Rulah Jungle Goddess vs "The Carnivorous Blonde" (Fox Comics; 1948)

Ah, the perils of a May-December relationship!

Today's golden age tale is a neat little passion play wherein our resident jungle goddess actually utilizes her innate sexuality to help trick a two-timing gold digger into revealing her infidelity to her much older and naive spouse. The twisted minx has even been trying to murder the poor chap.

Add in a rampaging elephant, the lion king and a three hundred pound gorilla to the mix and of course, Rulah herself, and you've got all the ingredients for a fine Fox Comics feature from Rulah Jungle Goddess #20 (November 1948).

Enjoy!

Great Superhero Movie Lines: "I like to play with things a while before annihilation."

Sometimes "camp" just seems to work, the 1960's Batman series wasn't exactly the Dark Knight at his best, but it was at least fun to watch and "kids" from those years still fondly recall Adam West and Burt Ward as the Caped Crusaders.

The same can be said for the 1980 film version of Flash Gordon, based on the old comic strips and early Hollywood matinee serials. Max Von Sydow starred as the evil Ming the Merciless, alongside Sam Jones as Flash, and eventual James Bond 007, Timothy Dalton.

This line was taken from the Emperors pithy response to a query about the fate of the planet Earth.

Plus there was a kicking rock soundtrack provided by the band Queen. "Flash! Ah-ah. He'll save everyone of us!"

How NOT to do a Superhero Movie: Captain America (1979)

You can sum up the entire premise of the twin 1979 Captain America television films thus; F.L.A.G. – Full Latent Ability Gain, “the ultimate steroid”, plus a not-so-spiffy van equipped with a motorbike (topped off by a clear shield, which conveniently doubles as Cap’s usual offensive weapon) and a big blond lummox to assay the part of Marvel Comics resident living legend of World War II. For those of us who are still reeling from these two crummy flicks, there is at least some nice eye-candy in the form of Heather Menzies in movie of the week #1 and Connie Selleca in movie of the week #2. The second of these deplorable set pieces was titled, Captain America II: Death Too Soon. In my opinion, death didn’t come quickly enough to avoid these awful teleflicks. One interesting aspect of these largely forgotten TV movies, is that many seemingly normal folks that actually do recall them, simply overexaggerate their relative worth.

Don’t believe the hype! If you ever get the chance to watch either one of them and discover something entertaining here, please donate your organs to science, because something is wrong with you. lol

Comic Books Around The World: France

I haven't posted anything else in this series since January and that is too long. To be honest, I could probably spend at least a week on famous French comic books, so expect to see more French stuff at some point down the line. For today, lets take a look at one of the longest running all ages strips since the early days of the silver age .... even if it does originate outside the continental U.S.

The Adventures of Asterix is a French comic book & comic strip series published between 1959 and 2005. Originally created by writer Rene Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, The series follows the exploits of a village of ancient Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their druid, which gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonist and titular character, Asterix, along with his friend Obelix have various adventures. In many cases, this leads them to travel to various countries around the world, though other books are set in and around their village.

The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into over 100 languages, and it is very popular in most European countries. Asterix is less well known in America and Japan.

The success of the series has led to the adaptation of several of the books into eleven films (eight animated & three live action). Noted French actor Gérard Depardieu played Obelix in one of these films. There have also been toys, games and food items based on the characters, and a theme park near Paris is built around the series premise and characters.

Albert Uderzo took over the job of writing the series after the death of Rene Goscinny in 1977. While the bulk of the series consists of humorous adventures in a historical setting, more recent volumes have employed science-fiction and fantasy elements like extraterrestrials in Asterix and the Falling Sky and the city of Atlantis in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea.

You can occasionally find Asterix volumes at Barnes & Noble for about $10 and they are well worth the price!

