Weekend link extravaganza plus gay Iceman

There have been no celebrity birthdays since my last post that I felt the need to comment about so I used the time to get rid of a lot of stuff that had accumulated on my laptop. You know how these things just pile up.

So I spent these last days doing that but also preparing the stuff for new posts and follow up on some stuff from previous posts. But to not leave my readers hanging without any new posts for the weekend I thought I could do one of these link posts I used to do. As usual I will go through the links in the order they appear on my toolbar which will not be the order in which they wind up in the post. So the first thing you will read as it first appears on the post may end up on the bottom and vice versa. But now without further ado let´s get to the things that have kept me busy.

TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICTED COMIC BLOGGER

Now I have already mentioned a few times that with the amount of time it takes me to do these posts I often only get to read many of the links I include in the posts after the fact except for those I have to read to make the actual post. Some of the links I included in my post about Russ Meyer actress Haji are from Sam Tweedle´s CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT and I just had the chance to peruse the archive at more detail.

Besides more orbituaries for such pop culture legends like Leonard Nimoy , Patrick Macnee or Yvonne Craig he has a few comic related posts. He has two interviews with Ronn Sutton about his work on the Honey West and Elvira comics, an informative post about Peyo´s THE SMURFS comics ( Did you know that the Smurfs predated the Justice League of America and the entire Marvel Age of comics ? ) and a really funny post about why you should never tell superhero jokes to comic readers. For the fans of top Ten lists ( and we all are ) there are Comic´s 10 Greatest Dads and two lists about the Top Ten Lamest Superheroes Of All Time ( list 1 / list 2 ) which I´m happy to report doesn´t include the Avenger´s Gilgamesh.

Speaking about Top Ten lists, he lists his Top Ten Picks From The New 52 which was followed up one year later ( no pun intended ) with a post on what worked and what didn´t. And since we are on the subject of awful reboots he has a post on the most awful reboots in comic history in two parts ( part 1 / part 2 ) that includes such great ideas like Dracula, The Shadow and the Blackhawks as superheroes, the Metal Men getting human secret identities, Dick Tracy in Space and the Justice League of Detroit.

To close the book on DC´s NEW 52 there is a really interesting post about why DC made the wrong character gay when they decided to turn Alan Scott gay on EARTH 2. Which leads us directly to our next hot topic.

WOW ! BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS MUST REALLY HATE OTHER WRITERS

Out sheer curiosity I decided to find out whatever happened to gay Iceman after all the hullubaloo that was made about that on the internet.

I for one was not so sure that he would survive the SECRET WARS but apparently I was right in my decision to ditch ALL NEW X - MEN because after bullying the Iceman from the past into admitting he´s gay when he clearly is not now Jean Grey got him so brainwashed that he even teamed up with her to lie to the Iceman from the present and tell him that he´s secretly gay. Which shocked Iceman so much he actually believes it.

Yep, sounds ridiculous but that´s exactly what happened in UNCANNY X - MEN 600 ( way to celebrate an anniversary ) and it seems this " important story " will be " continued further " in the new ALL NEW X - MEN book that starts with a new number 1 and will not be written by Brain Michael Bendis who will leave the X - Men franchise altogether. So the question remains if Bendis was going to leave the x - books anyway, was this his version of a mikedrop or was he even giving all the other writers that come after him the finger, even if it´s only metaphorically ? Why was Iceman turned gay ?

While Disney, Bendis and all the other writers at Marvel insist it was only to tell a good story you have to question if the same story could not as easily have been told with a new character that is gay. After all if you are arguing that it would not have had the same impact with a new character you also imply that Bendis does not have the capability to write a new character and make him that compelling and interesting that it doesn´t matter it´s a new character. And if you say that´s not possible you might want to check out the original SPIDER - MAN 2099 series by Peter David.

