It´s a Born Free Friday with Animal Man !

Yesterday I took some time off from working on the blog to watch some of the videos I posted ( yes, most often than not I only get to watch the videos after I post them ) and I thought that the tv show Manimal would be better suited in a post about Grant Morrison´s comic ANIMAL MAN.

The thing is that when Brian Bolland´s birthday came around last month I thought about doing an Animal Man themed post but I didn´t have enough material. Because I already did one in 2020 and I put all my best into that.

Anyway, if I have learned one thing in life it is that sometimes when you can´t do what you want to do you have to change your point of view and start thinkint outside of the box. So while I didn´t have enough material for a Brian Bolland exclusive ANIMAL MAN tribute he only did the covers.

Don´t get me wrong, his covers ARE spectacular and I bet in many cases the incentive to buy the issue. What is the main purpose of a cover - even if most comicbook publishers seem to have forgotten this lately. But that is the topic of a different post. Coming back to ANIMAL MAN, so after I decided to look for more interior pages I found a truck load of original art.

Which made me realize two things : firstably, Chaz Truog is the unsung MVP of the series. As I said in previous posts his art is not what brought me to the series and I will always wonder how the book would have been with - let´s say a different artist because I don´t want to say better one.

Okay, there are obviously some artist´s whose craftmanship is above the level of other artists and then there are what you would call " artist´s artists " who are on such a high level that they can make others rethink their entire way of approaching comicbook art with just one short story.

So while I don´t want to deny that at the end of the day it all comes down to personal preferences. I mean, without a doubt Jack Kirby was one of the best comicbook artits ever but when I started out reading comics I didn´t like his art. So yes, I would have preferred to have one of my favorites on ANIMAL MAN but I have to give Chaz Truog props because even if he just shows up and does the work he does all the heavy lifting.

The second thing I realized is that I have to get me some ANIMAL MAN as soon as possible because I don´t remember any of this. Now I do know the broad strokes of the stories but with the thousands - probably more like millions - of issues I read during my 40 plus years of comicbook reading I can´t recall every tiny tidbit. And this stuff is dope. Since the upcoming omnibus is piced very high I probably will get the Deluxe Editions but those are easier to read and not as hefty as an omnibus. Anyway, that´s enough of an introduction as I have to heed the call of the wild. Enjoy !

ANIMAL MAN was initially just supposed to be a four issue limited series so it´s no surprise that Grant Morrison really hit his stride with issue 5. What floored everybody was the fact that he immediately knocked it out of the park with " The Coyote Gospel ". It is considered by many afficionados to be not only his best single issue of this run but even more one of the best metatextual comicbooks ever written. And as great as the done in one is it´s just a sample in which direction Grant Morrison would take the title.

Speaking of limited series, we come to the impetus for this entire post Manimal or how it was called in Germany A Case For Professor Chase - which in german doesn´t even rhyme. Anyway, as beloved as the show became later worldwide when it first aired it didn´t have the success the tv execs expected so it was cut short and only lasted for eight episodes.

Fiction has always been fascinated with heroes who have animal powers.

For Buddy Baker a.k.a. Animal Man that means he can aquire the abilities of nearby animals while in Professor Chase´s case ( no pun intended ) he can transform into various animals. Which is nothing new since the power of animal transmogrification has been part of folklore for centuries, from vampires turning into wolves, bats or rats to lycanthropes and skinwalkers.

With Bravestarr we have a more conventional kind of animal powers as instead of controling animals or transforming into one the title character calls upon " spirit animals " enabling him to use the eyes of the hawk, the ears of the wolf, the strength of the bear and the speed of the puma.

While our previous examples of men with animal powers required special rituals or circumstances there are those who let themselves be inspired by animals to develop their fighting style. Probably the best known martial arts movie of that genre is Snake In The Eagle´s Shadow from 1978. I don´t know if it was the first martial arts movie that refrained from most of the typical brutality in favor of including comedy elements but I know that it became an instant cult classic in Germany and it also was the first Jackie Chan movie I saw. For Today´s audience the soundtrack by french musician Jean Michel Jarre may seem a bit weird but back in 1978 he was a big hit so naturally the producers wanted to combine two very successful things.

