And I said a little homage because this is not a full blown re - post. I just finished my last post on which I have worked too long because as always the post addenddum got way too long. Which is something I am trying to cut back on in 2019. Anyway, a full re - post would take up too much time and I have not done enough on the next issue of my new comic this week as it is. So while doing a full re - post was out of the question I still want to acknowledge Markie Post. She has popped up a lot in my latest posts so it would have felt kind of weird not to mention her on her 68th birthday.
So this is the part which I usually put into my posts and as always there are the links to previous Markie Post tribute posts for those few who haven´t checked them out yet. This post is also for Saturday Night Live comedian Harry Anderson who passed away on the April the 14th this year.
He is of course best known for playing unorthodox Judge Harold T. Stone on Night Court with John Larroquette as lecherous prosecutor Reinhold Fielding Elmore, Richard Moll as bailif Nostradamus " Bull " Shannon but most important one of my all - time tv crushes 80s sexbomb Markie Post.
It was another of my favorite series from the 80s although as usual german television policy kept it from reaching a big audience. Like Northern Exposure it was on after midnight and I don´t know what the translators at that time where smoking when they came up with the german title Harry´s wundersames Strafgericht ( Harry´s woundrous criminal court ).
I guess they went for that option because in Germany there is no such thing as a night court. In Germany court sessions take place during the day and if you have read Kafka´s book The Trial you know that bureaucracy is more important than speedy justice. Here you have to wait for justice until the sun rises. In America the system of night courts was started to battle the overwhelming flood of street crime related cases in the 80s - at least that´s what I think but I couldn´t find any webpages to verify that.
I AM SUFFERING FROM ( MARKIE ) POST TRAUMATIC SEX SYNDROME !
Coming back to Markie Post, she had appearances on tv shows like CHiPs, The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Hart to Hart, Eight Is Enough, The Greatest America Hero, Simon & Simon, Matt Houston, Love Boat, Cheers, A - Team or Hotel so when you were watching tv in the 80s you were bound to catch her somewhere sooner or later. She was probably best known - outside of Germany - for playing public defender Christine Sullivan in the NBC sitcom series Night Court from 1985 to 1992.
Aside from that she also played bail bonds contractor Terri Michaels on the tv show The Fall Guy ( she replaced previous female bail bonds contractor Samantha Jack played by Jo Ann Pflug ) beginning with the second season.
At the beginning she played a minor role but one of the producers must have realized what a waste it is to have somebody like Markie on the cast without letting her " show what her Mama gave her " like they say Today.
But The Fall Guy didn´t just have 80s Power Girl Markie Post they also put blonde bombshell Heather Thomas in the show right from the beginning.
THERE`S SOMETHING ABOUT HEATHER THOMAS - AND HER BLUE BIKINI
She played stunt body double ( and what a body it was ) Jody and her job was to keep the male viewers hooked by providing eye candy. She was in all episodes except for an episode in the first season. Yes, fan service is not as new as some people might want you to think and Heather Thomas mainly got the part because of her absolutely amazing bikini figure. OMG !
It took a few episodes before she could strut her stuff but once the tv guys got a taste of Heather it happened more often and the famous blue bikini scene was quickly added to the new intro of the second season.
For generations of adolescent young boys the only highlight of the week was the short moment when Heather appeared in her famous blue bikini.
Like most growing teenagers I watched that show religiously but the biggest part of its appeal for me were sexbombs like Heather Thomas and Markie Post who didn´t appear as often in a bikini as I would have liked.
Well, Heather Thomas did since that was her main purpose on the show but Markie Post´s appearances in bikinis on The Fall Guy were very few .
Coming back to Heather Thomas, thanks to her absolutely stunning 37 ( ! ) - 23 - 32 measurements and the exposure in The Fall Guy she became a famous pin up model with posters in every hormone driven boy's bedroom.
She even managed to replace Raquel Welch on the number one spot !
Now while Markie got to show her goods in The Fall Guy the producers were much more timid in Night Court. There were a few occasions in which she had a hot outfit but mainly she wore a business suit - even if it could not conceal her best assets. Her absolutely stunning physique was often addressed in the show by guys constantly hitting on her - which was the realistic part. If she were a public defender I bet that all the guys in town would get into all kinds of trouble just to have her defend them.