I also have noticed that with all the reactions from the first " reveal " of Iceman being gay to now I haven´t heard one person mention the story at all. Not one person. There were a lot of comments about the importance of the story, how everybody who doesn´t like it is a homophobic and how we need more diversity in comics. Mind you, not real diversity OF comics meaning comics that appeal to all kind of readers which is more than just superhero comics but rather superhero comics that represent all kind of people and races and religions because that is what we all want to read about. And we can only identify with people who are the same as we because we don´t understand other people and we do not want to.

I mean let´s be honest here for a moment. Is it really necessary that someone has the same sexual orientation as yourself for you to identify with him ? Does he need to have the game racial background ? Must he have the same age, the same job or even the same sex ? There is this lie being repeated again and again ever since Robin was created that the younger readers couldn´t identify with Batman because - well, obviously he was much too old, duh ! Okay, newsflash, but in all the stories I read with Batman and Robin I always was Batman. Why ? Because he´s the boss and what many adults don´t seem to get into their head is that just because there is a sidekick around younger readers don´t automatically just identify with him because he´s young. It´s a fantasy and sorry, but in my fantasy I´m not the sidekick or the gopher, I´m the guy in charge.

Yeah, Batman was older than me but so what ? I was going to be older some day and that was my example to aspire. In all the comics I read with Superman, Spider - Man or Thor that inspired me I never thought " Gee, I wish there was a young guy around I could relate to because the main character is much too old to identify with. " Maybe that´s a generational thing. I grew up reading a lot of francobelgian comics like ASTERIX, LUCKY LUKE and TINTIN and all these comics were a huge success with kids even if the heroes were all grown ups. So is Today´s comic reading generation unable to relate to people outside of their own small group ?

Okay, back to the topic of gay Iceman, some people say that the change was just made to have diversity for diversities sake , some people tried to make an argument that Iceman already was written as a gay character in the comics which doesn´t make any sense because if you HAVE dated women and are now interested in men, I think people used to call that bi - sexual in my day and age. So understandably the bi - sexual people are not happy that the gay have shanghaied their new break out character.

Another factor here is the movies because they are the real cash makers for Disney so they don´t care what happens in the comics as long as they get a good movie out of the deal. And if you still don´t believe that after they just flushed over fifty years of continuity down the toilet I can´t help you. So actor Shawn Ashmore was asked about this and he said he´s ready to play Iceman as gay . Which in plain english means " Yes, I like to eat and I´m not that stupid that I want to ruin my chances of being in any further Disney movies. " I mean, there´s an old german saying that whose bread you eat their song you´ll sing. And if Disney decides that Iceman is gay that´s how you play him if you want to get paid. Also for an actor who has already played that part a few times it can get boring and so he has a new challenge. Especially since they have already established that he had romantic involvements with Rogue and Kitty Pryde. I wish they had put only half as much effort into finding challenging things for Oscar winning actress Halle Berry to do as they put in finding a way to make Iceman gay.

Of course Stan Lee has also been asked what he thinks about Iceman being gay but I think the interviewer Kit Simpson Browne mistakes Stan Lee´s - let´s say carefully diplomatic - answer as actual approval.

He´s not going to say anything negative about Marvel because he doesn´t want to pee off Disney. All he´s saying is that as long as it´s a good story it´s okay with him. And I think that is as good of a closing argument as any because I think if it had been a really good story nobody would have complained. I mean we swallowed Sue Dibny being retroactivly raped and killed and Tim Drake´s father and the original Captain Boomerang biting the big one in one comic because it was such a good story. So if there was so much fuzz about Iceman being gay . . . you draw your own conclusions.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE OLD ( OR HAVE TASTE ) WHEN YOU LIKE THIS

Among the many bookmarks that have amassed over the last year are many from fellow link partner DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND and since putting them all here would bust the size and purpose of this post I´m doing a small selection of everything I have saved for future posts.

I´m a huge Sal Buscema fan and one of his best - if not THE best - series is ROM, SPACEKNIGHT where he collaborated with the great Bill Mantlo.

