By George ! The Brave and the Bold issue 9

It´s been over two and a half months since our last brave and bold entry so to make up for this I´ll put more George Perez content on the blog.

Today´s post is a bittersweet one because I finally managed to find an update on George Perez´ health and it´s bad news for all of his fans.

Because of his deteriorating eye sight he is now basically retired since it takes him too long to draw. To find out more about this go to the George Perez website or listen to his interview on Bedrock City ( there is some talk before it so if you want to go right to the interview skip the first 30 minutes ). Now as a fan I am of course sad because we will get no new comic work from one of my favorite artists but on the other side I can understand it if he puts his health first. As somebody who is currently facing the ravages of time on the body - knee problems, trying to loose weight, stomach problems because of the changed diet, back problems, worsening eye sight, tendonitis - I really hopes he stays in as good health as possible. Man, I sure picked a great time to get back into comic books.

As far as his comics he leaves us a considerate body of work and some of it - like his excellent NEW TEEN TITANS run - I could re - read ad infinitum.

It´s also reassuring to know that he gets enough money from his royalties for NEW TEEN TITANS and other stuff that he is financially secure and doesn´t end up like William Messner Loebs. That was really sad. The man wrote THE best FLASH series ever plus very successful runs on WONDER WOMAN, THOR and other stuff and now he ends up like this. Anyway, back to George Perez just the other day I was going through the comic books my younger brother is selling now since he is moving and when I came across Malibu Comics´ ULTRAVERSE BREAK - THRU I automatically set that apart thinking : " You might hold on to this one for a little while longer. It might just go up in price. " This was before I knew of this and now it will really go up in value. I´m just glad that I already bought all the NEW TEEN TITANS omnibus and the first WONDER WOMAN BY GEORGE PEREZ omnibus because you know that when the news of George Perez´ retirement hits the mainstream the prices at amazon will go up ridiculously. I am not sure but I think I have managed to accumulate most of his important comics.

But this is not what Today´s post is all about and I´m sure we will talk more about this in future posts. Now this issue is kind of a mixed bag since it features probably as many heroes as you can fit in an issue and the reason for that is that this series was basically only made to give George Perez an opportunity to draw all the DC characters he loves.  

Now a lot of new readers are probably scraping their heads because our last post on this series was issue 7 and here we are with issue 9. Well, the reason is that I already posted issue 8 waaaaay back on the 17th of June in 2016. Man, I was going over the old posts to find that one and FLASH FRIDAY really was a weekly feature on this blog. There is probably only enough material left to do one more FLASH FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN post but maybe I can start posting stuff from issue 1 forward. I had hoped that I could re - read the entire FLASH run now that I have all the issues ( which will probably lead to a few more crossover issues I need to get ) but it would be a great way to remind people of William Messner Loeb´s great contribution to the FLASH mythos. And while I also haven´t the time to re - read Paul Ryan´s not run but marathon on FANTASTIC FOUR I could either alternate the FLASH FRIDAY posts with FANTASTIC FOUR FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN posts or change it to SCARLET SPEEDSTER SATURDAY or Sunday.

But that´s in the future so let´s continue our story in progress with issue 9 of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and for those who missed my previous posts or want to go back and re - read them to refresh you memory here are issue 1, issue 2, issue 3, issue 4, issue 5, issue 6, issue 7 and issue 8 .

Today we have no celebrity birthdays comic related or otherwise except for Lee Majors who turns 79. While he´s not as prolific on tv as he used to be and only does the occassional guest appearance on Human Target and the likes he is still very popular because of his roles as Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man and Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy. Some people may even remember him from Raven. As longtime readers of the blog already know I watched The Fall Guy religiously so I just had to mention him.

Although to tell the truth a big part of that show´s appeal for me as a growing teenager were sexbombs like Heather Thomas and Markie Post who didn´t appear nearly 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.

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.

Thanks to her absolutely stunning 37 ( ! ) - 23 - 32 measurements and the exposure in THE FALL GUY Heather became a famous pin up model with posters in every hormone driven boy's bedroom from that time. She even managed to replace pin up goddess Raquel Welch on the number one spot.

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 .

Since I have already posted all the good episodes from The Fall Guy with Markie Post her part in this is very short but as always she steals the show.