Another hero with animal powers who appears in Morrison´s ANIMAL MAN is B´wana Beast whom you might have seen on Justice League Unlimited.

He also was in the intro to one of my favorite super hero cartoon shows ever. My brothers never could get over the way Batman´s chin looks but I had a lot of fun with the series as it manages the delicte balancing act of not taking anything too serious while at the same time staying true to the characters, going in bold directions, fleshing out characters, giving them real depth and last but not least including a lot of DC Comics history from the Golden Age to the Bronze Age. It´s also not afraid to do a musical episode and those of you who have seen the episode with the Music Meister will back me up : it is one of the best episodes. And what´s even better, various countries have done their own versions of the songs so if you buy it on DVD or BlueRay you can enjoy the episode multiple times. 

Coming back to B´wana Beast, he does have confusing powers : on one side he has an elixir that gives him enhanced strength, speed, hunting and tracking ablilties, on the other sidehe possesses a helmet that let´s him communicate with animals plus merge up to four different species to form a chimera. Thankfully Comic Tropes Chris is here to sort it all out for us.

For some reason DC Comics seem to have the monopoly on super heroes with animal powers while Marvel Comics has more super heroes who take on the traits of a specific animal like the Black Panther or Spider - Man and his animal themed rogues villain. On the DC Comics side we have heroes like Congorilla or - the best known ones because of their appearances on cartoons and tv shows - Changeling a.k.a. Beast Boy and Vixen. The last one is best known for her association with the infamous Justice League Detroit. I thought about getting the omnibus of this era of the Justice League of America because I don´t know anything about it but at first it was too expensive, then I had to move to Spain and now it´s out of print.

Speaking about DC Comics´ Vixen, longtime followers of the blog may already know this from my CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA - ONCE YOU HAD BLACK special or my tribute posts to cult siren Beyonce.

I cast her as Mari McCabe which went against the new JLA comic from that time since Ed Benes obviously based her appearance on Halle Berry.

And knowing what a big fan I am of Halle Berry you might think it obvious that I would do the same. But they do that with a lot of female black characters in comics and I don´t want to cast Halle in five different roles.

And I don´t use the term " black " to provoke. It´s just that " afro - american " sounds more like some pc nonsense to make it sound not as offensive while people have the same stereotypes in their minds.

Technical speaking Mari is " afro - african " since she was born in Afrika where there are also white people. And she doesn´t even wear an afro.

So, for playing the afro - african - american Justice Leaguer who is also a model I went with somebody who is hot, has starred in a few movies and is no stranger to the world of fashion. She even designs her own clothes.

So the bootylicious Beyonce got the role of Vixen in my fantasy casting for a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie, and boy she does bring out the animal in men.

By the way, somebody ought to tell the guys at DC that Vixen is not really a good name for a woman in Germany as it sounds like wichsen, the german word for spanking the monkey....to keep the animal terminology.

These sections seem to be my only chance to catch up because I am living under a rock out here. Not under a literal rock but more where happenings in the real world are concerned. So for those who may find themselves in a similar situation it looks like Beyonce made some pretty hot commercials for german sports outfitter Adidas. I have no idea if this is a recent thing.

Longtime readers know that Halle Berry is one of my all time wet sex fantasies so not only does she appear in my Justice League of America movie casting she had even four solo posts . But of course it was only a question of time before I added some new ones so in 2018 I wrote four more : the first one about Halle Berry in her best movies , the second one on Halle Berry´s comic book movies , part three about my dream comic book movie casting with Halle Berry and the unexpected bonus round .

Halle Berry did a remarkable sexy dance ( not a striptease as she didn´t take her clothes off ) in The Last Boy Scout , teased us in Catwoman and finally delivered in Password : Swordfish and completely redeemed herself in Monster´s Ball where she milked Thornton´s rock hard Billy Bob totally dry in front of the entire crew. Which nobody really got to see since they censored it more than three times - about which I wrote a special post .

