Behold, The Future!

Ladies & Gentlemen, we present The Man Of 1955 (as presented in 1942):

Oh, yeah... The Future is coming.

The Man Of 1955 by George Marcoux from Supersnipe #6 (1942)

Saturday Solutions 011

There's a bunch of potential future posts embedded in yesterday's Friday Fun & Games. Let's take a look and see who they all were, eh?

Y'know - you don't really appreciate the gravitas that Peter Dinklage brings to the character in Game Of Thrones until you've watched him toss it away to embrace other roles as in UnderDog and The Knights Of BadAssdom, especially the latter, with a LARPer in contrast to the types of characters they would be role-playing. (LARP = Live Action Role Playing. Think D&D with costumes & props)

But the first thing we'll be looking at is #5 - The Guardians. Superhero Team fun from Russia, maybe even with love. I've already done a first pass to grab stills, so hopefully this week.
#2 - The Champions, is an old personal favorite. It's not a movie, it's a British TV series from Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner, whom you might know from The Avengers tv show from the same period. We've even got a little bit of comics for them coming up.
#19 - The 3 Fantastic Supermen, might look pretty goofy at first glance. And second. And upon review. But that goofiness worked for them - the film spawned 10 sequels over the next two decades.
#25 - That's Chin Kar-Lok as The Green Hornet. In Lam Ching-Ying's version, they basically ditched the goofy white guy and moved Kato up to the title spot. There's a special appropriateness to this in that Lam Ching-Ying was Bruce Lee's fight/action choreographer, in addition to being an international star in his own right, and his work in training others, such as turning dancer Michelle Yeoh into the #1 female action star globally. Chin Kar-Lok was Lam Sifu's protege. We'll be looking at him quite a bit, as he and Sammo Hung Kam-Bo are responsible for one of my favorite Hong Kong film genres - the Spooky Comedy.

stills are my caps from the vids as labelled

Friday Fun & Games 011 - Video Whozit

Welcome once again to my way of avoiding participation in Friday Night Fights -

You might have noticed that yesterday's post had almost nothing to do with comics - only the presence of a Garfield doll as a nod in that direction. Jack Kirby's centennial just a couple weeks after starting the blog kind of brought the focus strictly to comics, but that's not my overall intent. Comics will always be a big part of the blog, but not the limits.
So today, we take another step to expand from comics to movies & tv. Our subject is Video Comic Book/Superhero Characters. Some of the following are adaptations of existing comic book characters, others are newly created for their source videos. Your job, identify the characters and where they come from. In the case of tv shows, only the series needs to be identified, not the particular episode.
(BTW - I pulled all these caps from my vids, so don't expect to be able to easily reverse image search thinking they'll match existing files from the web)

Video Whozit #01

As usual, you can click for a bigger view to aid in identification as needed or desired.

Tune In Tomorrow for the answers - Same ODD Blog! Same ODD Time!

Why I Like Mo Lei Tau #01

Some folks, once they know what Mo Lei Tau is, wonder why i enjoy the genre.
Mo Lei Tau is a Hong Kong movie genre, loosely translating as No-Brain-Comedy. Though that's a misnomer of sorts, it's actually more applicable to watching the films in any language other than Cantonese - including Mandarin. The level of pun & word play involved goes pretty damn deep, and just plain cannot be translated.
And yet - they're still fun as hell, even knowing you're only getting a fraction of what's happening at times.

Exhibit #1> Fatty Cheng as a Taoist stepping on a stuffed Garfield as an iconic feline power source while ringing a bell to repel an evil undead spirit:

Of course, he's kind of screwed when the daughter of the host of the evil spirit wants her toy back...

Where else are you going to find this kind of Odd fun?

Kent Cheng Jak-Si appearing in Zhou Gui Da Shit (aka Ninja Vampire Busters) (1989)

But where were Gene, Roy, and the SoP?

Let's follow up on the ending of this morning's post...


"The simple ballads of the cowboys were created out of sweat, loneliness, and danger. Often they are sung to the accompaniment of thundering hoofs across the dusty plains. The cowboys had their favorites, including the famous BILLY VENERO."

I think it's time to listen to some Marty Robbins...

The ballad of Billy Venero from The Hawk #1 (1951)

Johnny Mack Brown - Educational Cowboy

Once upon a time there was a cowboy star named Johnny Mack Brown.
JMB had him some comic books, and he didn't seem to be quite like the other cowboy movie stars...