Sadly Marvel doesn´t have the rights to the series anymore but who knows ? If the MASTER OF KUNG - FU omnibus books are a financial success maybe Disney will get the license back. In the meantime you can haed over to Old Groove´s blog to read A House Is Not A Home from ROM 5 ,  Dog Day Afternoon from ROM issue 6, As I lay Dying from ROM issue 7,  Deathwing from ROM 8 and The Stalker In The Night from ROM 9.

It´s a series I can´t recommend high enough that should be easily found in dollar bins especially since there are no plans to bring it to the movies.

Of course Sal Buscema did more than just ROM and you can also find Kill ! Cried The Raven ! from SUB - MARINER 26, When Wakes The Kraken from SUB - MARINER 27 and this collection of splash pages from the series on the blog as well as  and another collection of splash pages from his run on INCREDIBLE HULK with inker Joe Staton ( we will return to him later on ).

Also worth reading is a four part saga by Chris Claremont, Sal Buscema and Steve Leiola that started in MARVEL TEAM UP 82 with No Way To Treat A Lady guest starring the Black Widow and Nick Fury, continued in MARVEL TEAM UP 83 Slaughter on 10th Avenue and went on in MARVEL TEAM UP 84 Catch A Falling Hero where we added Shang Chi to the mix which finally concluded in MARVEL TEAM UP 85 with The Woman Who Never Was . I couldn´t find any reprint information but I remember reading at least part of it somewhere in a spanish or german translation.

To end the Marvel section of this part and as a call back to my post on John Romita´s birthday there´s also a post that features the complete six page SATANA story from VAMPIRE TALES 2 along with some other stuff.

I said we were going to come back to Joe Staton and he is one of the artists on THE METAL MEN from the good old times before they got human secret identities. The artist on issues 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 and 49 is Walter Simonson though and Joe Staton does the issues 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 and 56 of the series with Jim Aparo providing the covers for the last 4 issues ( Walter Simonson did the previous covers of these issues ).

Joe Staton was also the artist on A Choice of Destinies from BATMAN FAMILY 18, Gotham Town Is Burning Down ! from BATMAN FAMILY 19 and Trial By Fire from BATMAN FAMILY 20 which introduced the Huntress.

And speaking about Earth 2 bombshells her bff Power Girl was front and center in All Star Super Squad and Brainwave Blows Up ! written by Gerry Conway and art by Ric Estrada ( not to be confused with Erik " Ponch " Estrada from CHiPs ) and Wally Wood from ALL STAR COMICS 58 and 59. In most articles about how artist Wally Wood made Power Girl´s breasts bigger in each subsequent issue you will see art from these stories.

Coming from a parallel earth to the far future one of my favorite series has always been the Legion of Super - Heroes and you can read The One Shot Hero from SUPERBOY 195 which introduced Wildfire, Timber Wolf . . . . Dead Hero, Live Executioner ! from SUPERBOY 197 by Cary Bates and Dave Cockrum and The Legionnaires Who Haunted Superboy ! from SUPERBOY 206 by Cary Bates and Mike Grell on Old Groove´s blog.

Apart from the Legion Mike Grell did a long and beloved stint on the Green Lantern book ( check out The Revenge Of The Renegade from GREEN LANTERN / GREEN ARROW 91 ) but his big opus as a writer / artist was WARLORD. I have been a bit lax with continuing to put the links on my blog so here is Arena Of Death from WARLORD 2, War Gods Of Skartaris from WARLORD 3, Duel Of The Titans from WARLORD 4, The Secret Of Skartaris from WARLORD 5, Home Is A Four - Letter Word from WARLORD 6, The Iron Devil from WARLORD 7, The City In The Sky from WARLORD 8, Lair Of The Snowbeast from WARLORD 9, Tower Of Fear from WARLORD 10 ( WARLORD 11 was a reprint of Travis Morgan´s first appearance in 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL 8 ), Trilogy from WARLORD 12 and The Hunter from WARLORD 13. This is a must read for all true comic fans.