 
But longtime readers know that I always try to pick videos with a little something extra so while Markie Post doesn´t get to show her full range we do get Lou Ferrigno since Trauma is a crossover with Trauma Center, a short lived 13 epiosode tv series which Lou did after The Incredible Hulk.



Seeing as this is Lee Majors´ birthday I wanted to include something special and I thought about adding the title song sung by Lee Majors in the opening. Fun fact : when Glen A. Larson originally pitched the tv series all he had was the song. Which shows you that sometimes all you need is a great idea. Anyway, I always like to include a music video but since everybody knows the title song of The Fall Guy I decided to include the german version by Tom Astor which may be new even to some of my german readers because on german tv they played the original song.



To make up for the lack of bikinis in the episode of The Fall Guy here is the second part of The Girls of Venus Swimwear which I promised to post some while ago. I thought about including The Hot Body Wet - T - Shirt Contest but because of the minimalistic clothing that doesn´t leave much to the imagination I´m going to keep that video for my a bit riskier posts.



And before people forget that this is a comic blog because of all the hot babes here´s a video for my german viewers that shows how important having access to a good comic shop can be. I found a few new videos about comics in german so there will be more popping up in future posts.



Avengers : Earth´s Mightiest Heroes is the best Avengers show bar none. To this day I can´t understand why they cancelled this out of nowhere and replaced it with the dreck that is Avengers : Assemble. Well, I know WHY they did it - to have them talk and behave like in the movies instead of the comics - but it´s sad that there was not one person involved in the decision making process who said : " No. We are not going to pander anymore to non - comic book reading and non - comic book buying people than we already are. We have a good thing going and we´re not going to flush it all down the toilet. " On the other side I´m not really surprised.



Speaking about pandering to non - comic book reading, non - comic book buying people, it may surprise Today´s comic readers but in an issue from Kurt Busike and George Perez´ almost forgotten Avengers run they dealt with the problem that SJWs tried to impose their way of thinking on the makeup of the team roster. It´s interesting to read how the team argued against it back then especially since the Avengers have always been about diversity. It´s just that it was not the kind of diversity the SJWs wanted.



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Heather Thomas´ blue bikini made THE FALL GUY a success.

Paul Ryan Flash Friday : Heart and Souls

Once again I´m late with the FLASH FRIDAY but this time I have a good excuse, I mean reason. In fact there are various good reasons for this.

The first and most important reason was to make this post possible. You see, up to THE FLASH 128, the issue I posted last week, I had all issues prepared in advance. Which is one of the reasons why the FLASH FRIDAY posts - at least for a while - were the only posts that came out regularly.

The only problem had been the special posts which interrupted the series and finding the time to write the posts. So I went to the website where I found the other issues but I could not get issue 128 of THE FLASH there.

What to do ? Now some people might say that now that the original Wally West Flash has returned in the DC REBIRTH universe there is no more need for these FLASH FRIDAY posts. Which is only partially true. Yes, one of my crazy ideas when I started this series was that if enough people got on the Wally West is the best Flash ever bandwagon that could generate enough buzz on the internet for DC to realize what a great character they are wasting. I am not sure if I really made a difference here. But the thing is that I also wanted to make people aware of the great run Wally West as the Flash had - the stories, the artwork, the character, the world building.

Now some might argue that too has become obsolete as the success of the tv series has finally prompted DC to reprint more Flash material which includes the FLASH run by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar and a separate line for Mark Waid´s run. Which means that I may finally be able to close one of the gaps in my comic collection - FLASH issue 70 - in May if only in trade form. Issue 1 is included in the THE FLASH - A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS hardcover which I initially bought as a birthday present for my brother ( but he told me he has no interest in the character ) so I don´t know if I will still be on the lookout for the issue in single form. Anyway, while together with the SHOWCASE editions and the FLASH BY GEOFF JOHNS omnibus books this might now be the time that most of the FLASH lore is available in collected editions I do not feel that my work is done.

