Why comics rule so much more in spanish

Man, I really hoped to do some comic relevant post Today but it´s once again a post with videos. Well, it´s comic related because it´s about Marvel cartoons but not comics - comic related if you get my meaning.


Quite some time ago ( in fact in June of 2007 ) I wrote that I liked some of the spanish names for superheroes better than the original names. Moon Knight, Avengers or Iron Man doesn´t sound as Airwolf as Caballero Luna, Vengadores and Hombre de Hierro.

Quote from myself : PEDAZOS DE ODIO ! Now doesn´t that sound better than any original title could ? Sometimes the spanish translations have a better ring to it than english. I mean Iron Man sounds cool but the spanish name " Hombre the Hierro " is just oozing with machismo. If I was a wrestler that would be the kind of name I would go for. Or even better " El mucho grande Hombre de Hierro ". Yeah, that´s perfect.

Watching the 60s Marvel cartoons I found something that just shows how superior the spanish adaption can be to the original work. I know that sounds contradictory but I want all the readers who remember the opening title of the 60s Thor cartoon show to get an earful of El Poderoso Thor :



Now doesn´t that sound infinitely better than the original version ? And they said disco was dead. But wait, you haven´t heard nothing yet. Just wait for the theme song for Hulk - or la Masa how he was sometimes called in Spain. That´s almost like the bellcanto of big operas.



Now I didn´t know these songs because - 1 - I haven´t seen a lot of these cartoons in the spanish version or - 2 - if I did it was a long time ago and I don´t remember.

Apparently they were done under the name of Capitan Memo Aguirre by Juan Guillermo Aguirre ( born 1951 ), better known as Memo Aguirre, a famous Chilean singer whose voice has been heard all over Latin America, particularly during the opening acts of superhero cartoon shows during the 1980s. They were done for Latin America but were exported to most spanish speaking countries.

Here´s the title song for El Hombre Araña or Spider - Man how he is also called. A catchy little tune. The video is with footage from the Spider - Man movies with Tobey Maguire. Sorry, but I couldn´t find one with the full spanish opening.



Man, I want a CD with these song SO bad. I would totally buy this if they had it on amazon. Or like my paisanos say : Compratelo ya !

Here are a few more songs from the Hombre Araña cartoons. I can´t decide which is my favorite, especially that SPIDER POWER song sounds like a sure hit.



And since we had so many spidersongs already here are some from La Mujer Araña how Spiderwoman is called in Spain. The show stars Jessica Drew who also fought more mystical opponents in the comics - I think. Her powers are a bit different from our favorite webslinger.



Last but not least a few tunes from Los Cuatro Fantasticos. How could I ever live without it ?



And to show you that it´s not just some prank by some spanish guy who took some intros and put music on it here´s an episode of La Mujer Araña called LA VENGANZA DE DRACULA. Because nothing says " Merry Christmas " like vampires.


Actually vampires, werewolves and a few Frankenstein monsters.

In the story Dracula is out for revenge ( hence the title ) on Dr. Van Helsing who lives in his castle after defeating Dracula. The cur, how dare he ? It just serves him right to get turned into a vampire as well as all the freeloaders who are crashing at Castle Dracula.

Meanwhile Jessica is at the cinema watching ALIEN SPIDER with Jeff ( who´s always trying to get some quality time with Jessica ) and Billy ( the little brat who always makes sure Jeff gets none ) as her spider instinct picks up a disturbance in the force. Under the excuse to get some popcorn she goes to confront Dracula and shoots some bolts on him. When she gets back the thing with the popcorn is never mentioned again as both Jeff and Billy think that was just an excuse to leave the cinema because tia Jessica was just scared.

Dracula - who managed to escape - naturally he is not satisfied with turning Van Helsing and his party guests into vampires ( with some special rayo vampiro that he shoots from his hand ). No, he also digs up the Wolf Man and Frankenstein´s monster.