COSPLAY LINKS : THE YAYA AND THE NIGRI ( NO UGLY ONES HERE )

One thing I have the feeling I´m always preparing is my upcoming big Yaya Han post which keeps getting delayed because I always get too worked up. Still I try to find the best stuff about her in the meantime which includes animated GIFs some of which I try to make myself.

And this is what I have been trying to make the last two days. Now despite my lack of success I have found some online and since I´m not sure when I can do my Yaya Han post I want to include them so readers can check them out and don´t have to wait until I can make the post.

The DR OCTOCAT tumblr has a few animated GIFs of Yaya Han cosplaying as the Red Queen which are actually borrowed from COSPLAY SLEEP EAT PLAY where you can find another post with GIFs of Yaya Han in her incredible Dark Elf costume , DARKNESS169 has some nice Gifs of Yaya Han ( cosplaying as Carmilla ) and Jessica Nigri ( cosplaying as New 52 Supergirl ) fighting and speaking about Jessica Nigri : H. Q. Roosevelt on THE ROOSEVELTS has 18 Reasons Why Jessica Nigri Is Better In Gif Form , NERD NINJA has 14 more Jessica Nigri GIFs and there´s the obligatory FUCKYEAHJESSICANIGRI tumblr where you can find all the latest Jessica Nigri GIFs, pictures and videos you will ever need. Never miss one.

And that´s all I have time for Today. I wanted to include a few more links but I got carried away by the whole topic of gay Iceman. Which I hopefully could outbalance a bit with the GIFs of Yaya and Jessica. I hope there is something interesting for you and I hope you have a good weekend.

Since I mentioned Batman in this post and I have bookmarked more Batman videos than I can post here´s Shades Of The Bat about the evolution of his animated series. It has been split into two parts.



I also wanted to add an Elvira video but because most of them on YouTube are of a really bad quality it took me quite some time to find this one.



One of the things I also mentioned in this post is that there are other comics besides super heroes ( and thanks to the efforts of Disney I will be checking out more of these soon ) but for all those readers out there who have no idea what I´m talking about here is a video of Amy Dallen´s visit to Portland, the mysterious town where independent comics thrive.



And speaking about diversity I also wanted to post something different with my music video so I chose this clip from Alisia. I have no idea to which lucky accident I owe finding it in the first place and I couldn´t tell you the title of the song or even from which part of the world she hails. All I know is that she´s hot and has great taste in choosing her outfits.



Last but not least here is the video from which I tried to make a GIF for the last two days without having any success. If somebody can do one of Yaya Han´s opening bit as Chun Li for me it would be greatly appreciated.



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

Bart Sears continued or This is your life !

Because the post about Bart Sears I started Yesterday has become too long I decided to put this stuff in a separate post. You can go to the first post if you want to read about Bart Sears on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE.

I really should be finishing the material for the post on Alyssa Milano, who celebrates her 42nd birthday Tomorrow instead of still writing on what is practically Yesterday´s post. But as usual I did spend most of Yesterday putting the original art pages I found while making the post into folders and looking for the Bart Sears art I had scattered all around my laptop instead of actually writing the post. It also doesn´t help if you have to go to the bank and write a post without any preparation on the same day.

Especially if - like me - you have to take a bus to get to the bank and no matter when you arrive at the bus stop the bus leaves right under your nose. Anyway, I will probably have to wing it on the Alyssa Milano post or do it at a later time as usual and I also don´t have the time necessary to do a post on Christina Aguilera who celebrates her 35th birthday Today.

So in our last post we covered Bart Sears on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and here we get to all the other stuff he did in his long and illustrious career.

After his stint on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE Bart tackled another DC icon in the three issue story Faith in issues 21 to 23 of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT before drawing the bookend issues to the big ECLIPSO crossover of the 1992 annuals and the first issues of the following ongoing series. Some of you may remember that the first issue of the ECLIPSO event had a little violet plastic Eclipso diamond glued to the cover ( which wrinkled it a bit ). Yep, the 90s with the crazy gimmick covers were in full effect.

