Sexbomb Saturday with E E Erika Eleniak

Today busty blonde Baywatchable beach body par excellence Erika Eleniak ( or short E E for her friends ) celebrates her 49th birthday and since it has been two years since I last re - posted her cult siren entry I thought it´s high time to put one of my top ten wet sex dreams on the blog again.

This is the third repost which means that I first posted this in 2014 and in the meantime there have been many risky animated GIFs and my blog has not been deleted so I must have managed to keep it at a level that most readers are still comfortable with reading. There are some animated GIFs that are new for this post or new to the blog but most of them have appeared on other posts and the world hasn´t stopped spinning. In any case, if this is still too much you can check out her repost from 2015 here .

Erika has been in a lot of movies but she´s probably most famous for her sexy striptease in UNDER SIEGE which is what this post will be focusing on. Which is also one of the reasons why I didn´t do a post about her sooner. Now longtime readers will already know that her striptease is on my Top Ten list of movie stripteases. I know, maybe it´s not on the official Top Ten or your personal Top Ten but it sure as hell is on mine. And one of my goals has been to do at least one post about all the entries on my list.

So far I have covered most of them including Demi Moore and the recently added Elizabeth Berkley but there are still some left on my list like Claudia Christian who earned a spot with her raunchy striptease in THE HIDDEN .

I also already had written a post about this on my old boob blog that´s probably still out there. Now you might ask yourself where the problem lies. Well, the thing is that I try to keep the post safe for work and most the Erika Eleniak pictures I had were full frontal nudity or at least with a lot of exposed breast. Not that I have a problem with that. But like I said, I tried to keep the post safe for work and how should I do a post about a particular scene when I can´t post any pictures ? I know that it is totally doable since there are also other pictures from the movie but for me this would feel too much of a tease. I always hated it when writers put scenes in comics that involved nudity well knowing that the artist were never allowed to draw them and had to come up with a way to make it work.

Which always never works. Because comics are a visual medium and if you fail to bring a visual gag over in a visual medium you have definitely failed.

So you might ask why I´m doing this post. Well, to tell the truth I have blogger and myself to thank for this. Since I figured out how to make screenshots I´m not depending on other people´s screenshots and I can do my own which are not that risky. Okay, some of them may be and I´ll probably include one shot of Erika Eleniak in all her stripper glory but only for scientific reasons, I promise. I also have already posted some pictures without having any reader complaints so I´m keeping my fingers crossed.

The other reason for doing such a post and hoping to keep it safe for work is that blogger now allows to post animated GIFs. So far the posting of GIFs was possible but you ran into trouble because blogger didn´t show it right. But now that´s possible so instead of filling this post with dozens of risky screenshots I can just post one animated GIF of her striptease and if readers have a problem with that they can just quickly scroll over it.
 

With all this in mind you might ask why I still feel the need to do this post.

Well, this blog is also about giving tribute to all the neglected or forgotten cult sirens out there who bare it all ( so to speak ) to turn unbearable dreck into fun trash and who never get top billing or movie awards.

They never get credit or the big bucks but nevertheless they work hard and are prepared to show it all - unlike some actresses who are extremely hot but who will never get naked on screen - just so we can get a little something from awful movies that otherwise would be a waste of time.

And it´s not like I haven´t posted about hot sexbombs before. I did four entire posts about Baywatch colleague Traci Bingham ( a.k.a. Traci Banghim ) one of which included a lot of animated GIFs from Janet Jackson´s hottest wardrobe malfunction on Jay Leno´s Tonight Show ,

