Tell Us About It...

Doug: We got nothin' to say today. But what's on your mind?

Back Me Up on This, Will You?

Doug: Back in 2013 we ran a post about surprise back-up singers. Stevie Nicks, Mick Jagger, Phil Collins, James Taylor, and many others made our list of suggestions for conversation. Today we're not talking surprises at all, but those regulars who appeared... regularly on the songs of certain bands or solo acts.

Doug: Below I've pictured some vocalists/band members who came to mind when, well, this post came to mind. We'd like you to expound on favorite performers of your own, but also favorite performances. We all know that Paul McCartney sang lead on many, many Beatles hits. But one of my favorite performances from Sir Paul is his backing of John Lennon's lead on "One After 909" (the 1963 version).

For those who occasionally enjoy a little AM pop...

Guest Strip - Let's Jump Into a Good Book!

Doug: He's back! Telling a tale as only he can, your host du jour is PF Gavigan!

There's a Whole Lotta Wrong Here...

Doug: This is too easy...

I should have asked you all for a permission slip before allowing you to view this image!

Karen: So I guess one of Psylocke's super-powers is extra vertebrae? How else could she twist herself into a pretzel like that? Ughhh! And I'm sure having one's behind exposed is great in a fight. Oh come on!!

Time in a Bottle -- a Comic Covers Genre

Doug: Last Monday's reviews of the JLA/JSA/All-Star Squadron crossover comics has me thinking about covers with hourglasses on them! Commenter Frank drew a direct comparison between the covers of All-Star Squadron #14 and Avengers #79 -- bravo, Frank! I dug up another few covers for you to chew on, and because I'm guessing this won't be a huge list, let's expand it to covers with timepieces in general -- calendars, watches, stopwatches, grandfather clocks, et al. Don't be late with your suggestions...

 

Tarzan by Joe Jusko - an Appreciation

Doug: This appreciation doesn't require any words from me. Happy Friday!

 

 

Take 5: Favorite Animated Super-Hero Shows

Karen: Last weekend my husband and I were watching the Green Lantern animated series again, and were struck by just how good it was -the story, the characters, the design, the whole she-bang. It got me to thinking about super-hero animated series, and which ones were my favorites. So without further adieu, I'm going to list my five favorites, seeing as this is a "Take 5" post, and then I'll leave it up to the rest of you to discuss the merits of my list, your own list, each others lists -you get the picture!

1. Justice League: I'm definitely a Marvel fan more than a DC fan, but this show, to me, is just the epitome of animated super-hero shows. A perfect selection of characters, great writing which demonstrated understanding of all those characters and how they fit together, excellent voice casting -Kevin Conroy will always be Batman to me - and stories that drew from the breadth and depth of the DC universe. Plus fabulous Bruce Timm designs. Even when it became Justice League Unlimited it was still a winner. Although the first theme song was the best.

2. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: If only this show had gotten another season or two! Instead it was replaced with a watered-down, unwatchable  22 minute ad for toys. This series was everything a Marvel fan could have hoped for. It followed many traditional storylines but subtly incorporated elements from the Marvel films too. The characters acted like they should and we got guest stars from across the Marvel universe. My only complaint would be the art, but it was acceptable if not outstanding.

3. Batman the Animated Series: A classic. It's got Kevin Conroy. Mark Hamill as the Joker. That great opening sequence. This cartoon 'gets' Batman better than any of the films.

4. Green Lantern the Animated Series: This is space and super-heroes done right, with a surprising amount of pathos thrown in. At first I thought I would dislike the animation style, but I came to really enjoy it. The show did a great job fleshing out the main characters and the major storyline in the later half had some spectacular space battles. A sad ending though -I wish they had gotten another season (this is becoming a common complaint).

5. (Tie) Young Justice/ Wolverine and the X-Men: OK, I cheated, but I couldn't decide between these two very good shows! Young Justice was essentially the Teen Titans plus regular guest appearances by the Justice League. Wolverine and the X-Men had a strong storyline that utilized elements of Days of Future Past but put them together in a unique way.

Guest Writer - In Appreciation Of Weird Heroes

Edo Bosnar: This is another one of those great 1970s projects tailor-made for us comic geeks. Dubbed the “New American Pulp” by writer/editor Byron Preiss – a big fan of the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s – this was an attempt to spur a pulp revival in the 1970s. However, he didn’t just want to produce pastiches of the work by the old pulp writers; instead, he wanted to create something very modern (well, 1970s modern) and forward-looking.