I read until the issue after Bart Sears had left but the drop in the quality of the art was so dramatic and the story had become convoluted that I left the series. I have to add that most of the ECLIPSO annuals were if not great reads at least entertaining ( I bought them all ) which can´t be said for a lot of crossovers these days which have become formulaic.

Around that time Bart Sears started doing art tutorials in WIZARD which I still read at that time. He did over thirty of them and if you have one of their How To Draw books there is probably some of his stuff in there. He went freelance and did work on Marvel´s SILVER SABLE and MIDNIGHT SONS, Dark Horse´s TITAN and WILL TO POWER and image´s VIOLATOR.

He also began working for VALIANT where he did some issues of TUROK ( which in my opinion was a big waste because there were not enough hot babes for him to draw there ) and X - O MANOWAR which was a better fit.

He returned to X - O MANOWAR as one of the regular pencilers in 1995 for which would become the title´s swan song. I read many VALIANT books but X- O MANOWAR was the best. You just could not beat the concept which was putting Conan, the Barbarian in a piece of space armor more sophisticated than Iron Man´s suit. I mean, X - O Manowar´s armor was doing things Tony Stark had never dreamed of like battle camouflage or morphing and his Iron Man suit looked like cheap trash compared to this.
   

At this point his style had become so detailed that it was impossible for him to do a monthly book but the guys at VALIANT had the brilliant idea of alternating issues between him and Andy Smith who had a pretty similar style at that time. So the reader got a art two punch combo and X - O MANOWAR really picked up some speed during the last 24 issues or so.

VALIANT folded, or better was bought by ACCLAIM which turned some books into unsuccessful video games and the comics into bad versions of their former glory before folding. And that was that for a time. Thankfully VALIANT has returned again and so far all of their books I have read are awesome. Bart Sears even returned to the company to do some promo art, covers and issues 18 and 19 of BLOODSHOT AND H.A.R.D.CORPS.

In 1994 Bart set up his own comic company OMINOUS PRESS where he sadly only published three issues of BRUTE & BABE. These issues have some of his best art but because of the fragile market his company went out of business. After the collapse of the first incarnation of VALIANT Bart Sears went to PENTHOUSE COMIX where he did art for YOUNG CAPTAIN ADVENTURE and HERICANE. Since I was buying all of those issues ( come on, comics, superheroes and boobs, this was like the best of two worlds ) I devoured the pages which gave you an idea what a POWER GIRL series could have looked like if those guys at DC had real cojones. The art on these is pretty amazing and he started using the thick outlines here.

He returned to Marvel where he did a very successful BLADE series and a not so good SPIDER - WOMAN series. You would think that a series written by John Byrne and drawn by Bart Sears with more Spider - Women than you can shake a stick at would become a huge success. But it didn´t.  

Marvel was totally schizophrenic because at that time they already HAD a long running comic book with a female version of Spider - Man that was beloved by their readers ( they started three letter campaigns to stop Marvel from cancelling it ! ) but they did their best to kill that book ( like restarting the numbering to prevent that the book got more than 100 issues under its belt ) while at the same time coming up with one failed attempt after another to establish a new and different Spider - Woman.

Coming back to SPIDER - WOMAN this was not a good time for John Byrne aficionados and after the atrocious SPIDER - MAN : YEAR ONE, which was supposed to do for the Spider franchise what Bendis´ ULTIMATE SPIDER - MAN achieved years later, he was just phoning his scripts in. This of course didn´t excite Bart much and the art suffered accordingly. It also didn´t help that the main character changed her outfit like every other issue so besides having the original Spider - Woman Jessica Jones in the book they only lasted 18 issues. And I´m not kidding, if you look at the covers Spider - Woman has a different outfit on almost all of them.