more than one post about cult siren Markie Post and one about Heather Thomas , five about Jamie Lee Curtis sexy striptease on TRUE LIES ( one just for all the screenshots and one special post with animated GIFs ), also five on Salma Hayek with most mentioning her striptease on FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, one on Janet Jones and Leslie Easterbrook´s wet t - shirt on POLICE ACADEMY which I had to split into separate parts for real life Power Girl Leslie Easterbrook , beachbody Janet Jones and Becky Mullen , three on fitness sexbomb Kiana Tom´s exposed bra on UNIVERSAL SOLDIER - THE RETURN, more than three about Wonder Woman Lynda Carter as well as italian soccer MILF extraordinaire Simona Ventura with a spin - off for the part about german strip show TUTTI FRUTTI , Mistress of the Dark Elvira , Russ Meyer cult actresses Tura Satana ( which I re - posted in 2016 ) and Haji and I wrote about dozens of others including Joyce Hyser from the almost forgotten screwball comedy JUST ONE OF THE GUYS where I just had to include some full frontal. And that´s not taking into account all the posts about actresses from Andy Sidaris movies or all the posts about Yaya Han. Heck, our last post was an unscheduled cult siren post about Audrey and Judy Landers. Anyway, the list is far too long to post but you get an idea this kind of post is not unprecedented here.

Today´s only comic book related thing is that I cast Erika Eleniak for the role Hawkgirl in my Justice League movie and you can find her part in the JLA CASTING SPECIAL BAYWATCH EDITION together with Carmen Electra.
  

Anyway, that enough public announcement stuff so after a rather long winded intro let´s hear it for celebrity birthday babe Erika Eleniak :

Originally posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Retro babe of the week : Erika Eleniak strips on Under Siege

Time for a dive into the vault for some awsome striptease goodness courtesy of the ever so popular RETRO BABE OF THE WEEK series. Today´s contestant is playmate and Baywatch babe Erika Eleniak whose claim to movie sex icon fame is her incredibly hot striptease on UNDER SIEGE .

Erika started on BAYWATCH where in one of the first episodes she got into trouble because of some raunchy pictures of her that were published.

Which at that time didn´t make much sense because her breasts were rather average and only grew to the enormous size she has been known for ever since in later episodes of one of the most successful series on the planet. I bet David Hasselhoff wished he had known this before.

So Erika Eleniak became the " queen of the mountain " on BAYWATCH with the biggest boobs around ...... until Pamela Anderson came around.

Like Pamela Anderson she also appeared in Playboy and was the playmate of July 1989 although I´m not sure if the pictures where she wore part of a uniform much like the one she wears in her famous striptease got her the role on UNDER SIEGE. Anyway, Erika Eleniak was only the first of a decades spanning tradition of Baywatch babes who got photographed by Playboy like Vanessa Angel, Krista Allen, playmate / Penthouse pet / pornstar Teri Weigel, Jenny Mc Carthy, Yasmine Bleeth, Donna D´Errico, Kelly Monaco, Brande Roderick, Nicole Eggert , Mitzi Capture and Gina Lee Nolin among others. Most of them have been in Playboy and other men´s magazines.

The bodacious Krista Allen played Clark Kent´s hot new teacher on SMALLVILLE, Jim Carey´s new neighbor with the big boobs in LIAR LIAR and the sexy oracle on CHARMED ( she was also in a series called Black Widow which had nothing to do with the Marvel character ) but she is probably best known for her role of Jenna Avid on BAYWATCH HAWAII.

Besides that american audiences are probably most familiar with Krista Allen from playing Emanuelle in eight made for tv movies . Because she did it when her incredible body was in prime condition she was able to believable portray the french sex machine with the high moan factor who merciless milks men dry until they can´t remember on which side the doorknob is. The show had some strange 3D effects - because that was the new thing at that time - and the stories were not that great but it was all worth it to see Miss Allen get her freak on. Whoa, did she ever.

Back to Erika Eleniak, she appeared in a few movies like BEVERLY HILL BILLIES, CHASERS and BORDELLO OF BLOOD ( which got censored beyond recognition in Germany ) but she never achieved the level of success Pamela Anderson did. Not even Traci Bingham achieved it and she´s build like a porn star - in fact none of the other cast members of BAYWATCH did.

Carmen Electra is the only one who was anywhere near the success level of Pam and she also was in Playboy numerous times. A coincidence ? 

Coming back to Erika Eleniak she had some pretty hot scenes in CHASERS ( much less so in THE OPPONENT and STRIKE FORCE a.k.a. THE LIBRARIANS ).