Who also transform people into werewolves and Frankenstein monster by using beams they shoot out of their eyes ( Wolf Man ) or their metal bolts ( Frankenstein´s monster ). So in short there are a lot of beams shooting back and forth.

Jessica ( who always pretends to have fainted to become Spiderwoman - ay, mujer ) even gets turned into a vampire / werewolf hybrid but thanks to a nearby labaratory she can cook up a chemical cocktail that turns her normal. Ah, the 60s, when superheroes had the scientific knowledge to whip up an anti - vampire - werewolf - elixir in no time flat.

So here are Dracula, the Man Wolf and Frankenstein´s monster in spanish ( although only Dracula has a speaking role while the other two just growl ) and more innocent bystanders turned into classic movie monsters than you can shake a stick at. And in the case of Frankenstein´s monster there were really some people crazy enough to shake a stick ( or a pitchfork ) at him.



So that´s all for today and next time we´ll be talking comics - promise. There are a few days left till the deadline for the big Christmas contest so drop me an e - mail. You can find the rules and everything else about the contest here so enter and wins some comics.

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SUBZERO´s lazy video post

There hasn´t been a loot of posts on this blog in the last few days because I was waiting for a few comics I ordered. Sometimes when I´m waiting for new comics I get writer´s block - I don´t know why.


It´s not like I have nothing else to read, I´m re - reading my BIBLIOTEKA MARVEL THOR issues with the big Celestial Saga where Thor meets Odin´s missing eye and the mistery of his mother is revealed. The story is so entertaining because Roy Thomas took all the elements of the Niebelungen saga and the elements from nordic folklore, added some giant space gods and a few pantheons and just put it through the blender.


Besides reading that I´m also finishing book 5 of the collected ANDRAX edition from CrossCult. But somehow I didn´t have the impulse to write.

Some of the stuff I kept myself busy with were :

fellow blog Collected Editions interviewed for Berliner Tagesspiegel

Collected Editions top 10 JLA trades

the reason why Uncle Scrooge is called Dagobert in Germany

business cards of superheroes ( and villains )

10 unforgettable tv christmases

playing blockbreaker - highly addictive !

I also watched a lot of stuff on YouTube. Some people may tell you that there´s nothing good on YouTube but that´s because they don´t know how to look for it.

In my last post I had already posted two clips from the PRISONERS OF GRAVITY series, one of them with comic legend Jack Kirby. Through a video posted on ComicBitsOnline ( Terry Hooper´s blog that I hope you are reading especially if you are interested in some british comics that also appeared in the german KOBRA comics ) I found another video about Jack Kirby. It´s a bit shorter but nevertheless interesting if you haven´t seen it before.



The next thing I found were the animated movies NEXT AVENGERS - THE HEROES OF TOMORROW and PLANET HULK. Now I didn´t like the NEXT AVENGERS movie because by making the main characters even younger than in the comic they totally ruined it. Yes, there are some people in marketing who may think that by making the main characters younger their target audience can identify better with them.

Which is totally untrue because when I was a kid reading comics I identified with my heroes even when they were 15 years older than me, had a lot more money and weren´t even spanish. I know that a lot of comic readers are campaigning for superheroes who have the same gender, ethnic background, appearance or sexual preference as them and I say that´s okay. The superhero universes try to reflect the real world and as such the more diverse the better. But I never was interested in such superficial things because I always was more concerned with what´s inside a hero. What makes him tick. Everything else are just labels and a lot of noise - meaning nothing.

On top of that it also makes no sense to let kids of that age endanger their lives by figthing crime. But the worst thing were the metal boob thingies on Thorgirl. That´s just sicker than lego Catwoman shaking her hips.


It cannot recommend this movie.

On the other hand I liked PLANET HULK movie much more, especially that they exchanged the Silver Surfer with Beta Ray Bill. It looks just too stupid when Norrin Radd uses his surfboard as a giant shield like those elves in Final Fantasy with the giant sword. But you can see for yourself. Here are the links ( as the embedding was disabled ) :

next avengers - heroes of tomorrow / planet hulk - part 1

Now since it´s Christmas in a few days you may still have to get some presents. This year I was thinking about give away some animated movies but then I decided to stick with comics. That´s quite predictable but that´s just how I am. But back when I was thinking about getting some animated movies I was considering the DC movies.