But don't despair true believer. There was Christine´s Friend, the 17th episode of the 4th Season, in which Markie showed what she's capable of.
MARKIE POST : HABEAS CORPUS MAMMARIUS MAXIMUS FANTASTICUS !
The plot was that she tried to go against her image by dressing more sexy and of course it didn't work - at least in the show. In real life : DAIMN !!!
Now this was clearly just a cheap plot by the writers to explain why a hot sexbomb like Markie didn't show more skin - especially since she had already done so in The Fall Guy. And it wasn't that she didn't look as hot as before. No, quite the opposite was true. But I didn't mind because at least she showed a cleavage window in that episode to rival Power Girl.
Man, I can just imagine if they had done a Power Girl movie with her back then - ah, the countless missed possibilities of bared bodaciousness.
80s Power Girl Markie Post is probably the best known cult siren on the blog because not only have I done many re - posts of her original post .
I also keep mentioning her in other posts and her original post is in the Top Ten Posts widget that appears on every post. Since I have done so many different versions it is not so tragic that I did not do a re - post last year even though I did the last version of her cult siren entry in 2016 .
And while I can´t give you an episode of Night Court here is a clip from the third season in which Markie is dressed as a sexy with for Halloween.
I´m posting this for my german readers because there might only be a few old enough to remember this. For some reason there are no german DVDs or Blue Rays of this show so if you want to see it the only chance is to get the original american episodes through amazon or other internet shops.
It´s strange how things work out sometimes. Just Yesterday I was going through my bookmarks because some of them ended up in the wrong folder and I was all set to include some random links to my next post. But as it turns out I can use a lot of them in the birthday check list. As always we start with the ones I missed since my last post and the first one is Lise Myhre who turned 43 on the first of November best known for Nemi .
It´s one of Norway´s most popular comic strips and I don´t know for how long I have planned to write about it. But just as I was about to delete all my bookmarks about this book I get to mention it here. Anyway, I don´t have the necessary space to explain what the comic is about and why everybody who reads it falls in love with it but for those who never heard of Nemi there is a short post about Nemi on THOR NEWS and a longer one on PLATYPUS COMIX . For my spanish readers Fran J. Ortiz presents Nemi on his blog ABANDONAD TODA ESPERANZA and there is another post - also in spanish - about Nemi on FRIKI 100 % that includes hard rock videos.
You can get a preview of Nemi 4 on COMIC ATTACK ( I´m so far behind, I haven´t even finished Nemi 3 ) plus Nemi and Blacksad are the topic of episode 355 of the Podcast DECONSTRUCTING COMICS . And when you have converted to a die hard Nemi fan you can go to her facebook page .
Who would have celebrated his 76th birthday on the 1st of November is comics scribe Michael Fleischer who started writing stories for DC´s horror titles Secrets of Sinister House, House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion. He also scripted Steve Ditko´s Shade, the Changing Man, and made several contributions to the Batman mythos in the early 1980s by reintroducing the Crime Doctor, co - creating the Electrocutioner and writing the origin of the Penguin in The Best of DC 10. He also wrote Jonah Hex for more than a dozen years but if you know his name it´s probably from the trippy Hex series with art by Mark Texiera that came out after Crisis on Infinite Earths in which Jonah was sent into a dystopian future having all kinds of weird science fiction adventures.
Michael Fleischer´s greatest claim to fame though is revitalizing The Spectre with artist Jim Aparo. It brought the character into the horror territory with chilling stories in which the spirit of God´s vengeance inflicted graphically gruesome deaths to criminals. It´s what defined him for decades to come and as a big Jim Aparo fan I couldn´t help myself and wrote a special post back in 2014 for Halloween on Adventure Comics 431 the first issue by this new creative team with the complete original art.
On November the 2nd we had another sad anniversary as it would have been the 91st birthday of Steve Ditko who also just passed away this year.
2018 is really not that great for comic artists. Anyway, I do not consider myself the biggest Steve Ditko fan and I have to admit that when I bought the Marvel Visionaries - Steve Ditko hardcover it was because I already had a few of the others and wanted to get the complete set so to speak.
Another reason was that I didn´t want to pay the ridiculous prices Marvel - or Disney - charged for its current output and it was pretty cheap. So I bought this book not expecting very much. Of course I knew that Steve Ditko co - created Spider - Man and Doctor Strange with Stan Lee ( and I don´t want to get into the whole discussion about who contributed how much because I wasn´t there and there are a lot of other people who already did that ) since those were the comic books I grew up with.