But my favorite movie with her is UNDER SIEGE. Which by the way is called ALARMSTUFE ROT ( Condition Red ) in Germany. That´s what you get when you use german words that make no sense in german - they have to come up with a different name. And that was one of the reasons why it was so difficult for me to find stuff about her until I figured out the original title.



UNDER SIEGE is one of the better Steven Seagal movies which means that his acting is not as bad as in other movies and it also has big stars like Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey and Nick Mancuso. The plot is simple but even though he only beats up smaller guys ( Did you notice that in most movies Steven Seagal only fights people who are smaller than him ? It makes it hard to take him serious. ) it´s a pretty decent action movie.

But the reason why I really like the film is of course Erika Eleniak and her sexy striptease after she comes out of a cake. She really shows some talent there which makes the fact that she never continued in that direction just more tragic. Ahh, the career she could have had stripping.

You can say what you want about Steven Seagal but he sure does have an eye for talent because it has been said that he included Erika Eleniak.

And if that rumor is true he has earned my eternal gratitude for giving the entire world one of the best striptease ever. And her manager who persuaded to take this part and use her stripper skills to the benefit of mankind. I bet he got something out of the deal as well. I know that if it had been me there would have been a few private sessions of rehearsing.

Of course the fabulous striptease is not the only scene where Erika struts her stuff because not only does she have wonderful breasts - she also has a tight derriere. There is also the scene in which she arrives on the ship where she steps out of the helicopter and has something on her shoe.

Erika leans forward to get it off, showing some good cleavage while all the horny sailors stand around drooling, hoping to get an eyeful. I guess they didn´t have to give the male actors much directions on this one.

She then walks past the viewer and the camera zooms in on her incredibly sculpted round and firm butt checks moving and shaking. Holy makarel !!!

Wow ! That has got to be one of the best butts in movies of all times together with sexbomb Kelly Overton working her butt crack in TEKKEN

and - of course - the spectacular Halle Berry in THE LAST BOY SCOUT .

And here´s Erika with her sexy striptease thanks to Steven Seagal who had the balls to include her in the script. I hope he at least got some.

Even if not I bet the strip was one of the scenes they had to do the most takes of. Steven probably had to relieve himself afterwards - if he didn´t get honey Erika to join him. In any case, it is Steven Seagal´s best movie and the one most liked by movie goers so in the end it was for the best.

One last thing about the famous striptease scene from UNDER SIEGE : people always wondered if there was a rivalry between Erika Eleniak and Pamela Anderson and if that was the reason Erika Eleniak left the show.

There are two different versions of the story but I think this article from Jake Davis on FETCH SPORT - which also takes an in depth look at Erika Eleniak´s life and career - comes closest to the truth. According to Pamela Anderson when she auditioned for the role of Jordan Tate in UNDER SIEGE Steven Segal naturally wanted to put her porn star body to the test on the casting couch and told her if she didn´t do it the next girl would do it and she would get the role instead. Pamela refused and so Erika got the role.

According to Pamela Steven Segal used Erika Eleniak as his personal blow up sex doll while Erika Eleniak denies something like this ever happened. I think you have to decide for yourself which version you believe. In any case we still have Erika Eleniak´s steamy striptease in UNDER SIEGE, one of the best in movie history which will excite generations of male movie fans to come. So many happy returns Erika and thanks for the mammaries !

Today´s post has been all about a tv cult siren and playmate that I wanted to do a post about for a very long time so I thought it´s only fair that the first video is also about a telenovela icon and playmate : Aylin Mujica.

I don´t have time to go into all the details here but the 43 year old starred in MARINA ( a telenovela that helped me a great deal ) and another with possibly the best title ever SIN TETAS NO HAY PARADISO ( without tits there is no paradise ). Since the 2015 Erika Eleniak post I eve managed to do one about Aylin Mujica on MARINA . Now you may think that I´m crazy writing about 43 year old tv stars but 40 is the new 24 and Aylin did a photoshoot for the mexican Playboy where she showed : she still got it.

