Tagged: vintage
Creepy Comic Cover of the Week: Frankenstein’s Monster vs Iron Man?!!
Here’s another installment of ‘Creepy Comic Book Covers’! This week as we grow closer to Halloween it’s only obvious we’d check out a odd battle that took place way back in 1977 between Iron Man and yeah…Frankenstein’s Monster!! As it states on the cover he’s “the most unexpected foe of the year” and I always loved it when Marvel would pit it’s classic superheroes up against classic monsters. This is an excellent cover that features Tony Stark in some deep shit as Frankenstein’s Monster just got done serving him his ass on a platter! What I really love are Frankenstein’s Monster’s weird ass little minions crowding around Iron Man armed with wooden clubs and out for blood! A great halloween flashback from comic book art legends Val Mayerick & Dave Cockrum!
Those Crazy Vintage Spider-man Fan Flicks!!
Who doesn’t love a good fan made film? Well these days it seems comic book fans waste no time pumping Youtube full of fan flicks and with modern technology everyone seems to think they’re a damn genius director. Well back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s making a fan film wasn’t exactly something that everyone was doing. Nope there was an actual serious shortage of regular fanboys and girls attempting to bring the pages of the comics to film.
However today I saw a pair of pretty entertaining Spider-man fan films one from 1969 and another from 1989. It’s awesome to see way back then people were inspired enough to give the near impossible feat of bringing a superhero to life on screen- check these out for a serious blast from the past, hey you gotta give these peeps credit and an A for effort, they gave it a good shot with what they had!!
Oh and you gotta love the Kingpin in this one!
STINKOR: The Smelliest Action Figure of All Time!!
Here’s a great old retro commercial from The Masters of the Universe featuring one of my favorite action figures Stinkor!
Yep there was a He-man villain that was a man sized skunk and the action figure did indeed stink! They basically took an older He-man figure, a villain called Mer-man who was a fish man and just repainted it like a damn skunk giving him Mekaneck’s battle armor!
Yeah as awesome as the He-man figures were they often times used the same body parts, swords, armor etc. and just cheaply created new characters.
As kids we didn’t care though we still ate that shit up anyway! So here’s a truly funny commercial that highlights this bizarre bad guy check it out!
New Music & Comic Book Adventures from…..The Monkees?!
I’ve always been a huge fan of The Monkees and now they’ve released a brand new song that will be on their upcoming album “Good Times”. Of course I’m still sad about the passing of Davy Jones, my personal favorite Monkee, but the good news is this new album WILL feature and old unreleased track that Neil Diamond wrote for the band in the 1960’s with Davy Jones on lead Vocals. It’ll feature some new instrumentation and harmonies by Micky Dolenz & Tork. Also the album cover too is a good sign that we’ll be getting some classic vintage style songs from the boys.
The album will also feature a brand new song by Michael Nesmith! So all four of the original Monkees will be present in some way shape or form. In the mean time here’s a cool new track, written by Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, I’m pleased to hear that this new album will recreating their classic 60’s sound. This little video is cool as well as it follows an old classic comic book adventure of the band!
If that’s not good enough they’ve released another song from the album written by Andy Partridge from XTC!!
Fordman! The Worst Superhero of the 1970’s!!
Hey there true believers, take a quick look at the mighty, mighty…uh…Fordman! Mild mannered sleezy car salesman by day and amazing superhero after work! Yep from 1970 here’s a forgotten classic commercial featuring the man who’s got the power of Ford on his side! Whatta guy!!
Comic book Cover of the Week: Classic X-Men!!
I was such a big X-men fanatic back in the 1980’s! Lets face it they were the most unique super team ever way back then. The only problem was that the comic book was so hot at the time that all of the classic issues featuring the second team were expensive as hell! So as a kid I wasn’t able to afford all the cool Claremont / Byrne stuff. Well lucky for all of us they reprinted all those issues under the title of Classic X-Men! Yep not only did these issues feature incredible brand new back up stories of the our favorite characters in their more “normal” everyday lives but they included brand spankin’ new covers as well!! Here is one of my favorites Classic X-Men #45 drawn by Steve Lightie proving once again that often times keeping a cover simple is often the most effective way to paint an incredible picture!
This issue reprints issue #139, here’s what the original looked like also a great cover by John Byrne:
I Finally Bought A New Marvel Comic: Power Man & Iron Fist!
It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve picked up anything new by Marvel in the comic book department, but this week I couldn’t resist when I saw the vintage logo of Power Man and Iron Fist on the stands. Marvel comics for me have become a bit of bland reading experience, often times the art’s pretty subpar and at 4 bucks a pop shit better be really fucking impressive! I’ll say it again once comic books reach the 5 dollar cover price I’m done. However this week I was lured by that nostalgic old logo and couldn’t resist giving this new series that unites Luke Cage and Danny Rand for some street smart retro style adventures in the big apple.
I was actually pretty impressed with this new series which thank god isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Most Marvel titles are monthly changing superhero genders, races, characters etc etc blah blah. Don’t get me wrong I am all for those changes if they’re part of a creative story but lately it seems Marvel is simply trying way too hard to change everything to cash in on modern trends on social media. Sometimes keeping things simple and somewhat familiar really is the best way to create a meaningful story. We’ve got some witty writing here from David Walker that’s filled with nostalgic throwbacks to their heyday when Luke “Power Man” Cage used to sport a shiny silver tiara and the two used to be partners in their small biz “Heroes for Hire”. Luke Cage now a family man with Netflix’s latest sensation Jessica Jones is being tempted by Danny “Iron Fist” Rand (now a bit more wise cracking than usual) to “get the band back together”. I also totally love Iron Fist’s new version of his costume, harking back to Bruce Lee in Game of Death.