Ah, yeah - exciting adventures in boot polishing!

Really, he did have some good adventures (stay tuned) but he surely didn't seem to be all in-your-face about being the man's man cowboy, now did he? And, as noted above, his comics were Educational type publications. Learn the history and culture of the Old West, one page at a time!

And, of course, what's Cowboy Westerns without the music?

pages from Johnny Mack Brown #s 541, 834 & 922 (1954, 1957, 1958)

C'mon In!

Nope.
Decided i'm not coming out of my head today.

Why don't you folks step inside for a few instead...
(with less drugs and more colour)

Nope. Not going out there today.

NOTE: Three images from this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. It's really minor stuff, and probably not worth the effort to go look. But should you desire to do so,
please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork. 

stuff by Gilbert Shelton, Kelly Freas, B.Kliban, life, -3-, Forte...  man my brain ain'

Blue Monday, not Monday Blues

Fighting the urge to draw back deeper into the cave today. Nearly Monday Blues instead of

Instead of withdrawing, how about we dig something up out of the darkness? Say maybe an Un-comic with a Frank Frazetta cover for a Neal Adams comic strip? That work for you?
Hope so...


NOTE: The images from this post contain nudity, and thus have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics. (Fair warning, there's not a whole lot of nudity, but a lot of oddity. And you do get a naked cover from Frazetta)
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Ah, 70s....  how we miss you.

Dragula by Tony Hendra and Neal Adams from National Lampoon #20 (1971)

Len & Friends go Crazy, Crazy, Crazy

Sunday Morning Funnies time once again, and still dropping Odd bits from Len Wein after we lost him two weeks ago. So this time, let's go to Crazy #1...

Okay... That's not at all confusing. Just a little Crazy. Len's parody is in the 1973 black & white Crazy #1. But let's take the long way there, starting with 1953's Crazy #1-

The first tale in this Crazy features the only "Lace Cadet" i've ever encountered-

19 years later, we get another Crazy #1-

 

Oddly enough, the indicia in this issue gives copyright notice of reprints from the 1953 series, but the material seems to be all parodies of 1960s Marvel Titles. One might think they were reprinting from Not Brand Echh instead. The lead story from this version of Crazy #1 starred, as all the stories in this issue did, the ignoble Forbush Man!

A year later, they decided that really didn't work out any better than NBE, so they tried once more with the black & white magazine style of the other mental illnesses (Mad, Cracked, Sick, etc.,.)

Wait.... what..? That can't be...
GODHELL!!! That's a Kelly Freas painted cover to kick off the new title! How did this come about? In whose name do we burn offering for this?
Um...       excuse me.
I may have mentioned previously that Frank Kelly Freas, like Jack Kirby, was one of the Masters who inspired me to follow the path of the artist. (Artdo? YiShuJiaDao seems a bit unweildy... (and the combined brushwork on those 4 characters is overly busy and inelegant, too))
Y'know... I think i might be old man rambling again. And, speaking of old people - how many remember one of the first of the big Irwin Allen disaster movies that created the genre - The Poseidon Adventure?
I actually had the movie poster for this up on my wall, along with Planet Of The Apes and others. Back in them old days, you could just go to the theatre and ask the manager for the poster after the movie run was over. They were just going to throw it away, and you might get lobby cards and other promos, too. Develop a relationship with them, and you could even wind up with life-size lobby stand-ups.
I really don't think that happens much now. Not without cash changing hands.
Okay - rambling again...

Here's Len Wein's parody adaptation of the movie, with art by Ross Andru & Vic Martin, from our Crazy #1 number 3:

Bonus Oddity! Here's a satirical(?) view of the future from Harlan Ellison, with illustration from Basil Wolverton! They really weren't skimping on the talent for this first issue, were they?

And, simply because it took me this long to remember where this was and dig it out to prep for the VOO, and - what the heck - because Tony Isabella worked on this issue of Crazy, also, here's my favorite view of Len Wein as editor, from Giant-Size Chiller #3...

 ...and at the end of the book:

Another Oddly Enough remark - this issue reprinted the first story that Marvel published by Len Wein. (The Moving Finger Writes, from Tower Of Shadows #3 (1970))

Well, that was a long post.
And i'm all out of potatoes. Left them all in a barrel in Skyrim and they disappeared on me.

Here's a bear. They don't eat potatoes.

fun with bears by Frank Frazetta