Here is an actual video with Aylin Mujica and her boobs are just out of control. Aylin denies having had plastic surgery - at least not on her breasts - and in a recent interview she also said that she doesn´t see herself as sexy. Which is probably the only reason she never did porn.



Since this post was about stripteases our second clip is from BAILANDO PARA UN SUENO ( Dancing for a Dream ) which is the version of Dancing with the Stars from Argentina. Only the female contestants have bigger breasts, wear less clothing and instead of dancing they are stripping.

In our last Erika Eleniak birthday tribute I posted the famous striptease by übersexbomb Cinthia Fernandez which broke the internet because of it´s explicit nature and made me aware of the show. Today we have kind of a re - post but since it has been four years since we had nymphomanic doule dee cowgirl Virgina Gallardo´s boner inducing performance on the blog I guess there are a lot of first time visitors who have never seen it. 



Speaking of hot dance performances, also in out last Erika Eleniak post we had one of the last videos of Daje Monroe but thankfully I found a new one with Didem Kinali. She is one of the best belly dancers on the planet and is it just me or do her breasts look better than ever ? And people tell me the women I draw have unrealistic boobs. They don´t know Didem !



A totally different show is TU CARA ME SUENA from spanish television which could be roughly translated as YOUR FACE LOOKS FAMILIAR although the spanish term " me suena " means something like making sounds or music if you take it literally. So it has kind of a double meaning since people - mostly celebrities - dress up and perform as famous singers.

Because it´s a spanish tv program and not a german one it´s an original idea and most of the performances are quite good. There is one who does an Adele performance almost better than the real thing but Today´s clip is Anna Simon with Marylin Monroe´s DIAMONDS ARE A GIRLS BEST FRIENDS.



Anna Simon is another tv cult icon I wanted to do a post about for a long time but as always I haven´t gotten around to - not yet. As with Aylin Mujica I can´t explain everything about her but she´s a tv institution in Spain. I tried to find a particular clip on YouTube but since I could not find it here´s an animated GIF from one of her best shows. Ay oma, que rico !

Since the clip from spanish cult show TONTERIAS LAS JUSTAS where Anna´s boobs almost spilled out of her tight pink corsage has been deleted here is another clip with one of Spain´s greatest tv moments.



Anna is a guest on the very entertaining show EL HORMIGUERO ( which is highly entertaining, if you are ever in Spain you have to watch this show - provided it´s still on the air ) and her juicy breasts pop open her shirt. If this would have happened on a german tv show we would not get to see anything and the only way we would know it had happened would be from an article on the newspaper. But since this is a spanish tv show they not only taped it but are showing a slow motion for all the viewers at home.



A stereotype many latin women have to deal with is that most foreigners think all latinas have black hair. Just ask Sofia Vergara. Anna is a natural blonde but in one episode of OTRA MOVIDA - another comedy / news / gossip show - she wore a black wig and she looked so stunning that her male co hosts kept hitting on her for the length of the entire episode.



At the moment Anna is one of the hosts of ZAPEANDO together with Cristina Pedroche and Ana Morgade which is the trifecta of hot tv babes.



Or at least one of the trifectas since there are so many hot sexbombs on spanish tv. It seems I only get to write about these spanish sexbombs when I´m writing these re - posts so here is another mega busty iberian massita Paula Prendes whose giant melons almost leap off the tv screen.



If you ask me how best to describe Ana Morgade then I would say she´s like the spanish version of Tina Fey only with a DD breast size - at least. She has a rapier wit, a great sense of humor and a body like a centerfold.





Two years ago I put a whole bunch of Ana Morgade videos here and last year three videos with massita Ximena Cordoba who´s possibly the hottest weather girl on the planet. So this year I´m posting a video of mexican Über Power Girl Ninel Conde who celebrates her 48th birthday Today and whom I have cast as Zatanna in my Justice League casting .



And because of many requests here are more videos with Emanuela Botto.






New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

En internet no paran de hablar de las tetorras enormes que tengo pero no hablan del culo de ningun humorista.