Longtime followers of the blog might have expected me to include a music video with Beyonce but this one was a no brainer with the topic of this.

Now I don´t know if Serpent Of The Nile from 1953 has anything to do with animals besides the title but it does star Perry Mason Raymond Burr, Commander Krang Michael Ansara ( who also provided the voice for Mister Freeze on Batman - The Animated Series ) and Catwoman Julie Newmar as an exotic dancer clad only in gold paint and an early 1950s style gold bikini.

There are however plenty of animals in this animated feature film based on Kenneth Grahame´s The Wind In The Willows. There are actually quite a few of these - including one by Walt Disney which I sadly could not find in good quality - and if I can I will put some of them in my upcoming posts.

Apropos The Wind In The Willows, there also was a stop motion tv series.

Closing things out, one of my favorite cartoon shows growing up was Grisu the dragon and this is what taught us about diversity. Nowadays the SJWs put it in everything, especially cartoons but back then you could not talk about these things so they got their message across more subtle. For those who have never seen the show it´s about a little dragon called Grisu whose most burning desire is to become a firefighter. Of course everybody around him never tires of telling him that it is impossible for a dragon to become a firefighter but Grisu doesn´t let that deter him from his dream.

There are a few episodes where he even achieves his goal but one of Grisu´s biggest problems is that he breathes fire whenever he is happy.

Like I said this is one of my favorite cartoons because it tells us that we have to follow our dreams even if everybody tell us that it is impossible.

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

Der Dachs lässt schön grüßen, möchte aber auf keinen Fall gestört werden.

A Brian Bolland Black and White Thursday

Today artist extraordinaire Brian Bolland celebrates his 69th birthday so it´s about time to make good on my promise to do an ANIMAL MAN post.

My last Brian Bolland post was in 2017 and initially I wanted to do another tribute post with art from different books he provided covers for but as longtime readers of the blog know I like to do theme posts and thankfully I have enough material for one of the best  comic series I have ever read.

And how that happened is a story unto itself. Now I probably must have told it somewhere else but I could only find references to my comicbook readings during my summer vacations in Spain in the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY : MY SECRET ORIGIN post so I´ll try to do a quick summary of it.

As I have mentioned in a lot of posts we spent every summer vacation during my school years in Torredembarra and back then comic shops were not a thing. Neither in Spain nor in Germany or Amerika. So you bought your comicbooks at newsstands, Mom and Pop stores or stationary stores.

Which in Spain were more likely to have something like MORTADELO Y FILEMON or some other classic spanish tebeo by Francisco Ibáñez .

Of course they didn´t have only MORTADELO, PULGARCITO or TBO, there also were some superhero comics and since Germany was always a few years ( in some cases entire decades ) behind with what was published in Spain I read my first issues of certain Marvel Comics series as PATRULLA - X , CABALLERO LUNA, LOS DEFENSORES, LA MASA or HOMBRE DE HIERRO .

Now there were three shops where I could get my superhero fix but I remember one shop in particular ( which has either gone away completely since then or has become an entirely different shop ) that didn´t get their comics very often. So they usually had one big stack of comicbooks and throughout the four or five weeks of summer vacation ( that really was a long time ago when the summer vacations seemed to last forever ) and I slowly worked my way through it. During the first week I would get stuff like SUPERMAN, BATMAN, SPIDER - MAN or THE X - MEN but after that I would buy stuff that I was not so familiar with like SECRET ORIGINS.

Or in this case ANIMAL MAN. Okay, time for a short interlude. For those readers who are not comicbook collectors or at least don´t collect floppies when I say that I would buy issues of SUPERMAN or BATMAN then I am talking about issues I didn´t already own in the german version or in the american version. Which since I was reading a lot of series were not that many. So even if I found an issue of SUPERMAN in that shop the chances were high that I had already read it. Now I have always been a bookworm so I needed a lot of reading material to tide me over the summer vacation and when I had already gone through every issue of the series I usually consumed anything that could keep my mind entertained was fair game.