Don´t get me wrong, whenever I write on this blog about my generation´s Spider - Man it´s the one penned by Stan Lee and John Romita since that for me is still the benchmark. But it was not the first Spider - Man I read and who defined what Spider - Man is all about and how he acts and just about everything about his life. Because that was drawn by Steve Ditko.
So when I finally got the book about Steve Ditko it was a much better read than I hoped for. Even if you dismiss his early sci fi / horror stuff ( it is weird how much horror stories from that time incorporated sci fi elements ) there is a lot of cool stuff in it. There are all those classic Amazing Spider - Man stories you forgot including what may be the most iconic, there are the stories that shaped Doctor Strange who back when he started out was simply the master of black magic and then there are the stories that most people forget about. Because Steve Ditko also did Iron Man, he did a lot of stories for the early issues of The Incredible Hulk, just a few issues of Daredevil plus he created Speedball and Squirrel Girl.
And that´s not counting everything he did at DC Comics where he created or co - created Shade, the Changing Man, The Creeper, Hawk and Dove or Charlton Comics where he co - created Captain Atom, The Question and revitalized Blue Beetle. Those three were later acquired by DC Comics and the Question was the blueprint for Watchmen´s Rorschach, one of the best comic book series ever written and a must read not only for any comic book fan but also for anybody who likes to read. So it´s arguably difficult if not impossible to compress Steve Ditko´s life and work into a short paragraph. Which is why I won´t even try it. There will be a much longer post about Steve Ditko - probably with lots of pages from german comic books - later on although at the moment I can´t say when. I am leaving you with orbituaries that appeared on such prestigious german news sites like SPIEGEL , DER TAGESSPIEGEL or SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG .
We continue with the anniversaries for Yesterday and more great masters that have had a great impact on pop culture and our first is Goseki Kojima, the artist of Kozure Okami better known as Lone Wolf And Cub by writer Kazuo Koike. Longtime readers may remember this post from 2011 where I not only wrote why I boycotted the german distributor for all american comics by buying them via amazon ( I think I became a regular customer of amazon through these books which in turn led to all the books I got at half price or less so thank you german distributor of american comics for that ) but also what the series is all about and you can even watch the first episode of the tv series Kozure Okami there. My mother is a big fan of it.This may also be the first post in which I mention cosplay goddess Yaya Han and back then I was not as obsessed with her as I became later .
I am not sure exactly when I became aware of Lone Wolf And Cub but it is the best manga I have ever read. And the best thing is that the story is finite so you know how much of a commitment you have to be willing to make going in. There is also New Lone Wolf And Cub by Kazuo Koike and Hideki Mori but at the moment I have neither the necessary time nor money. I know that there are still people out there who won´t give black and white comics a chance but please, make an exception for this one.
But not only has the manga influenced whole generations of comic creators like Frank Miller ( you can see a lot of these influences in his issues of Daredevil or his graphic novel Ronin ) it also had a huge impact on movie makers like Quentin Tarantino. Now I would not have thought that Phil Collins´ In The Air Tonight and Lone Wolf And Cub went well together but some ideas are just so crazy that they actually work out.
So far I had written five posts on Yaya - two of them are pretty safe but the other three are absolutely not safe for work - and I keep mentioning her on various JLA casting posts and any other posts involving exotic sexbombs like Kiana Tom, Ava Cadell, Akira Lane, Miko Lee, Gail Kim or Minka and I swear the completely NSFW BIG YAYA HAN POST is still in the pipeline. In the meantime I have made two new posts about Yaya which showcases a part of her anatomy that I have ignored too often - her legs.
As regular visitors to the blog may have noticed while I have mentioned Yaya Han a few times in this section over the last months there has not been a lot of new videos with her. And the reason for that was that I had almost run out of videos. But just the other day - which is actually in the future from when I started writing this post but in the past from when some of you may be reading this ( I know, all this timey wimey stuff gets confusing because it takes me so long to finish this ) - I found some new ones and I just had to include the best of them. Because not only is Yaya Han´s cosplay flawless as usual she also looks hotter than ever. And people say I exaggerate where her huge 40D oppais are concerned. Just look at them, it´s like they´re coming out of the computer screen any moment. This ladies and gentlemen is why 3D tv was invented in the first place.