Schwarz Weiß Sonntag with Usagi Yojimbo

Since I have worked so long on my last post I´d thought that Today I could do just a quick post about one of my all time favorite series by Stan Sakai.

It really felt like it took me forever to finish my last post about Gene Colan´s Batman which was in great part because I had problems with the stomach. I finally managed to put the finishing touches on it Yesterday but that was like a herculean effort on my part because I ate too late and too many vegetables and I have had severe stomach cramps until one hour ago. Now I am feeling a little better and because I also drank some wine I am just in the right mood to write another post about the longeared Ronin that has been wandering the japanese countryside since 1984.

Which is what I am focusing on in this post. I already did an extensive post on USAGI YOJIMBO way back in 2010 and if you don´t know the series you should read that first since it tells you everything you have to know about the series but for this post I have selected some pages that are mostly about Usagi Yojimbo´s environment. Stan Sakain is a master storyteller and one of the reasons why his book is so compelling and captivating is that he manages to capture the majesty of the japanese country with just a few simple lines. No matter if Usagi is battling the elements in a drowning downpour or just quietly walking through an open wheat field it is always expertly rendered and nature is as much a character in these stories like street performer and pickpocket Kitsune or fellow bounty hunter Gen.

Because USAGI YOJIMBO is a black and white series there are no colored versions of these pages so I hope I can wrap things up quickly as I feel a bit drowsy. In any case don´t let the fact that this book is in black and white stop you from checking it out. I know that there are still comic readers who don´t read certain comics because they are in black and white but I hope that the examples I have selected here might sway you.

Because of my health problems I missed two important birthdays from March, the 15th and the first one is hugely important for spanish comic fans. It´s Victor Ibáñez Talavera, part of the spanish comic bedrock who is most famous for his series Mortadelo y Filemon but who also created such well known comics - at least in Spain - like Botones Sacarino, Don Pedrito, Rompetechos, Pepe Gotera y Otilio, Tete Cohete or Rue Del Percebe 13.

But like I said, the most well known is Mortadelo y Filemon which has been translated into many languages and I think in England it was called Flip and Flap. Here in Germany it was called Clever & Smart and it has been coming out forever. Not as long as in Spain where the series is still going on but I remember that during all my time in school and while doing my apprenticeship to become a car mechanic Clever & Smart was a steady presence. And the series sold so well that they actually did two editions side by side - one with new albums and one with reprints. I don´t exactly know when they stopped publishing the series in Germany but they just announced this year that they are continuing. I also mentioned Mortadelo y Filemon in my JLA movie casting solo post of spanish / french sexbomb Marlene Mourreau because there is a connection to that classic comic and you can check out her post if you are curious what that connection is.

But to know more about Victor Ibáñez and all the different comic series he did check out the post I wrote on his birthday last year . If you DO check out the post you will notice that I announced a follow up post but I never did get around to do that. And I have all the material lined up and prepared which is why I´m a bit bummed out that I didn´t get to do a post on Ibáñez. Anyway, maybe I can do the second post at a later date.



The second important celebrity birthday of March, the 15th is one all my longtime readers are very familiar with since it was nothing less than the 50th birthday of my favorite cult siren - quite literal - italian singing sexbomb of the 80s extraordinaire Sabrina " Bouncing Action " Salerno.

Okay, also celebrating his birthday on ...... wait, I know what you are thinking. No more mention of Sabrina Salerno ? Usually I don´t let the tiniest possibility pass by to include hot sexbombs and now with one of my all time sexual phantasies there´s nothing ? No links, no pictures, no animated GIFs, no videos, no nothing ? Don´t worry true believers. The reason why there is nothing about Sabrina Salerno here is that we will get to her later because her birthday actually connects to another birthday.

Anyway, like I was saying, the third birthday from March, the 15th I want to mention is Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am who turns 43. That the group only hit the big times when they added sexy frontwoman Fergie to the roster. 

