks skinnier ?


QUO VADIS DC

And talking about women who used to be hot and comics, you may remember that I was pretty psyched about DC´s new WORLDS´FINEST series by George Perez and Kevin Maguire starring Huntress and Power Girl. Well, back then I didn´t know that the book is sponsored by the catholic church or how else do you explain Power Girl´s new costume ?


I really just don´t know what to do with DC at the moment. Which is one of the reasons I stopped posting the DC news. On one side it´s a fulltime job with all the comings and goings, scandals and lies, hurt feelings and bruised egos. The other side is that it´s just too depressing.

They are totally out of control and there seems to be no plan at all. I mean how else do you explain that they felt they needed to sex up Catwoman and Starfire while taming down Power Girl ? She even looks like a teenager. And on the other side they make variant covers like this. Does that make any sense ?


I mean they turn the knife just when people are about to say anything positive. Not all of their new titles are crap : Aquaman is just brilliant, Wonder Woman was better than expected although I want to know if Cliff Chiang will draw another issue someday and I heard that there is ONE good Batman book among the lot.

But no, DC doesn´t want good press. They almost bury the new SHADE series and now they start another s - word - storm with BEFORE WATCHMEN. As usual I´m going to wait and see before making any kind of judgement on the quality and / or necessity of the books but is anybody really surprised they went ahead and did it ? A few years back I might have said they would never cheapen the WATCHMEN franchise with this but the new 52 will do anything for a quick buck. And I guess this is what really counts. Right now everybody is shouting to the heavens above but when they DO come out most people will definitely buy them. Even if it´s only to complain. Except the DR MANHATTAN issue by J. Michael Straczynski and Adam Hughes. Because I doubt it will come out in time just like his ALL STAR WONDER WOMAN that never comes out. If it does come out I guess it will either be the last of all the specials or have some fill - in artist who finishes it.


But I don´t want to just complain and the good side to it is with the amount of DC books I want to read shrinking each month there are plenty of new books on my pull list or rather my internet orders by other companies. And in many other genres than just superheroes.

I´m totally in love with kaboom !´s SNARKED, iVAMPIRE has finally printed the third trade and naturally everybody is reading Sergio Aragones new FUNNIES book. Of course there are also such brilliant superhero books like MUDMAN, THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN DISINTERRED from Image or John Byrne´s NEXT MEN sequel by IDW. And the occasional issue of DARK HORSE PRESENTS which is the best page per cent ratio at the moment.

Last week I made a little list of books I get per internet shops or via amazon and that´s quite a lot of money my comicshop could earn. The only reason why I get these issues elsewhere is that they don´t have it. Or not as cheap as amazon. Of course there are a few series I have on my " to read " list like AVENGERS ACADEMY where I read the first issue, liked it but haven´t gotten around to get some issues.

It´s one of the cases where I waited too long to decide if I should get them from amazon and they were much more expensive when I finally had made up my mind. Well, I hope they will be cheaper again in the future as the artists include Tom Grummet and Tom Raney, two of my favorite artists.


GIVE ME THE SALT BUT PASS THE CURRY

Sometime around the end of last year I had some kind of virus that blocked my internet with some fake charges of internet rights violations claiming to be from the german government internet police division. Now the reason why I knew it was fake was that aside from claiming I had surfed on some pornsites ( Hello ? Internet, male....D´uh ! ) it also claimed that I was distributing child porn and participate in terrorism. The cherry on top was that it stated that I could unlock the internet by sending 100 EUROS to a special account. Say what ?

Now I don´t know about you but I don´t want terrorists and pedophiles to be able to buy their way out of jail with a measly 100 bucks. Man, the guy who set that fraud up must think people are stupid or too panicked to think. Anyway, since the internet was blocked I just used a different participation ever since but Yesterday I started it again and after running the antivirus programm twice it was eliminated.

So there had been tons of links I had saved there for posts but later on couldn´t use which will be popping up in future posts. Like the next one that is a bit of old news from 2011 but I´m not sure if my readers have read about Adrianne Curry´s eviction from ComicCon 2011 because her costume was too skimpy and showed too much butt. She dressed up as Aeon Flux and it seems she stayed a bit too close to the original.


Well, it has also been said that she was escorted to the exit because she was charging people 20 bucks for taking pictures of her or with her. Since I wasn´t there it´s hard to know and it´s neither the first time there have been scantily clad cosplayers at ComicCon nor that someone charges you for photos. And everybody must decide for himself if a picture like the above is worth 20 bucks for him or not ( click here for a picture gallery of Adrienne Curry in the Aeon Flux costume ). I have to say I give her props for " keeping it real " like those kids say nowadays unlike all those wimps at Hollywood for their laughable try at it.


Man, nothing against Charlize Theron but that doesn´t even resemble it in the broadest sense. This is what it should look like. And no, it doesn´t cover the buttocks in the slightest but that´s how it was designed by the original artist ( picture below courtesy of Drew Gardner on DeviantArt ).


So where´s my stand in this ? Hard to say since I´m kind of biased when it comes to women showing skin for cosplay. There were some people who said she should have sticked to her other outfits like her slave Leia one, but after reading that Adrianne Curry was molested in 2010 after a STAR WARS convention I don´t think that´s an option. Getting kicked out of ComiCon really is the lesser evil here.


In any case it seems that Adrienne Curry has something of a bad luck streak when it comes to cosplay : molested in 2010, kicked out in 2011, who knows what will happen in 2012 ? I just hope those bad experiences haven´t managed to turn her off cosplay forever.


Last but not least on the question whether her butt is too bootylicious for ComicCon or not - aside from the allegations being true or not - which started the whole thing I guess you have to decide that one for yourself.


As usual before closing things I have to report the newest going - ons on the Doctor Who front. While I have finally managed to get my brother started on the season 4 with David Tennant I´m myself starting with the second season of William Hartnell. I have just finished watching THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH and I have to say who ever casted Carole Anne Ford as a teenager must have had a serious eye problem.


If you see the DOCTOR WHO ORIGIN special there´s a scene from another movie she was in that apparently was one of the reasons she was cast as the doctor´s granddaughter ( the other that she was " a good screamer " which sounds like it has a double meaning if I ever heard one ) but she looks more like a grown woman in that. And in all the right places if I might add.

Anyway, I´m rather enjoying the episodes old as they might be. Today´s video at the end of the post is also Doctor Who - ish, it´s the title track of the series played with Tesla coils. And you thought science was boring.



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I´m not losing my mind here....that gorilla just used a jetpack, right ?