1980's Flashback: Sword of the Atom

One of the great silver age superstars received a temporary status boost when DC Comics published a four-issue limited series entitled Sword of the Atom, beginning in Sept. 1983, Ray Palmer (aka The Atom) abandoned civilization after uncovering his wife's infidelity. Ray decided to charter a Central American flight to go in search of a missing piece of white dwarf matter (the same substance that gave him his size-changing abilities). Unfortunately his pilot was a shady drug smuggler, who conked Ray over the head and tried to toss him out of the plane before they inadvertently flew over the gangs cocaine fields. Ray recovered just in time to change into his Atom guise and he quickly made short work of the villains, but in the battle he was blown out of the plane and fell to earth, where he found that he was trapped at his six inch size. The Atom then becomes a Conan-like figure and hero to a tribe of six-inch tall yellow-skinned humanoid aliens who already dwell in the jungle.

Eventually three subsequent Sword of the Atom specials were released, which revealed that the colony was destroyed, despite Palmer's various attempts to stop it, by a group associated with the US Government who were acting as loggers. Ray Palmer was forced to escape via his signature trick of "phoning" himself home through the telephone lines to North America.

Writer Jan Strnad and artist Gil Kane pulled out all of the stops on this terrific series, and had they been issues of an ongoing Atom series it would have been even sweeter. In my opinion, these issues were so well done and so much in tone with the Atom's classic 1960's scifi-esque original series, that it may have lasted longer. Various later series have tried to reinvigorate the "Tiny Titan", but so far nothing has equaled this classic 1980's romp.

"Gal" Friday! Cat Deeley

Catherine Elizabeth "Cat" Deeley (born October 23, 1976) is a British disc jockey and former fashion model. She began hosting the second season of So You Think You Can Dance in 2006, replacing the original female reality talent show host.

Deeley often lends her time to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children's hospital in London, and divides her time between her homes in London and Beverly Hills. Ms. Deeley isn't the bustiest chick that I've profiled in the Catacombs, but she is one tall (& lovely) drink of water for us desperately deprived fans of sexy British women.

I don't follow the talent show that she hosts, but sadly the trio of estrogen-Valkyries at my hacienda does. At least at those times when I must pass through that portion of the house, it's nice to know that there is something at least worth checking out for a few moments when that show is on the telly.

[Photo (right): by F. Brown/Getty Images]

Happy Birthday from the Catacombs!

I would like to wish my brother, David, a "Happy 45th Birthday"!

I tossed in a nifty Captain America illustration by Jack "King" Kirby & Syd Shores as a bonus since he is feeling a tad under the weather with a summer cold today and that's no way to celebrate a birthday.

Little brother, sometime later, the beer is on me.

Dark Horse Mounts a Valiant Effort to Revive Gold Key!

This news blurb was taken from Newsarama so that I could selectively edit portions of it, but if you want to see the original article, head over there and read it for yourself (I couldn't get the link to work).

"Dark Horse Comics has announced that Jim Shooter, formerly of Marvel Comics and Valiant Comics, has joined their company to relaunch a batch of new monthly titles based on the disused Gold Key characters made famous most recently by 1990s relaunches at Valiant. Dark Horse has recently collected a number of Gold Key stories featuring these characters in hardcover archive editions."

"Given the time lapse between the most recent publications of the titles, I have to wonder whether some of the younger audience, or those who came aboard during the comics boom of the ’90s, will respond more to this announcement than they did to convention-shaking news of the Marvelman acquisition by Marvel. While Marvelman is undoubtedly a more historically-relevant character, the Gold Key characters are a little fresher in the minds of casual fans, I should think; I remember being 13 and Valiant’s Turok: Dinosaur Hunter #1 being the most sought-after book at my first-ever convention."