Back to Will.i.am he played John Wraith in X - Men Origins : Wolverine which was not as distracting as I feared. Speaking about Wolverine thank god they did what I hoped with the Logan movie and kept it as far away from the original Old Man Logan comic which is one of the worst stories ever written while the movie turned out to be the best Wolverine movie ever. Right now there is a new Old Man Logan series in whatever passes for the Marveluniverse nowadays but from what I have seen he is not written like an old man. Which is probably because the new SJW writers have no real life experience and therefore on idea how old people really would behave outside of what you see on the telly. But that is the topic for another post. Anyway, I wanted to add a video from The Voice UK but a video with a live performance by mega MILF Fergie trumps anything.



Another cult siren shoutout goes to Brittany Daniel who celebrated her 42nd anniversary just Yesterday and whom most people may know from Joe Dirt, Joe Dirt 2, It´s Always Sunny In California, Just Shoot Me !, Club Dread, That 70´s Show, That 80´s Show or Dawson´s Creek although for me she will always be the buxom blonde twin who saved my worst summer.

Longtime readers may remember my post from my return to Spain and how far away from everything it is back home. I don´t know if it was during the time when my mother tried to get me to cold turkey comics but one year there was really not much on tv and as I had already read all the books and comics I had brought from my last trip to civilization I was starving for entertainment in form of movies and tv especially involving hot women.



Unfortunately my parents had the control over the remote at that time so the only chance to wrestle it away from them was while they were making dinner. Which meant I was stuck with prime time tv shows which were not really known for including a lot of scantily clad girls. You have to remember this was pre - 24h nonstop tv and naked chicks going at it on HBO. But as fate would have it I discovered Sweet Valley High, which would have been your average teen show if not for the fact that it had two incredibly hot blonde sexbombs with hardbodies that make guys go crazy as the main protagonists who were twins to top things off. Brittany played Jessica Wakefield while her real twin sister Cynthia Daniels - whom you might know from her role in The Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio - played Elizabeth Wakefield. This show really helped me through some rough ( and hard ) times and on some days a scene with Brittany / Cynthia in a hot outfit - or even better - a bikini was the highlight of that day.

Since they are twins they both celebrate their birthday Today so I want to be fair ( especially since I can´t be sure who wore which outfit in which scene and both are damn hot ) and say thanks for the mammaries to both.



Now with our next candidate I have a love / hate relationship because on one side you have to acknowledge that Peter Illmann - who turns 59 - was indeed the music tv presenter of the first hour years before Mtv and VIVA would appear on german tv screens. On the other hand it means I have to talk about Formel Eins which was the worst music show on german tv. But it was the only music we had ( if you don´t count Die Deutsche Hitparade which mainly played Schlager music ) so we had to bear the horror of it.

Peter Illmann was the first host and he was kind of a mack daddy although that only evolved over time. Still, he was not the best host. That dubious honor belongs to his replacement, Ingolf Lück who innovated the show by turning his introductions of the various musical acts and music videos ( they showed both ) into little sketches. It was only downhill after he left as they got their first female presenter Stefanie Tücking who was much too tame for this kind of show and she then handed the reigns over to Kai Böcking who was completely clueless. I remember that in his first show he had Sabrina Salerno as a guest and she was just too much woman for him.

See ? I told you we would get back to sexbomb Norma Sabrina Salerno.

At the time Sabrina Salerno, the cult siren with the obligatory bouncing action was at the height of her popularity in Germany thanks to her worldwide number 1 smash hit Boys Boys Boys ( which was especially popular in those countries that showed the uncensored version of her video where her tiny bikini top could not contain the singing sexbomb´s huge melons ) and various articles in teen publications like Bravo and Popcorn and nude pictorials in adult men´s magazines like Penthouse.

So they had to invite her to Formel Eins which was the music tv for german teenagers. The show was a total train wreck, they always cut the videos because the producer of the show was in Bavaria and they are very catholic and prudish down there. When Sabrina was there as a guest they didn´t play her video and told her she had to do a live performance. Which was obviously more than they bargained for because Sabrina began to shake rattle and roll her boobs up and down like there´s no Tomorrow.