Luke’s resistant to the idea and Jessica even more, so Rand claims she’s got Luke “on a short leash these days”. When their former Heroes for Hire office manager gets out of prison they agree to do her a favor and retrieve a family heirloom stolen from her years ago. Sounds simple enough? Well turns out the albino super gangster Tombstone has it. I’ve gotta admit too I’ve always been a big fan of Tombstone and hopefully we’ll get more of the big stark white weirdo dude as he’s disposed of far too easily. Come on now Tombstone is a total bad ass!
The issue delivers a lot of promise for the future though with cool but heavily stylized artwork from Sanford Greene that some might love and others could easily be turned off by. It works for me though, I really dig it and it’s perfect for the more comedic tone so far of the series. I like simplicity of the story and also the smallness of it all, I really do like my comic stories kept on a personal level most of the time. It’s been a while since I grabbed a Marvel comic but this one seemed like a much safer bet than say something like the completely wretched “Totally Awesome Hulk” series or whatever million of the Deadpool books are floating around on the shelves these days. I’ll be back for issue number two for sure as it’s nice to see the boys are back in town once again…
What do you think? Am I missing out on something truly awesome from Marvel these days woth the cover price? If so please enlighten me!!
She-Hulk Was The Original Deadpool!!
Ok so I saw the latest Deadpool flick and though I was never a huge fan of the character (aside from him in the Remender X-Force books which I totally dug) in this case I’ll actually say I think Deadpool works better on the silver screen than in the funny books! Yep, I really quite enjoyed the Deadpool flick, heck I thought this was the first good movie Ryan Reynolds starred in as the lead. It was action packed, well written, never boring, surprisingly funny and was about as over the top as you can get.
It’s also responsible for getting us an upcoming R-rated Wolverine flick by golly, something I’ve hoped for forever. So yeah, nice work for once Hollywood! Anyway I keep reading all these articles about how Deadpool was the first major superhero to “break the fourth wall” in the comics, something many think is the key to his success as he and the audience are “in it together”. Well I got news for you! For those of you who may have forgotten the late 1980’s She-Hulk run from John Byrne you need to bust out the back issues asap! She-Hulk, you betcha was “doing the Deadpool” before he was even created!
Yep back in 1989 The Sensational She-Hulk came out and it was one of the best comic books ever. In fact Dead Pool comedy-wise in the comic books can’t hold a candle to Byrne’s She-Hulk.
Power Records: Vintage Vinyl Comic Book LPs!!
Remember those old “Power Records” vinyl comic book rock records of the 70’s?! No? Well when I was a kid I had several of these, they were amazing and they’d provide hours and hours of entertainment. They were basically a radio show of your favorite comic book put on a record complete with sound effects , music and voice actors. There were more of these released by Peter Pan records as well so at the time this was quite a popular trend, it was so cool to hear what your favorite heroes & villains actually sounded like!
Yep you could read along to them too because they included a super cool comic book of the story you were reading! These days people just watch a video on Youtube, but back in the day this was quite an experience and at the time there might not have been a way to actually watch your favorite comic book cartoons on the tube. You had to warm up the record player and listen to them come alive with the crackle of a record you played way too many times…
Power Records put out a ton of different titles too from DC stuff like Batman, Superman to Marvel stuff like The Incredible Hulk, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Man-Thing and random stuff like Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man, Dracula and The Wolfman, Planet of the Apes!!
You can find this stuff online on ebay and a cool site called My Comic Shop for damn cheap! Like they always say COLLECT THEM ALL! Come on Power Records, bring us some new vinyl superhero adventures already!!!
You can check out a bunch of these on You Tube as well this is a great Superman adventure so you you can relive that magic again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyeQ0bxnlJI
Also watch and listen as Batman and Robin take on The Joker!!
One of my personal favorites as a kid (I wore this record out BIG time!) The Incredible Hulk at Bay!!
Forgotten Monsters: The 1960’s ‘Great Garloo’ Meets The 1990’s ‘Gorzak’!
I have to admit until today I’d never heard before of the legendary Great Garloo! Well now I come to find out he was the grooviest monster of the 1960’s! Yep this big green monster toy looked like cross between The Incredible Hulk and Fred Flintstone.
Sounds like a great guy to me personally and he was there to obey your every command as long as you had the batteries to keep him at bay. This here vintage commercial from 1961 shows just how bad ass he really was:
Um how awesome was that commercial?!
But wait there’s more…Let’s revisit another forgotten monster from 1990’s: Gorzak! First off I’m not sure who’s got a better name between the two, but damn Gorzak is one cool 90’s dude. Like the Great Garloo, Gorzak also obeys your commands and up until today I’d never heard of this guy either!
So if you’re a fan of old toys like me (and as a kid AND as an adult today I’m still crazy about monsters) it’s got me combingT Ebay looking to possibly track down these two guys to do my bidding in 2016! 😉 So check out this old Gorzak commercial from 1994:
Universal Dork 