Last but not least one of the reasons for the series was to make people aware of Paul Ryan´s work so I will at least try to continue until I have posted all of his issues of THE FLASH. After that I don´t know. Maybe I will continue in numeric order or start again with number 1. As for Paul Ryan, there is that epic FANTASTIC FOUR run where I have only started to show the tip of the iceberg. Even before Paul Ryan passed away I had started to collect material for a DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH OF REED RICHARDS post and although I have not written the post yet because it is macabre it would be sad to let all that work go to waste. And it would be a way to keep featuring one of my favorite artists and prove not all comics that came out in the 90s were as bad as their reputation at the same time.

Anyway, now that my resolve to continue with the FLASH issues by Paul Ryan had been invigorated the question was what to do ? I could use the meager material I had on the rest of the issues to write up a summary - or a few of them. But so far I have always posted entire issues and I wanted to continue in that vein. To make a long story short ( or at least shorter ), I found another source for the issue and hopefully it will be smooth sailings from now on even if I have to reduce each page to post them.

Okay, that was the first reason why this post is late. The second one has to do with superstition so I don´t know if all my readers will agree on the validity of it. When I had finally finished preparing all the pages and stuff and bells and whistles I realized that it was already very late. Now I have been trying to go to bed earlier and also get up earlier and do more work during the day - and so far failing miserably at that - so that was another argument to wait one day with the post. As was that I would be posting on Friday, the 13th. Now I´m not sure if I really am that superstitious or cautious just in case but I decided it would be best not to tempt fate.

And finally reason number three is that I wanted to make some animated GIFs for the celebrity birthday section which was supposed to reduce the babe factor on the blog ( I am conscientious that people have commented that I need to dial things down in that regards ) but which - like always - has taken up more time than anticipated. But I think it was worth it. In any case, now I have finished with the preparations, I got all my ducks lined up, from all the FLASH pages of this issue to the celebrity birthdays and the corresponding animated GIFs and even all the videos. If nothing unexpected comes up at the last minute all I have to do is post the thing.

Now this is part two of Hell to Pay and you might go back to last weeks post and read that first if you have missed it. This story not only has Jay Garrick, my favorite second world war speedster, and the complete JLA with Zapp ! Superman and Kyle Rayner but also the Rogues ( of whom you might have seen the redneck version of Captain Boomerang in the Suicide Squad movie ) who have turned into demons ( I think ) after the fallout of the UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED crossover event. Yep, Flash´s Rogues kicked the bucket in that one but you just can´t keep a good villain down. Neron was ultimately punked by the Trickster and couldn´t get the pure soul he was after but he always has a plan b and now he has set his sights on the scarlet speedster. But enough recap, let´s follow the story in progress. 

So there you have it : Joe Quesada totally swiped the idea for BRAND NEW DAY from Mark Waid. Although he totally botched the story since he used it to undo 25 years of spider continuity. If you want to see how this kind of dilemma gets solved more elegantly by a good writer you will have to wait until our next FLASH FRIDAY because I don´t want to spoil things.

What I always found a bit strange is the lengths to which Joe Quesada went to eradicate every positive developments had happened in Peter Parker´s life going as far as bringing a possible future offspring of Peter and Mary Jane into the story only to tell people that this would not be happening in the future. Without commenting on the offspring Peter and Mary Jane already had in the present. Yes, most people forgot about it but it happened during the Clone Saga : they had a girl which was switched with a dead fetus and they were told that it was stillborn. Which is the story of Mayday Parker a.k.a. Spider - Girl. It seems everyone but me has totally forgotten this and if I could write one Spider - Man story that was what I would write. There would be a mysterious vigilante with spider powers and Peter would find out that this is his daughter. Although after the whole Marvel universe was destroyed in SECRET WARS III and then recreated by the Silver Surfer - and the whole Spider - Verse mischmasch - I don´t know if there still is a 616 Spider - Girl out there. Or any Spider - Girl. Or any trace of the 616 universe. Thank God the ALL - NEW, ALL - DIFFERENT Disney NOW universe has made things so much easier for us.

In any case, if you haven´t done so already your assignment is to go to your local comic shop or the internet and get EVERY issue you can of the one, true, MC2 Spider - Girl. This has my utmost recommendation !

Today´s birthday roll starts with Baywatch babes Nicole Eggert who turns 45 and Traci Bingham who turns 49. As longtime readers of this blog know I have done numerous re - posts of my Traci Bingham post and I thought this year I would just mention it in this post and then link to last year´s post .