In my opinion, Newsarama (like Wizard magazine) suffers from toadyism towards the bigger publishers. I also wonder from time-to-time whether the gang over there smokes crack. After reading this item, I wondered whether the writer covering this news item suffered a certain degree of favoritism towards Marvel, or if he was just high at the time he penned his remarks. Which "younger" readers does he refer to? Invoking the Valiant-era relaunch of the Gold Key heroes, by referencing the historically relevant Marvelman, without mentioning that that British character was a blatant knock off of Fawcett's earlier golden age Captain Marvel (the Shazam version) seems terribly offbase to me. No, what Mr. Burlingame might actually be alluding to as "historically relevant" is the late 1980's/early 1990's Alan Moore/Miracleman version of "Marvelman". Given the context of when the Valiant books were running, and the timeframe when Neil Gaiman succeeded Moore on Miracleman, I would think that they probably shared some rack space back in the day. "Younger fans", if they even exist, may check these books out today, but make no mistake, these will be marketed, trumpeted and hawked by Dark Horse, to the same aging fan boys who bought the Valiant stuff in the first place.

From the Dust Bin: Section Zero

I recently picked up the brief run of this aborted series for next to nothing on eBay, largely for the cool artwork by Tom Grummett and Karl Kesel, and after reading it, really wished that this book had continued beyond its short run. This book was lots of fun to read, it was beautiful to look at and it definitely deserves to be revived.

Section Zero was created by writer/inker Karl Kesel and artist Tom Grummett and published in 2000 by Gorilla Comics (an imprint of Image comics). The series followed a covert organization working under the aegis of the United Nations, whose mission was the investigation and containment of unexplained phenomena around the world.

Section Zero was originally proposed as an ongoing series, but due to financial problems experienced by the organizers of Gorilla Comics, only three issues were ultimately published; and then only after Image Comics stepped in to help out. A fourth issue was solicited, but was never published.

Gorilla Comics was designed to be a creator owned company financed by a comics related website called eHero.com. The website quickly proved to be a financial failure, leaving the creators to personally finance their own books. Along with the other Gorilla Comics creators, Kurt Busiek & Stuart Immonen (Shockrockets), Mark Waid & Barry Kitson (Empire), George Perez (Crimson Plague) and Mike Wieringo (Tellos); Kesel & Grummett attempted to continue the series they started, but these efforts proved to be unsuccessful.

Section Zero's eclectic cast of characters included Dr. Titania Challenger, the last living member of a family of scientific adventurers; Sam Wildman, the team's field leader and Doc Challenger's ex-husband; Tesla, a childlike alien who pilots the team's flying saucer. Tesla has no memory of his life before he began working for Section Zero; Thom Talesi (aka the 24-Hour Bug), an Asian-American teenager with a magical tattoo that allows him to transform into an insect-like being for a twenty-four hour period; Sargasso, a reptilian being who worked for Section Zero in the 1960s and 1970s only to be found in the present and A. J. Keeler, the group's leader. Keeler secretly also leads the Ghost Soldiers, a second covert group that may or may not be working against the best interests of Section Zero.

"Fighting Mad" over Fighting American!

There is a fascinating post over at Newsarama [here] that details the fallout over a announcement made by the folks at Dynamite Entertainment during the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego about their impending intention to publish a Fighting American book, with the input and participation of Alex Ross. Guess what? It seems that the authorization to issue that statement was somewhat premature.

Apparently Dynamite publisher Nick Barrucci entered into talks with representatives of both Joe Simon and the estate of Jack Kirby, you see, Simon & Kirby had created the original character in the 1950's. Dynamite has become known for trying to become a rival to Marvel & DC Comics by utilizing as many other superheroes as they can get their hands on, whether these fictional characters are public domain properties, or acquired licensed properties, etc.

Dynamite has a slick product all right, and they have somehow managed to enchant Alex Ross into staying the course through each new title introduced into their budding "hero verse", but given the D-list talent that produces the interiors, no, D-list isn't accurate. Third string would be alot closer to reality, the end result - despite some apparent sales success - has not been worth the money.

To each his own, but the guys at Dynamite seem to be doing nothing more than "aping" every trend that either Marvel or DC has already burned through - many times over - and that is just not the way to make it long term in this business.