In some of his introductions to the various volumes of the series, Preiss pointed out that unlike the older pulps, this new series would encompass, or perhaps better stated, emphasize other genres outside of the standard action tales best typified by the Doc Savage and Shadow stories. Thus, there’s more fantasy and science fiction in WH. Also, at several points he stressed that he wanted his heroes to resolve their problems and/or overcome their adversaries without depending too much on violence (and surprisingly, some – but not all – of the contributors did seem to make an effort to adhere to this dictum). What makes these books particularly interesting to comic fans are the illustrations, often done by fan-favorite artists, like Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Estaban Maroto, Alex Nino, P. Craig Russell, Tom Sutton, Howard Chaykin…
The series consists of eight books, which all came out from 1975 to late 1977, i.e., periodically, like the old pulp magazines. Four of them, volumes 1, 2, 6 and 8, are anthologies featuring stories by a number of different writers, while the other four are full-length novels. Some of the contributions were made by notable writers in the SF field at the time, like Philip Jose Farmer, Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Ted White and Ron Goulart, as well as a few names familiar to us comic fans: Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Elliot Maggin and Marv Wolfman.

Back in the day (as they say), I only had one of these, the first volume, which I bought for about 50 cents at our local church’s charity flea market in 1980 or so. The cover caught my eye immediately, and I recognized a few of the names listed on it, like Archie Goodwin and Jim Steranko. (By the way, my favorite story in that first volume, then and now, is Goodwin’s contribution, almost the only one in the entire series that features a character most like the old pulp heroes: Adam Stalker, a scruffy Vietnam vet who works as a PI in Tulsa, OK.) I recall coming across one or two of the later volumes in used bookstores when I was a teen (I specifically remember seeing volume 8), but I never bought them, mainly because – quite stupidly – I thought I had to have the intervening volumes (yep, the completism bug to which us comic fans often succumb can be a rather silly and limiting disorder).

I apologize for the quality of these images, and for the lack of any of the illustrations found inside. Most of my current copies of these books, while intact and not falling apart are nonetheless pretty old and well-read, and I worried about doing any additional damage to the spines by shoving them into a scanner. However, Pete Doree, over at the Bronze Age of Blogs, did a post on volume 6 earlier this year which includes some of the excellent interior illustrations.

 

Like so many of these experimental projects undertaken by Preiss in the 1970s, this one never really got wings to become a long-term, sustainable venture. And for the most part, none of the characters that were introduced in these volumes ever took on a life of their own, with the notable exception of Ben Bova’s Orion, who appeared in an entire series of novels – the most recent one came out just a few years ago.

Other, less successful spin-offs included J. Michael Reaves’ Kamus of Kadizhar, a detective on a world where science doesn’t work but magic does, who appeared in a book called Darkworld Detective, which collects the two stories from vol. 8 of Weird Heroes, plus two new ones, and then in a later novel that wasn’t written by Reaves; Preiss also published an illustrated novel called Guts, starring the character of that name from the first volume.Besides that, Philip Jose Farmer’s three rather humorous stories about modern-day zeppelin pilot Greatheart Silver were later collected and published in a separate book, and the novel from volume 5, The Oz Encounter (featuring Ted White’s character Doc Phoenix – introduced in volume 2 – but written by Marv Wolfman), was reprinted in what I’ve been told is an attractive hardcover edition in 2005.

Otherwise, in the early 2000s Preiss reprinted the first volume in a new edition, apparently with plans to republish the entire series. Unfortunately, his untimely and tragic death in a traffic accident in 2005 basically put an end to this.

Some characters who never appeared again, but definitely should have, include Goodwin’s Adam Stalker, as mentioned above, as well as Ron Goulart’s Gypsy and the wonderful Nightshade, from volume 4. Gypsy is a mysterious character – a cyborg or possibly even an android – who time-shifted from the mid-‘70s to the early 2030s (in a dystopian, anarchic Europe) and knows nothing about his past, his true identity or why he has some amazing powers. He appears in two novels (in volumes 3 and 7 – beautifully illustrated by Alex Nino) and the second has a bit of an ambiguous ending that leaves a lot of questions unresolved.

Nightshade is very much like a classical pulp character in the tradition of the Shadow, the Domino Lady or the Green Ghost. She’s a brilliant stage magician, who, as a master of disguise and skilled martial artist and so forth, secretly goes on missions to fight evil-doers – although instead of dealing with mob bosses or evil scientists like her pulp-era predecessors, she takes on a multi-national corporation bent on world dominance by manipulating politicians and events in other countries (a topic as relevant today as it was back then). When I finished reading that book I was clamoring for more, but authors Beth Meacham and Tappan King never revisited her.

Needless to say, I highly recommend these to everyone here: they’re fun, light reads for the most part, and in some cases just the lovely illustrations make these worth tracking down.

Would You Rather...? Sandman Fashions

Doug: So let's say you have a dinner date (OK, dinner meeting) with our pal Flint Marko (aka William Baker, aka the Sinister Sandman). How would you prefer ol' Sandy come dressed? Perhaps it depends on how high-end a restaurant you've chosen...