The last one I gave away as a present was GREEN LANTERN - FIRST FLIGHT and I really like that one.


Just last week I watched it again because I´m a bit anxious for the new GREEN LANTERN movie and it was as good as I remembered. My only problem is that DC does so many of these movies. UNDER THE RED HOOD is already out as well as the SUPERMAN / BATMAN - DOOMSDAY and ALL STAR SUPERMAN has already been announced.

With my small budget I´ll have to wait till they are in the DVD shops to rent. Now if you have a tiny budget for comics and other pop art things you may opt for the cheaper version of the DVDs. Because DC always does two versions. The only problem with that is that there are exclusive short films among the extras on the special editions. So, to make your decision easier ( or more difficult - who knows ) here are two of the short films that were included in UNDER THE RED HOOD ( Jonah Hex ) and in SUPERMAN / BATMAN - APOKALYPSE ( Green Arrow ).





What I also considered were the WATCHMEN motion comic and the TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGTHER movie ( I have forgotten which one comes with the UNDER THE HOOD documantary - nice segueway with the Batman animated movie by the way ). I wasn´t sure how good they were but even if I have some qualms about motion comics ( I ´ve seen some bad ones ) the WATCHMEN version looks pretty good. Sorry, I only could find the spanish version. Here´s the first part of the first chapter.



And here´s TALES FROM THE BLACK FREIGTHER - in german. My, aren´t we multilingual Today ? This is a pretty good film even if you keep in mind that it should be part of the regular WATCHMEN movie.



Now there are a few movies I would like to buy for Christmas presents but I can´t. Because I can´t find them anywhere or I didn´t think of them when I ordered the Christmas presents. The first is from the last category and it´s the classic 60s cartoon THE HULK. I couldn´t believe it but there are really DVDS of this out there at amazon, SATURN or Weltbild. In fact it´s a 2 DVD set that contains the entire series.

The HULK series does have a kind of cheesy intro but the art is based on the actual comicbook drawings by Jack Kirby. And the dialogue is from Stan Lee. Even if I didn´t know that as a kid I would have been tripping if that had shown this on german tv. And the animation looks like the motion comics that are so " vogue " Today. So, no, that is no new idea. So without any further ado ( as they said in those days ) Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you : the Space Phantom !



Now, if you begin to think : " Boy, this SUBZERO fella such has weird taste. " Then you haven´t seen nothing yet. Because my next pick would be NICK FURY : AGENT of S.H.I.E.L.D. starring David Hasselhoff in the lead role.

This may sound crazy but the more I see of the movie the more I want to see it. The Hoff is like Nick Fury if he had stepped out of a comicbook in this movie and they even use the old " We thought you were dead. " " I got better. " shtick. Here are 8 minutes from the movie.



And to top it all off here´s my number 1 pick for a Christmas present : Roland Emmerich´s Fantastic Four movie from 1991 ( with Roger Corman as executive producer so you might have heard of it as the roger Corman Fantastic Four movie ) that was never released for cinemas. Yes, the special effects are laughable from Today´s point of view but in every other aspect it´s pretty good. The actors looke like the Fantastic Four in the comic book, Ben Grimm really looks more like his printed version and they even pull off the original Dr. Doom costume. Something that none of the two new movies managed.



So that´s all for Today. I hope some of this helps you with your Christmas shopping and if not the deadline for the big Christmas contest hasn´t expired yet. There are still good chances of being in the top five judging by the entries I´ve received so far.

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

The big Christmas contest

Today instead of looking back on 2010 I thought it was time for the promised Christmas contest here on Tales from the Kryptonian. And to get you in the right mood here´s a bit of music for you.

click here for the track

Now I wanted to do a contest for quite some time to say thanks to all my loyal readers. Tales from the Kryptonian will have it´s 5 year anniversary in 2011 and I thought it´s about time to give back something.