After this unsatisfactory work experience Bart went to CROSSGEN where he did THE PATH ( a samurai story set in feudal Japan - I think - where he continued his heavy lined art ) and THE FIRST a series of two warring clans of beings with godlike powers. The latter one was one of the first ( no pun intended ) comics where I got an inkling hwat it must be like for a non comic reading person to read superheros. Because every person in that comic was wearing a costume but unlike the iconic costumes  we know from Superman, Batman, Spider - Man, Nexus or other costumed crusaders they all looked very similar and it was as hard to keep them apart as to remember to which of the two fractions they belonged to.

I think Andy Smith also did some of the work on THE FIRST. For a while CROSSGEN become one of the top five comic companies with each new slew of books being better and I was reading almost all of their titles. My brother was reading most of the books I didn´t have on my pull list.

Well, CROSSGEN also went belly up when it failed to find new investors ( it is telling how many companies go out of business in one man´s career ) so Bart returned to Marvel where he did the limited series CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON, WEAPON X : DAYS OF FUTURE NOW and SABRETOOTH which I haven´t read so I can´t comment on them. 

What I DID read was the awful WARLORD series he did when he returned to DC much to the dismay of my younger brother who had the misfortune of having to pay for the issues while I only needed to suffer through it.

Man, you just can´t beat the original series. Even original creator Mike Grell failed when he tried to add a new chapter. Anyway, if you don´t believe me just check out DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND where Old Groove has posted the latest installment " Trilogy " from WARLORD 12.

And that´s it. Bart Sears is still working but since I have not read THE SCREAM or THE HELM at Dark Horse or TUROK : DINOSAUR HUNTER and JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS at Dynamite Entertainment for which he did covers this is where the post ends. And I will definitely be checking out the BLOODSHOT AND THE H.A.R.D.CORPS issues from VALIANT.

As usual there are a lot of websites to thank for and I want to start with the ones that were most instrumental in deciphering Bart Sears´ personal work timeline. I hope I managed to get it right and my readers will correct me on any mistakes. Firstly the guys at GRAND COMICS DATABASE are to thank for all the covers and info on Bart Sears which were invaluable as were his entries at wikipedia and COMICBOOK DB and his biography at TALES FROM A BART SEARS COLLECTOR which seems to be the inofficial Bart Sears homepage. I also have to include the Bart Sears gallery at COMIC ART COMMUNITY which provided more much needed artwork as did A WORLD OF THOUGHTS where you can read the entire issue 1 of NEGATION WAR which you absolutely should do if you haven´t read the series or any CrossGen books. Kudos and many thanks to all of these.

Man, my brain is turning into mush because I blanked on Today´s 40th birthday of fitness model, Sexbombe and WWF ( for me it will be always the real WWF and not this new WWE ) Diva Trish " The Dish " Stratus.

Both her AND Christina Aguilera celebrate their birthdays at the same time ? It must have been the day for hot and busty blonde sexbombs. While Trish Stratus never won any fitness competitions, long before she stepped into the squared circle, a lot of us saw her in MUSCLE & FITNESS.

Trish Stratus ( born Patricia Anne Stratigias on December the 18th 1975 in Richmond Hill, Ontario ) is a former canadian fitness model and semi - retired professional wrestler ( on September 17th, 2006 after winning her 7th Women's Championship ). She´s the first in WWF history to have held the Women's Championship seven times, three more than the four reigns of Lita and the four recognized title reigns of The Fabulous Moolah. She is also one of only four women to have held the Hardcore Championship.

As a fitness model, Stratus has been on the cover of major health and fitness magazines such as MUSCLEMAG, FLARE, and TOTAL WOMEN´S FITNESS. She also released a calendar series called " Dream Team " with fellow model, Stacey Lynn. As a sports entertainer, she was proclaimed the " Diva of the Decade " on the WWF RAW X Anniversary Show . She was voted " WWE Babe of the Year " three times between 2001 and 2003.