Of course they were appalled but they could not do anything against it. The camera man tried to prevent the worst by doing a lot of close ups and just filming Sabrina´s head but as you can see it didn´t help that much.



Coming back to Formel Eins, while Kai Böcking did the most shows with 120 episodes they ultimately had to cancel it because of the upcoming competition of Mtv and VIVA who showed all music video in full and not only one per show. By that time Peter Illmann was no longer on tv although after leaving Formel Eins he did two other music programs, P.I.T. - Peter Illmannns Treff and Peter´s Pop Show which were successful for a while.



Coming back to Sabrina Salerno, I wrote her first cult siren entry way back in 2014 with annual reposts in 2015 , 2016 and 2017 where I always tried to do the ultimate version adding little things here and there. This year I thought I could skip it but while writing this post I came across some videos from other female singers who tried to boost or start a singing career like Danuta Lato or Angela Cavagna which are extremely to find in good quality. So I might to a post somewhere down the line although it will probably be mainly a video post and not so much about Sabrina Salerno and more about these other singers. There will be some new - at least I hope so - Sabrina Salerno videos in there naturally but in the meantime I wanted to include some here too. Here I am positive that I have not posted these before and I included the single clips as well as video with both live performances because the quality of the videos is different.





There is one last thing about Sabrina Salerno that I have to address. One of her signature live performances of Boys, Boys, Boys where bouncing action is concerned was on the spanish show Un, Dos, Tres and I have gotten some comments if there were any repercussions of Sabrina´s bonerinducing appearance on the show. Now to clarify I have to say that for one spanish people in general are much more open to the form of entertainment that involves sexy women. It may be hard to believe but there have always been what other countries may consider risky women on spanish tv. Also while Un, Dos, Tres was a family oriented game show it was shown in the late evening which meant that more adult things could be incorporated. For instance this is what the female assistants wore.



And this is what a typical show number on Un, Dos, Tres looked like. They were usually done to illustrate a point or introduce the next topic which means it was a cheap excuse to bring on some hot dancing women to spice up what would have otherwise been a very boring game show.



From the small screen we come to the big screen with french director and producer Luc Besson who celebrates his 59th birthday Today. He has made such cult classics like Subway, The Big Blue, Taxi, The Transporter, Wasabi, Leon : The Professional or The Fifth Element and the reason why I am mentioning him is of course Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.

Some of his movies like The Fifth Element has been heavily influenced by comic books like The Long Goodbye by Steve O´Bannon and french comic artist Moebius ( who also did designs for the movie ) but Valerian is the first movie that is based solely on a comic book series. And here is where the crux of the movie lies. Some people say it doesn´t live up to its full potential or history which I think is always difficult with classic comics.

Today movie goers expect superhero movies to be based on comic books but with science fiction movies it is not that obvious. And if the comic in question is not an american comic but a french comic nobody except the most eclectic american comic book afficionados have probably heard of it.

Valerian et Laureline or how it is called in german Valerian und Veronique goes back a long way so you have the problem how do you bring across a comic that started 50 years ago ? Back in its time nobody wanted to make french science fiction comics so it was kind of groundbreaking but most of the things that were innovative back then have become old tropes now.

There are enough articles about the many ways in which it influenced science fiction classics like Star Wars so I won´t go into that here in detail. But the problem remains that it is hard to bring across to new readers what a big science fiction comic series it was back in the day.

I remember that one of my teachers once told me that when his daughter saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the first time she thought that Marilyn Monroe was copying Madonna. He then explained to her that it was the other way around and that Madonna was copying Marylin Monroe´s famous performance of Diamonds Are A Girl´s Best Friend in the Material Girl vid.

But even after that explanation his daughter still had the gut feeling that Madonna´s version was the original and Marylin Monroe was the copycat.

Now since I have not seen it I don´t know how successful Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is at avoiding the Star Wars effect where something that was influenced by it has become more famous that the original source but I know that for comic readers in Germany Valerian und Veronique is part of the comic landscape. Most comic readers have if not read it then at least known of its existence for most of their lives and I remember reading the short installments way back in old issues of Zack !