Valiant (and each of its many derivations), Crossgen, Dark Horse, and numerous other companies have already tried this and failed. Does that mean that nobody should ever publish a seemingly similar superhero universe? No. Still, why simply duplicate a tired formula, if you are going to go head-to-head and compete with the big boys anyway, why not at least attempt to do something unique? Short term gains, maybe?

Go click on the link above and read the article for yourself, and lets hear it for Joe Simon. Crotchety old guy or not, we as fans are always going on about creators rights, so lets be glad that at least Mr. Simon speaks up for himself against a sleazy operator and also thank the Kirby estate for opting out of a tainted deal as well.

Dynamite really doesn't get my business or dollars anyway and maybe one of these days Alex Ross will get back to a better quality publisher. In the meantime, please remember kids. Just because you have the ability to put out a nice package, doesn't mean that you have the right to bullshit anybody.

Classic Cutie: Deanna Lund

I haven't posted any "Classic Cuties" in quite awhile, having folded this feature over into my regular "Gal" Friday spots, but for some reason today I was trolling the net and ended up looking at old Irwin Allen sci-fi television websites.

I was pleasantly reminded of Deanna Lund who had a featured role as Valerie Ames Scott in the Land of the Giants series. During her career, Lund also appeared in several films and many other TV shows like, The Incredible Hulk, The Waltons, Love American Style, etc. After Land of the Giants ended its two season run, Lund married her co-star Don Matheson, but they later divorced in the late 1970's.

Ms. Lund has remained a very striking looking lady for someone who is currently 72 years old. She has also apparently written a novel called "Valerie in Giantland" based upon her character from the show, but this work is set ten years after the conclusion of the series.

1980's Flashback: Xenozoic Tales (aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs)

The post-apocalyptic comic book Xenozoic Tales was created by Mark Schultz. It originally began in 1986, with the story "Xenozoic!" appearing in the comic book anthology series, Death Rattle. This was followed by Xenozoic Tales #1 in February 1987. Sadly, the comic series only ran for 14 issues, and these have been reprinted by several publishers, including Kitchen Sink Press, Marvel, and Dark Horse.

The series proved more successful under the memorable title, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which spawned a CBS cartoon series, an arcade game from Capcom, a home video game from Rocket Science Games, toys, trading cards, candy bars, and even its own role-playing game.

Set in an alternate future where the Earth has been ravaged by pollution and natural disasters of all sorts, humanity has built vast underground cities in which they have lived for approximately 600 years. Upon emerging, the humans discovered that the world had been reclaimed by previously extinct lifeforms (including most spectacularly, dinosaurs). In the new 'Xenozoic' era, technology has become extremely limited and those with mechanical skills command a great deal of respect and influence.

There are two chief protagonists of the series: mechanic Jack Tenrec and scientist/love interest, Hannah Dundee. Tenrec operates a garage in which he restores old cars, particularly Cadillacs. Given that the post-apocalyptic world no longer possesses the ability to refine oil, Tenrec modifies his cars to run on dinosaur guano. These cars, of course, are frequently chased by rampaging dinosaurs in pulp action-style adventure stories.

Their dystopian world of tomorrow includes various criminals, politicians, scientists, and inventors who populate the world of the Xenozoic Era. There is also a race of reptilian humanoids who cannot speak in a human language but instead communicate by spelling words with Scrabble tiles. These strange creatures have befriended Tenrec, and they apparently also have the ability to communicate telepathically with dinosaurs. Jack has raised Hermes, an allosaurus who basically acts as the most threatening guard dog one could ask for. Mark Schultz has occasionally expressed interest in continuing the popular cult series since the last issue was released in 1996, but his slow, meticulous art-style has stymied creative interest by any publishers thus far, so the long wait continues …. alas!

Since 2004, Schultz has been the writer of the syndicated Prince Valiant newspaper strip.