As longtime readers may know I don´t get many review copies so all the prizes come out of my personal comic collection. I´ll try to get to my comicshop before the deadline expires so I can get more comics from the GRATIS COMIC TAG to include in the package.

The stuff I give away is in great part promo stuff, Free comic Book Day comics and other goodies. But I´ll also include some normal comics which I have two of because of a trade I bought or that it was reprinted in a comic. Now I can´t promise that you will get all the good stuff but if you have some preferences ( say, you would rather have comic d than comic a ) be sure to mention it. Today I have gone through my longboxes and this is the stuff I have come up with so far :

3 copies of COMIX issue 7 ( they were intended for a contest I never got around to make ), COMIX issue 8, MAX comics 10 : Hyperion vs Nighthawk, MAX comics 26 - Punisher : Die lange kalte Nacht, Marvel Exclusiv 26 : Daredevil Höllenfahrt, X - Men Sonderheft 6 - Generation M, X - Men Forever 6, X - Men and Spider - Man 1, Delete 3, Gratis Comic Tag Hellboy


Gratis Comic Tag Ythaq, Gratis Comic Tag Star Wars Clone Wars, Curse of the Mutants Saga, Invincible Iron Man 1, Invincible 0, Savage Dragon 0, Free Comic Book Day Image Summer Special, Free Comic Book Day William Shatner presents, Free Comic Book Day Mercy Sparx - Under new management, Free Comic Book Day Archie presents the mighty Archie Art Players, Free Comic Book Day Wolverine - Origin of an X - Man and last but not least Vampire Boy 1 - Die Auferstehung.

And yes, most of the Free Comic Book Day comics are from last year because from the 12 or 14 comics I ordered this year only 4 have arrived so far. But I´m going to split the pile up into 4 or 5 nice packages.

Now you may ask yourself what you have to do to get some of this stuff. I could give it just all away to spread some holiday cheer but I know how much fun a good hunt can be. So here´s the contest rules. At the end of my posts - under the links to the top ten posts on this blog - there is a banner and under the banner I like to put some funny quotes from comics.


Now I know I have been a bit lazy with this in my last few posts. Which is in part due that i´m not always writing a post when I come across a great quote. Or I´m writing a post and I don´t come across a good quote. Because I´m mostly looking for ones that still sound good when they are taken out of context. And not all of them are quotes from comics.

What you have to do is to send an e - mail with 5 quotes ( don´t want to make it too difficult ) and from which comic they are taken. Now you may take last 5 quotes or you can pick 5 random quotes. Also, it doesn´t matter if they are from a comic, from a movie or from somebody famous. The important thing is that you send 5 quotes and the corresponding comics. And I´m not so anal that you have to know the exact issue number. However the more exact your answers are the higher your chances of winning.


Okay, what happens if you can´t identify 5 quotes ? No problem, the packages will be going to the contestants with the most correct answers. Which means if you only have 4 and all others only have 3 your chances are pretty good. Yeah, I know kind of overkill for the 3 readers I have. But who knows, it could be fun. Anyway, send your answers and your preferences for comics via e - mail ( you can get the address by clicking the " view complete profile " link ) and put " Christmas contest " in the about line.

Now because I have to send the comics by mail contestants from Germany have better chances to win. Most of the comics are in german anyway, sorry. Oh yes, the deadline will be on the 24th of December. It is the big Christmas contest after all.

So good luck and I hope I can add a few more comics to the list till then.

Today´s videos are from the show PRISONERS OF GRAVITY from the 80s ( at least I think so ) that I first encountered on Neil Gaiman´s blog. The first one is an episode about Jack Kirby and the seond one is all about Watchmen.





I also wanted to mention that I´m still open for some review copies and if anyone wants to sponsor the contest with some comics that would be great. If you want to exchange links for your blog just send me an e - mail ( although it should be a blog that has something to do with comics or pop culture ) because the new spam function blocks some of the comments.