I can´t say that I was particularly impressed by the interior art but the cover by Brian Bolland looked very nice even if what was happening on that cover - some unknown hero was fighting three red robots in the background while in the foreground there was an old guy in a costume who couldn´t care less - didn´t look like your usual superhero magazine.

So I bought it out of curiosity and whatever I felt may have been lacking in the art department - and I´m not trying to dis Chas Truog - was more than made up for by Grant Morrison´s story. After that I found another issue where apparently this Animal Man ( who was not billed as EL HOMBRE ANIMAL for some reason ) fought Hawkwoman and I think my third issue was the famous Coyote Gospel story and that was it for me. From then on ANIMAL MAN was the series I looked for first whenever I returned to Spain and later I grabbed every issue I could find at german comic conventions.

I don´t think that I own the complete Grant Morrison ANIMAL MAN run - and I have missed my opportunity to get the omnibus at a reasonable price - but I have most of the issues either in english or spanish. Anyway, that´s enough of an introduction since I have decided to do a second Brian Bolland post this month and the next one will be all about one of the greatest fantasy space opera comicbooks ever created : CAMELOT 3000. 

One of the reasons why Camelot 3000 has gotten a lot of headlines in the last few years is also one of the biggest misconceptions about the series as you can see in Corinna Lawson´s article In 1982 CAMELOT 3000 Broke Barriers with Its Portrayal of a Trans Character on BARNES & NOBLES .

The SJW crowd is always fast to appropriate comic characters and stories and claim it´s all about them - like UNCANNY X - MEN for instance which used to be about being different but now they try to convince everybody that it´s only about being gay or lesbian ( because white caucasian males can´t feel that they are different because they are the guys who are responsible for everything that´s bad ) and if you disagree you are a racist and probably a Nazi too - and if you see the character of Sir Tristan only as a trans character you are making things way too easy for yourself.

Especially since I am not sure if Tristan really qualifies as a trans character.

Now I am not saying that gender and sexuality are not issues here but I think that rather than making a statement for trans people - which I don´t know if that was already a thing in 1982 - the writer wanted to make a statement about gender roles and the barriers we put up for ourselves.

I´m not an expert but for me a trans person is somebody who has the feeling that he was born with the wrong gender and wants to change that. Or somebody who is comfortable being both or has evolved beyond those concepts. Which is not the case with Tristan. Tristan was born as a man and he is completely okay with that. What´s more, when he is then reincarnated with the body of a woman ( which also happened to the main character in the MANTRA series by Malibu Comics although so far I haven´t seen that being appropriated by the LGTB crowd so far ) he still thinks of himself as a man which is why he is so upset. So instead of a person just having the feeling of being born with the wrong gender - or at least not with the gender that person is most comfortable with - we have a person who´s gender has been changed and he´s not okay with that.

As I said, I am not expert in this field but for me just saying that Sir Tristan is trans gender doesn´t feel right. Anyway, we will talk more about this in the upcoming CAMELOT 3000 posts and for those who haven´t already had enough spoilers - or those who have already read the series but want to fresh up their memory - here is a video about the brilliant maxi series.



Before we come to the bonus section with it´s bevy of cult sirens and other pop culture related tidbits I have to include my old link partner CRIVENS ! COMICS & STUFF who has the story behind the cover for The Sensational She - Hulk 14 which was supposed to be by Brian Bolland but ended up being penciled by Mark Texeira and inked by Harry Candelario.

As my regular readers are already tired of hearing I am way behind with my posts so we kick off the bonus section for this post with the celebrity birthdays for March the 23rd and model / actress Karen McDougal who celebrated her 49th birthday. Believe it or not the brunette sexbomb taught pre - Kindergarten before winning a swimsuit competition which launched her career as a glamour, promotional and swimsuit model.