For more about Trish Stratus check out The Best Of  Trish Stratus ( with more pictures ) on DIVALICIOUS , if you are really interested go to LETHALWOW where you can find a really long bio and various galleries and if that´s still not enough the only place left is ADAM´S WRESTLING BLOG ( Best in the World ). As for me I´m going to watch some of my favorite Trish Stratus videos ( which are not from the Divas DVDs but I don´t want to go into a long rant right now ) to get my Stratusfaction.
 

It´s been a while since I posted a Yaya Han video and there is one I am saving for Christmas. In the meantime here´s one with Yaya as Chun Li.



Because we also covered Spider - Woman in this post here´s a video about all the going ons behind the scenes concerning the REAL origin of Venom and spider - Man´s black costume. Which ties in to SECRET WARS.



A lot of comic readers have no idea that such a thing as CrossGen Comics ever existed so here´s one of the few videos I found on YouTube on the subject. If you don´t know the comics you definitely have to check them out as almost every title is among the best comics you will ever read.



And speaking about the only videos I could find on YouTube Today´s cartoon clip is one of the few with Julie Bruin from the TINY TOONS.  I bet her giant bouncing boobs turned quite a few kids into furries for life.

Was Julie Bruin in any other episodes or was she only in the Tiny Toon Music Television episode  ? Her tOOns were definitely not tiny. Daimn !



Coming from one green garbed buxom sexbomb to another I couldn´t end this post without a Christina Aguilera video. It´s the least I can do if I can´t do a post on her. This is her breast appearance on the Ellen show.



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

Die großen Phantastic Comics

Yes, I know I wanted to write about one of my guilty pleasures - namely SECRET WARS II - next but Terry Hooper just did a great post about german comics on Comic Bits Online where he posted the cover of PHANTASTIC COMICS Band 57 SUMPFDING ( SWAMP THING by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson ) which reminded me what a great series that was.

Die Großen Phantastic Comics was published by the german comic company Ehapa / Delta which was the german publisher for DC comics.

The line brought all the great fantasy and sci fi series to german readers and it was in the album format. The series started in 1980 and I guess fantasy was a bit more popular around that time, otherwise the series probably would have been called Die großen Science Fiction Comics. Back in the day I was a big sci fi geek and I read everything from CAPTAIN FUTURE to MARK BRANDIS to PERRY RHODAN and even those small - or rather tiny pocket sized - sci fi mini books by Pelikan. The line was called TRAMP, it could fit into any poket and they only cost 1 Deutschmark.

No kidding, the books were so small they could fit into the palm of your hand and you could literary take them everywhere. And you always had enough money to buy one more and read it on the bus or while waiting at the bus station which I did a lot when I was still in school. I don´t think I ever heard of any of the writers but I didn´t care. I just read anything sci fi I could get my hands on. I´m not sure but I think the first one I bought was DANGER ON THE PLANET OF THE CATWOLVES and even though I was not sure what the hey a catwolf was it sure sounded very exciting.

Yes, I still have those and that´s exactly how my copy looks.

Anyway, back to comics back then I read much more than just super hero comics and Die großen Phantastic Comics was a great part of it because it offered various series. As you can see by the first picture I posted they published STORM by the great Don Lawrence who should be no stranger to most of the readers of this blog. He did those great sci fi classics like THE RISE AND THE FALL OF THE TRIGAN EMPIRE which was published in the UK in RANGER and in Germany it was one of the serials in KOBRA.

His STORM series was first published in the Netherlands in album form and later also in the UK and Germany ( the first chapters appeared in KOBRA again ). But although Don Lawrence was pretty well known by german comic fans - at least those who had read KOBRA - that is not the comic that started the line. Instead they chose to begin the new line with a fantasy series from an american comic artist by the name of Mike Grell.

WARLORD, HUH, YEAH, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR ? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

That´s right, baby. WARLORD by Mike Grell. I guess they went with this title instead because german readers already knew Mike Grell from his classic runs on LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES ( Legion der Superhelden )

 and GREEN LANTERN ( Grüne Leuchte ) both published by Ehapa.