And in case you haven´t noticed there´s also a link to my amazon store with my personal recommendations on this blog. Okay, enough pimping for Today. Next time another look at things that were Airwolf in 2010.

New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :

top ten posts

more posts of interest

Ghost, why do you see plots and conspiracies everywhere ?

Because.....there are.

The end is near - of 2010 that is....

Checking my calendar Today I just realized we only got 24 days left for 2010 ! Which means right now is the right time to start with this year´s recap posts.


Now some other blogs may start next week with this but with my posting quota I got probably less then 4 posts left this month. If I have counted correctly this must be my 296th post so I´ll be doing post 300 next year. And I still have to organize the Christmans contest if I want to get through with it. So in this first recap post I want to start with what was cool on tv in 2010.

NEW SEASON OF SUPERNATURAL

Yes, on top of my list must be the new season of SUPERNATURAL ( which should be season 4 - I think ). The series just gets better and better and the stakes get higher and higher. One of the worst things while watching the series is knowing that this is what the german tv series JOHN SINCLAIR, based on the pulps of Jason Dark could have been.


When I first heard about this I thought , yes, the german tv people have finally gotten it. JOHN SINCLAIR could be like BUFFY meets X - FILES ( remember this was way before SUPERNATURAL ). Instead it was more like DER ALTE meets WALKER, TEXAS RANGER.

Remember the Halloween episode on WALKLER ? Wow, that was bad. You could really see they tried to make it scary but they were not allowed to show anything really too exciting because of the parent groups. It was bad. It was Bernd Eichinger new Prince Valiant bad. One a good day with a lot of beer you couldn´t watch it. And the JOHN SINCLAIR tv series was worse. Oh, the horror !!! ( And not in a good " Hammer movie by way of Roger Corman " way ).



Maybe they should have gone with an animated version that´s closer to the series. Like this one :



But what can you expect ? They even f - word - ed up the JOHN SINCLAIR comic.


In the last issue they almost - ALMOST - managed to do an okay comic. Not a good one - an okay one. So that I bought the issue and thought that maybe the next issue would be better.

Then they cancelled it. Anyway, I wanted to concentrate on the good stuff on tv and on SUPERNATURAL. One of the best things of the series are the recaps of the last season at the beginning of the first episode of the new season. Because they use really cool rock n roll tracks for this. I know the season that was last shown here ( they are currently showing reruns of season 2 ) was season 4 but I haven´t posted the intro for season 3 yet and if there´s one definite theme song for the series it is AC / DC´s classic " hell´s bells ".




The following haven´t been shown in Germany so far so don´t click them if you don´t want to be spoiled.




There have been a few comics based on the tv series ( for the longest time I didn´t know what came first - the comics or the tv series ) but they face the same problems most tv series comics do : since the readers already know the characters and what will happen to them stories from the past are not that exciting and because of future events in the series the things you can do with characters are limited. Also for new readers there may not be enough information to get hooked ( because the producers still hope they will buy the expensive DVDs ) and for old readers most of it is just a rehashing of old tv episodes.


Kind of like EARTH´S MIGHTIEST AVENGERS : there was too much continuity knowledge needed to understand the story to be enjoyable for new readers, but not enough new stuff for longtime readers who have seen this stuff a few times - done by better writers AND artists. Or like in the case of the JOHN SINCLAIR comic the producers just don´t care. Which happens to a lot of franchise comics. Marketing thinks that the name alone will sell the comic so they don´t need good artists and we end up with something like the TOMB RAIDER comic.

The only comics that are based on a tv series that don´t face that problem are BUFFY SEASON EIGHT and the last season of ANGEL because it comes after the end of the tv series. And because Joss Whedon is personally involved with it. John Byrne did a few issues for the ANGEL book which has been collected in a nice trade so I´ll probably get that.