Which would have worked if I hadn´t made new GIFs of Traci Bingham. Because after going over the old Traci Bingham posts I realized that not only would now my best GIFs of her not be on any of her posts the GIFs of all the other hot Baywatch babes were scattered all over the blog. So to make things easier I made a new post which naturally got completely out of hand and you can find it here . The good news is that I succeeded in not having so much stuff about Traci Bingham and Baywatch on this post. The bad news is that because of the new GIFs this post was delayed and the content of hot babes has not diminished on the blog. Aw, who cares ? I already said that I might make a new one if something tickled my fancy.

Originally I wanted to add the second Baywatch Special of Family Feud but I couldn´t find it for the life of me. Maybe I already posted it but after going through my bookmark list five times the point is moot. Now with every Traci Bingham re - post I come back to the subject of John Byrne´s X - Men run which after a few days prompts another X - Men post. Maybe this year I can finally find the time to do DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION AND DEATH OF JEAN GREY a.k.a. The Dark Phoenix Saga. Which a lot of people think they know but they don´t. And since the Traci Bingham post is so packed I don´t want to add another video : 9 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About The X - Men which has in part to do with comics being complicated but also with people getting their knowledge from movies and cartoons instead of reading the comic books.



But even without Nicole Eggert and Traci Bingham we have no shortage of bikini clad beachbodies as Michael Worth celebrates his 52nd birthday who starred in a few martial arts movies but who is most famous for starring in the almost ( but not quite ) Andy Sidaris like tv series Acapulco H.E.A.T. 

Although not to slight Michael Worth but he was not the main reason for me to watch the series. And I´m not talking about Fabio here either.

Especially playmate Alison Armitage made me watch more episodes than was healthy and I never understood why she didn´t get more screen time than Catherine Oxenberg. I mean, the producers had to pay her anyway and to just have her in a few short bits in most of the episodes must have been a waste of money. Maybe I am naiive but to me that sounds like you got two weapons - a pointed stick and a gun - and always use the stick. If it was me after a few times I´d say f - word the stick and go for the gun right away. But that is probably one of the things that are done because they have always been done that way and therefore nobody questions.

Because of that it was extremely difficult to find an episode with Alison Armitage doing more than just a short appearance ( I can´t believe how many episodes of Acapulco H.E.A.T. are on YouTube - which probaly won´t last very long ) and also with Michael Worth getting some exposure.



We are staying with 90s tv series but we get from the lower level to the top with Julia Louis Dreyfus who turns 56. To Today´s audiences she´s best known as Vice President Selina Meyer on the comedy show Veep but I saw her first as the funny and sexy Elaine Bennet on cult show Seinfeld.

Even though it was not shown to the general public in Germany ( they always aired it when most people were asleep ) I managed to catch a few with Elaine´s best scenes. Seinfeld has been in amazon´s bargain section a few times now but as always I didn´t have the money to spend.

So far I haven´t seen an episode of Veep which also is a frequent guest in amazon´s 3 tv seasons on DVD for only 25 Euros bargain deals section.



Michael Worth is also the connection to our next birthday since he was in an episode of The John Laroquette Show. Which brings us to Richard Moll who celebrates his 74th birthday has starred in The Flintstones, Jingle All The Way but is best known for playing Nostradamus " Bull " Shannon on Night Court alongside John Laroquette and 80s Power Girl Markie Post .

Now usually I don´t like to post two similar videos in one post and we already have a complete episode from a tv series but as I could not find an episode of Night Court I could not pass up the chance to post another episode of The Fall Guy. This is one of the episodes I vividly remember because Markie´s character Terri Michaels is constantly interrupted by Colt while trying to make out with a guy. Anyway, I also count this as the music video as the story takes place in Nashville and we get so see a few country star perform. As does Colt when he loses a bet with Howie and has to perform his ballad of the unknown stunt man before an audience. So for everyone who wanted to know who wrote the title song : Howie did it.



As always we end the post with a Flash video and as there are less and less left Today´s video is about the alternate versions of the Scarlet Speedster.



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When millionaire industrialist Tony Stark, inventor extraordinaire, discards the solar charged steel - mesh armor of Iron Man he becomes one of a million alcoholics who refuse to admit their weakness ... the tragic Tony Stark.