It was many years later that Carlsen Verlag published the series in album format and I think it was around book ten that I had enough disposable money to buy them for myself. Before that I always read them via the local library but from that point forward I bought them for my comic collection.

Which of course had something to do with the character of Laureline getting more play in the stories. Artist Jean - Claude Mezieres does not have what you may call a photo realistic style but he drew her very nicely.

Which doesn´t mean that her main role in the series is providing eye candy. Another innovation that has become kind of a trope since than is that from the get go the creators flipped the usual man / woman dynamic so that Laureline was the more resourceful, capable and intelligent part of the team and Valerian was often more bumbling, ineffectual or sometimes even the damsel in distress who had to be rescued. He was still a very honest guy, good meaning and in most cases got the job done. But like they said in one of my favorite Doctor Who specials he just was better when he was with her and she just was better when she was with him.

Now from the comics it is established early on that they are bound to end up becoming a couple and I don´t know how good they brought that idea across in the movie adaption. In the comic there is a love between them but it´s not just a physical attraction and they start out as partners who clearly admire and respect each other and it actually takes a long time before that love is consumed in a sexual way. Which is because they are real persons and not just cyphers to bring across the writer´s agendas.

Anyway, while going through the material for this part I have realized that I somehow stopped reading them after the 13th or 14th story so while the series has ended as far as I know there are still a few adventures for me to explore. Thankfully the complete series is available in collected edition form so there will be at least one of those in my next comic book order.

Man, I could write much more about the series but that really deserves its own post since you can´t cram so much artistic goodness into the small space I have here. Coming back to Luc Besson and Valerian there is a video that talks more about the Star Wars effect in detail but I am saving it for when I have seen the movie so that I can actually comment on it. There is another one about the comic itself but since I am hoping to get to write that Valerian et Laureline post it´s also a no - go. The one I have chosen for this post is from german tv and it gives you a bit of background on the comic as well as mentioning a few of the parallels with Star Wars.



Our last and final birthday of Today is Frank McLaughlin who turns 83. Younger comic readers may not be familiar with his name but the artist and inker can look back on quite the long career. Mr. McLaughlin started as a assistant editor at the infamous Charlton Comics and by 1962 he had become art director. He then slowly worked his way through the Charlton Comics line which included such series like Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Son of Vulcan, The Fightin´ 5, Strange Suspense Stories and Sarge Steel.

And in 1965 he co - created the hero Judomaster with writer Joe Gill.

He then worked for DC and Marvel. At Marvel he inked Wayne Boring on Captain Marvel, Sal Buscema on Captain America and The Defenders and wrote martial arts articles for Marvel´s The Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu.

At DC he inked back up stories featuring The Atom, Black Lightning, Zatanna and The Fabulous World Of Krypton as well as Dick Dillin on Justice League Of America, Ernie Chan´s Batman stories in Detective Comics, Joe Staton on Green Lantern, Dan Jurgen´s Green Arrow, Carmine Infantion on The Flash, Gene Colan on Wonder Woman.

He also worked for Archie Comics, Acclaim Comics, Atlas Comics, Broadway Comics, Valiant Comics and The Heart Of Juliet Jones, Gil Thorpe, Brenda Starr Reporter, Nancy and DC´s The World´s Greatest Superheroes strips. 

Initially I wanted to post this in another article I have planned on Charlton Comics but who knows when I can get to it. And who knows ? Until then the movie about the comiker Boys from Derby might be already finished.



Wow, this post´s entertainment section has really become a marathon but that tends to happen once I start writing about Sabrina Salerno and spanish game shows from my youth. Now this was not the 925th post I envisioned but you can´t say that you didn´t get your money´s worth.

I am closing out things with a recap of Usagi Yojimbo´s guest appearances on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and the next time we will finally come to his appearance on the new Turtles cartoon. So goodbye for Today and I have to start on my Daredevil birthday post for Al Williamson.



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By the crays of Kilimanjaro !