Anyway, I´m trying to reign it back in. One of the reasons why it took me so long to finish this post was that I absolutely had to include an animated GIF of this cosplay but like usual nobody cared to make one so in the end I had to make one myself. People always say how obsessed the internet is with Yaya Han´s breasts but on the other side you can´t find that many animated GIFs with her. I guess it´s a lot of hype and not much actual fact.
Okay, at first I wanted to go through the entire video and make several animated GIFs but in the end I just made one and even that took me three days. Because I didn´t want to spend an entire day just on making one animated GIF for Yaya Han. Maybe I will make another one somewhere along the line but not before issue 3 of my new comic is finished. Which with the pace I am going now may well be in the summer of next year.
It´s back to the comic book anniversaries for November the 3rd with Jesus Blasco, one of the great names in Spain´s classic comics. Although I had probably read dozen on comics he worked on as a child without knowing it - back then the creators were not always credited - the one strip where I became aware of him was The Steel Claw which back then was published in the german Kobra comics which I just keep mentioning on this blog.
Now despite appearances I don´t know everything about comics so I went to a few internet sources to get more facts about Jesus Blasco. And I also made sure to read not only the english wiki entry but also the spanish one since I figured it would be more extensive and more accurate. So the first thing I have to do is make a correction. Jesus Blasco did not co - create Capitan Trueno but he did start a new series with co - creator Victor Mora which was cut short when the publishing house Bruguera closed down in 1986. Jesus worked on too many comics to mention them all here but he did everything from humor strips to boy adventure comics to westerns - he even worked on Bonelli´s Tex Wiler - like Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill of which I have probably read some in the german translations from Bastei. I thought the most I could include for Jesus Blasco would be some information and a few pictures but somebody actually made a video about The Steel Claw or how it was called in Spain Zarpa de Acero. Is it just me or do most comic book titles sound so much better in spanish ?
Sometimes I have a really hard time to find a cartoon video for a post and other times I have two competitors for the spot. Today I want to start with the one I have already mentioned on the blog which is Karel Zeman, a czech film director, production designer and animator. The reason why I have already written about him is that he made the best Krabat movie of all times. So, I said it. There is The Black Mill which is interesting if you want to know the full fairy tale version and the newer german live action movie has a nice atmosphere but it´s too afraid to compete with the Harry Potter movies to succeed. Anyway, a lot of readers have probably never heard of Krabat but don´t fear, just check out my MOVIE RUMMAGE TABLE : KRABAT RELOADED ! post which also includes the link to my much longer original Krabat post. Those who visit this blog regularly may have noticed that I changed the video and that´s because I had already posted the one I first included. Instead I found one that is a bit shorter but has a better quality. I don´t know if you can buy any of his movies in Germany or the US but if you want to know why you should care about the movies of an old czech animator I just want to mention that director Terry Gilliam is one of his biggest fans and said : " He did what I´m still trying to do. "
The second candidate for the cartoon category about whom I have not written so far is another heavyweight in animation, Osamu Tezuka also called the godfather of anime who is most famous for creating Astor Boy.
I have to confess that I don´t remember watching any episodes of Astro Boy but I know it was a watershed moment in animation history which influenced the following generations. So he probably had a hand in the creation of one of my favorite cartoon shows ever The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot based on the excellent comic by Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow. Hmm, that´s the second time I am mentioning Frank Miller. But he did a lot of great comic books. And still does. I recently read his Batman : The Dark Knight - Master Race and while it was not the new masterpiece ( pun intended ) that some expected I found it highly enjoyable. And at least this time around most people got what it was all about unlike his second book of that trilogy. Anyway, make sure to check out The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, the comic book as well as the cartoon show.
Now if I don´t remember watching any episodes of Astro Boy you are probably asking yourself why I am mentioning Osamu Tezuka at all. Surely not only to pimp The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. And you are right.
There is another cartoon which I watched religiously as a kid Kimba the White Lion of which I still have fond memories. Which made it even worse that Disney ripped it off for The Lion King and totally butchered the story.