Well, they are classic runs now. Back in 1980 they were just darned good comics. Gosh, I´m getting all misty - eyed just thinking about how great DC´s comic books were when I was reading them as a teenager.

Back to Die großen Phantastic Comics, WARLORD was one of my favorite series although I´m not sure I read all of them. I certainly read all who had art by Mike Grell and some of the later ones but I don´t think I held out to the end. What can I say ? I had a tight budget since I got no regular pocket money from my parents and even back then I had some standards where quality is concerned. From all the WARLORD books there are only two left where I know exactly where they are. All the others are buried under tons of other comics in some god forgotten place or became victims of my mother throwing away my entire comic collection. But the Mike Grell issues were great stuff. Since then there has been a german reprint by the fine folks at CrossCult but I do hope DC does another volume of their SHOWCASE edition so I can finally read the entire series.

Besides WARLORD there was another series by a british artist and not only do I know where every one of the albums are I´m one hundred percent sure I have all of them. I´m speaking of CAMELOT 3000.

ARTHUR PENDRAGON, KING OF BRITAIN AND THE WHOLE UNIVERSE

CAMELOT 3000 written by Mike W. Barr and drawn by Brian Bolland was, is and always will be one of my favorite comic series of all times. Amen.

I don´t even know how to praise this absolutely mindblowing book. It´s one of the best sci fi series ever, in fact one of THE best comics period.

It´s a brillaint re - imagination of the Arthurian legend with really great art by Michael Bolland and I remember it had far stuff like some alien invaders, Arthur revealing himself to the world on live tv ( I think Merlin transformed the microphone of a news reporter into a snake ) and Sir Tristan who was reincarnated as a woman which put a unique twist on his relationship with Isolde. Yup, leave it to those weird british comic guys with their constant gender bending to bring lesbians into mainstream.

If you don´t know this book it´s an absolute must - read especailly when you keep in mind that Brain Bolland doesn´t do much comic work nowadays except for covers. I don´t know if I had seen his work somewhere else ( which might have been possible because he did interiors for comics like BATMAN 400 or pin ups ) but this is where I stood up and took notice of him - like most of the people who read CAMELOT 3000. This is really an essential and should be in every comic collection.

BUT WAIT, THERE IS STILL MORE

And those were pretty much all the comics from Die Großen Phantastic Comics I read. There were of course some other comics in that line but they didn´t interest me much. There was TAAR, but for me he was just a cheap Conan knock off and I think I didn´t read more than 1 or 2 issues.

And with AROK I didn´t even start. For me he was in the same category as TAAR - which may have been justified or not - so I didn´t even bother.

Another series I totally skipped over was AMETYST, PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD mainly because for me it fell into the category of " girl comics ". How should I know that it would become Legion canon later on ?

Now there were only two more comics published  aside from the series mentioned above. The first one was BLACK DRAGON written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Bolton, which was a one shot, I think.

And the other was SUMPFDING. It was number 57 of Die Großen Phantastic Comics, which was re - named as simply Phantastic Comics.

I don´t know if they had planned to publish the entire series but they canceled the whole line the next issue which was a WARLORD issue.

So that´s the story of Die Großen Phantastic Comics and I must say you really have some weird luck to pick the penultimate issue to start.

Thankfully this wraps up Today´s topic as I´m already starting to race against the clock. Maybe I´ll add a few more pictures or more information to this post Tomorrow but for Today I have to call it a day. But what I´m definitely going to do is post more STORM covers by Don Lawrence. They are just awesome beyond words. Like totally Airwolf squared, dude !

Up next will be probably more STORM and also more WARLORD and then - hopefully - my love letter to SECRET WARS II. But now it´s time to come to the hugely popular video at the end of the post. Since we pretty much began with STORM and ended with STORM Today´s video shows comic master Don Lawrence at work. There is also a second part of this.



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