In high school Karen was a cheerleader going by the nickname of Barbie which might have had more to do with her 34D - 24 - 34 measurements than her wholesome sweetness like they told her. They are also largely responsible for her becoming first Playmate Of The Month in December 1997 and subsequently Playmate Of The Year 1998. I pity the generation who has to grow up with a PLAYBOY without nudie pictures and I´m glad I got to see Karen´s pictures. She´s one of the hottest women to ever be featured inside Hugh Hefner´s famous mag in fact the readers of PLAYBOY voted her as the No 2 Sexiest Playmate Of The 1990s. She also pursued an acting career during which she appeared on Charlie´s Angels, the movie Joe Dirt and as Shelly in an episode of Anger Management in 2013.

Pretty boy Richard Grieco turned 55 and I remember that when he was on 21 Jump Street everybody thought he would have the biggest career but Johnny Depp ended up with that destiny while Richard had the short lived spin - off series Booker which probably nobody remembers anymore.



On a comic book related note he did the voice of Ghost Rider in the Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk cartoon and Tony Dracon on Gargoyles.



He also played Loki in Almighty Thor and if that doesn´t sound familiar don´t worry it was not a Marvel production. Besides guest - starring as Steve Botando on Veronica Mars his greatest claims to fame were If Looks Could Kill in which he gets mistaken for a spy and skin flick Mutual Needs with midnight movie veteran Rochelle Swanson although he didn´t have sex with her. At least on screen. According to insiders Richard ravished Rochelle´s 30DD - 23 - 33 pornstar body in his hotel suite as soon as the cameras went off, trying to dicktame her to become his new blow up sex doll. But even though he relentlessly drilled her in every orifice all night Rochelle was an even bigger nympho sex freak and made him squirt until he was dry. For the rest of the shooting she used him as her sex slave. 

Now as you might have noticed from the preview picture that I have chosen the episode from Booker which guest stars another ultimate redhead sexbomb, Marcia Cross, best known as Bree Van De Kamp on Desperate Housewives ( where I still have to watch the last two seasons ) and who just celebrated her 58th birthday on the 25th of this month. 

Now the reason why I did this is that I can´t find the material I really want to put up on the blog. Because of the worldwide success of Desperate Housewives all I could find with Marcia is the scene where she is wearing red lingerie while I am looking for something from her Melrose Place days.

On the show Marcia played Dr. Kimberly Shaw who during the course of the storyline had various psychological problems and there was an episode where she worked on a radio station and because she was in one of her full nympho blow up sex doll phases her work attire ( for the upper part of her body ) was a black jacket with a black bra and nothing else. There was a guy she was trying to dicktame or at least get hard enough to cut a diamond so she was leaning over until her perfect puppies almost popped out of her tiny bra and no disrespect to Desperate Housewives Marcia Cross but Melrose Place Marcia Cross had her beat. I mean her body was in it´s prime and Marcia was just born to embody a nymphomanic sex freak.



Speaking of Desperate Housewives and ultimate sexbombs the main reason why I watched the show was of course rack - tastic Teri Hatcher and who could ever forget the famous " I´m not a stripper ! " scene ?

You know, I always found it very strange that this incident never had any repercussions in the show. Here we have a megahot MILF like Susan Meyers being mistaken for a stripper because she is pregnant and her boobs are so blown up that all the horny students think she got implants.

And when she tells them that she´s not a stripper and that her breasts are so big because of her pregnancy - that´s it ? It´s a bit hard to swallow ( no pun intended ) that not even one of them comes to visit Susan after that.

I mean, in the real world word would get around about this hot MILF who crashed the party and was mistaken for a hooker because of her perfectly rounded boobies. You can bet the guys would be lining up to bring over her daughter´s homework although they would conveniently come over when her daughter and husband are not home. Especially the blond guy at the party who says " That´s hot. " looks like he just got a huge erection.

He would molest her until she agreed to give him a blowjob which would turn into a deepthroat session which would turn into a double breasted boner massage which would turn into having one time only sex. Which would turn into one more but this time really the last love making night.