I also have no idea why they changed him from a white lion into a regular lion. Maybe they felt that they would get some flack because people might think they were white washing another african hero or maybe they thought that this way the few people who didn´t know that they were ripping off Kimba would not find out. In any case it really saddens me that there are so many people now who know Disney´s The Lion King but have never heard of Kimba, the White Lion. I looked for videos from this series and although I found complete episodes I had to include the german intro.
So the only full episodes from Kimba I found were either in the original or the spanish version so I included the one that I can at least understand.
One might think that after this long litany of pop culture tidbits we are finally at the end of this section but there are two celebrity birthdays Today I just have to mention. First we have colombian tv host, model and actress Ximena Cordoba who turns 39. She is very successful currently and constantly adding new stuff to her portfolio like a photoshoot for SoHo ( not So Hoe ) magazine which included some very hot and very tasteful nude pictures. Naturally I am only posting one that is safe for work here.
Norwegian comic strips, spanish comic artists drawing british comics, german intros for japanese cartoons, japanese mangas that inspired american comic book creators, cosplayers with german and asian roots, czech animators which influenced british directors, Today we have a really international entertainment section. Now longtime readers of this blog know that I have posted a lot of hot women on tv from various countries - and there are even more which I still have not posted yet - so I would never say that Ximena Cordoba is the hottest weather girl on tv but she surely has one of the best butts and can go up against the best of them.
It´s her biggest secret weapon and one of the reasons why she is going to go far in the movie industry . It´s no wonder that Shaquille O´Neal is a big fan of Ximena who actually got to meet her . The best part about this is his reaction : " Don´t talk to my girlfriend about that. " I bet he wishes Ximena was his girlfriend - like most men do. In any case it seems that Shaquile has promised her a role in his next movie - or is at least working hard to make that a reality - so don´t be surprised to see more of Ximena.
Another sexbomb, Petra Verkaik, Playmate of December 1989 a.k.a the most published woman in PLAYBOY history celebrates her 52nd birthday.
Petra who was also voted Playboy Lingerie Readers´ Choice Model of the Year 1997 not only could have easily starred in a Russ Meyer movie with her - all natural - 37HH ( !!! ) bust she DID actually star in a movie with Kevin Bacon. But her biggest claims to fame are her Lara Croft video that was all the rage on the internet and serving as a blueprint for John Byrne´s version of Jennifer Walters a.k.a. the Sensational She - Hulk.
Which was the last good version of the comic we got. Back then She Hulk was a fun character who was having real relationships and real sex but it was not always so emphasized like it was in later versions. There were some instances where it was a big part of the story like in the famous issue where a sleezeball managed to get some nude pictures of She Hulk while she was sunbathing topless and printed them in his adult magazine.
Or when John Byrne put the graphic in graphic novel when a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. goons kidnapped her and forced her to strip by putting a gun to her boyfriend, Wyatt Wingfoot´s head. But that was just the realistic part of the story about what happens when a bunch of horny secret agent rogues get hold of an ultimate sexbomb like She Hulk with giant melons.
They also made her undergo various physical exams and it is pretty clear that they took turns putting her body to the test after several full cavity searches. I mean although SJWs have done their best to turn her into an unattractive men hating propaganda tool for their war where she almost looks like her cousin she IS supposed to have the body of Petra Verkaik.
The current writers at Marvel just don´t get the character of She Hulk and when somebody tells me they are doing an okay series I quickly remind them that under John Byrne´s penmanship it was one of their bestsellers.
In fact this was one of the first series I had on a subscription. Because before that I didn´t even have a subscription. My faithful readers have heard the story a few times but for all who are new on the blog I first discovered that there was something called the international press which sold american comic books in bigger railway stations in Germany during a trip to an aunt. Soon afterwards I found one in Stuttgart and I went there to buy as many american comic books as they had and my budget allowed.
Well, I was always asking about if the newest titles had come in or why some of my favorite books were missing and I pestered them so long that they finally decided to give me the contact information of the comic shop where they got their comics. So I made my first comic subscription which at the beginning were two titles, The Sensational She - Hulk and West Coast Avengers, both written and drawn by John Byrne. Ah, good times.
Coming back to Petra Verkaik, I could not find any clips from the movie Speedway a.k.a. The Last Road , her clip from Love Potion Number Nine has a good quality but is way too short and I think I already posted her appearance on Married with Children . I guess this video must be new.
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