NEW SEASON OF FRINGE

Another great series is FRINGE although there is also a kind of private joke involved with it - at least here in Germany. Now is it just me or does Lance Reddick who plays Agent Phillip Broyles like the lost brother of Bruce Darnell ? You know, the guy Heidi Klum fired from GERMANY´S NEXT TOP MODEL ?


Separated at birth : Lance Reddick and Bruce Darnell ?


In any case, Bruce did a campaign for a telephone company here in Germany and now whenever Agent Broyles appears on FRINGE I hear Bruce in my head.



Du brauchst einen Wechselkurs. Let somebody from Germany explain it.

Nevertheless, FRINGE is one of my favorite tv shows and I especially like the complex character of Walter Bishop. I didn´t think they would dare to make him so....villainous. He´s really done some bad, bad things in his live. But you also have to see that - unlike Gambit - he knows it an he´s trying to make amends. If you want to talk about a real villain just take Walternative.

What a cool name. This show is of course borrowing from comics or how else would you describe the series premise than CRISIS ON PARALLEL EARTHS ?


And I have to say the way they pulled the whole parrallel earths thing off without making it sound too unrealistic - fantastic.

They are also showing reruns now but I have to say the season finale was just great. Especially the fake comic covers for the alternative universe.


And what a cliffhanger. Although I have to say I kind of expected the switch. So I wasn´t really surprised by it. Still, can´t wait for the next season.

Yep, there are also some FRINGE comics but so far I haven´t checked them out. What can I say, my budget is very small and so far I seem to be one of the few comic journalists who doesn´t get review copies.

HUMAN TARGET TV SERIES

Since we´re already on the subject of tv series and comics here´s another one I have to mention. Okay, at first I wasn´t too keen on the idea of adapting the comic HUMAN TARGET as a tv series. Don´t get me wrong, it COULD be a great tv series. But after hearing that they changed a lot of things I thought : Oh great, here comes another disaster because the guys in Hollywood think they know better.

In the original comic Christopher Chance was a unique combination of private detective and bodyguard who operated by impersonating his clients in order to eliminate threats to their safety. Thus becoming in fact a human target.


Now in the tv series he´s just a bodyguard because of the old problem - the actor wants to show his face. Which you can´t do if you wear someone else´s face for 80 percent of the screentime. It´s the same reason Sylvester Stallone had to take of the helmet as Judge Dredd ( something he never did in the comics ) and why Peter Parker is so often unmasked in the first three Spider - Man movies.

So they changed some things from the original concept ( not only to cut the budget for special effects ) but the remaining idea is still so strong that they came up with a good series.



And I really like the characters, especially Guerrero played by Jackie Earl Haley who was Zack Snyder´s Rorschach in WATCHMEN. Although I find the whole " no killing " stick of Christopher Chance a bit unrealistic. On the other hand maybe you see it differently if you had done it for a living and wanted to get away from it.


There is even a comic I read of the Human Target, the 1999 Vertigo 4 issue miniseries penned by Peter Milligan. It´s an intelliogent read that deals with the concept of identity and has great art by Edvin Biuković who tragically died soon afterwards. The series comes with the highest recommendation.

SMALLVILLE ABSOLUTE JUSTICE

Okay, it´s not something I have seen on german tv. Because as usual Germany is way behind with all tv series. I swear, every time my mother comes back from Spain, all the tv series that are " new " and " hot " here in Germany - she´s already seen ( at least ) the first season in Spain.

So I have to thank the internet once again for this. And a guy at the Stuttgarter Comicbörse who just had to tell me most of the cool bits. As a fan of the Justice Society of America I just had to see SMALLVILLE´s rendition of the first superteam in DC history and let me tell you it´s just all kinds of totally Airwolf. I dare you to watch the trailer :



And that´s once again all for Today. There is still a lot to say about tv shows like LOST, the last season of HEROES or such shows like LEVERAGE or NCIS L.A. but maybe in another post. If I´m doing one with the not so good things on tv in 2010.


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