Which would turn into wild uninhibited sex every Wednesday night. Which then would turn into every other night which would turn into every night until he has successfully tamed her to be his obedient blow up sex doll.



Teri played the BEST Lois Lane on tv so far and was the first actress who made it believable that Superman would choose her over the ultimate sex bombs in the Justice League of America like Big Barda or Wonder Woman.

While there were a lot of hot women on the show Teri clearly was the main attraction showing off her bouncing boobies in a lot of sexy outfits.

Check out my last post on cult siren Teri Hatcher to read more about her comic book connections like her appearance in Tales From The Crypt or Tango & Cash where she showed her incredible body and dancing skills.



Speaking of midnight movies, Serena Grandi, famous sex symbol of italian cinema in the 1980s and 1990s celebrated her 62nd birthday. She had wild success in many erotic movies with famous director Tinto Brass because of her voluptuous body and 40D - 24 - 40 measurements and most often the plot of the movie was that she is too much woman to handle and tries out various horny candidates which leaves them satisfied but her frustrated.

Besides her nude roles she is known to horror fans from Le Foto Di Gioa, called Das Unheimliche Auge in german and better known as Delirium in the english language. In the movie she uncharacteristically doesn´t take her clothes off but the movie was still a success because Sabrina Salerno, the italian pop queen with the built in bouncing action had a nude scene.

Serena also played Euryale in the second Hercules movie with Lou Ferrigno because they needed to fill the cleavages Sybil Danning had left empty.

What wikipedia won´t tell you is that Serena also was in Stormtroopers II based on the comic by Bonvi which strangely enough was very popular in Germany and during my time in the military everybody was reading this.

Now I had written in an earlier post that it´s a german comic series but it actually comes from Italy and they did two live action movies, one in 1976 and the second one in 1982 which is the one with Serena Grandi. I could only find episodes in italian because since Star Wars came out you can just forget searching for this on google, all you get are stormtroopers.



We are staying in that time period as Teresa Ganzel turns 60 who is best known as the blonde knockout in The Toy from 1982 where she co starred with Richard Pryor. Who gets to wear a Spider - Man costume in that film.

Bursting with bosomness and a sly, kittenish sense of humor Teresa often played ditzy, busty blonde bimbos and became famous as a recurring cast member of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, having replaced the late Carol Wayne as the Matinee Lady in the popular Tea Time Movie skits.



You might remember that I mentioned Carol Wayne in Mike Zeck´s birthday post and if you missed that you absolutely HAVE to google Carol Wayne.

The blonde bombshell with the mega inflated body of a living blow up sex doll predestined for the adult industry ( her exact body measures are not known but it is assumed that they were around 39DD - 24 - 35 ) made dreams come true when she did a nude PLAYBOY pictorial in February 1984.

With a curvaceous body that must have been the envy of most porn stars of that time she had many fans who followed her guest appearances on such television shows like I Spy, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. or The Fall Guy. She had roles in the movies Gunn, The Party and Heartbreakers in which she had a nude scene. Carol appeared in many sketches on The Red Skelton Show but she gained her greatest fame for her 100 plus appearances as the Matinee Lady between 1971 and 1984. In Love American Style she played a secretary that constantly distracts her boss with her big gazongas . She would´ve made one hell of a Power Girl !



So both Carol Wayne and Teresa Ganzel got famous through appearances on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and I found a clip with both.



You can find the rest of the celebrity birthdays from March the 23rd in my ROAD TO FLASH FRIDAY PART 1 : GREEN LANTERN post which brings us to our really short video section since I have already managed to check off most categories. But since we talked a little bit about gender roles here is the first episode of Ranma 1 / 2 the ultimate gender swap comedy anime by Rumiko Tamahshi. I read a lot of issues because it was on my brother´s pull list and it´s one of the more relatable series because the reason for most of Ranma´s fights is that he does not want to marry somebody.



There is no special reason why I chose this last video but because of the quarantine lockdown I am trying to include longer videos and Suzanne Vega is one of my favorite artists. Also these videos never last long.



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

For the animal shall not be measured by man.