30 June 2018

Saturday Solutions, Once Again

Quick answers to yesterday's Quick Quiz -

1>

From Larry Elmore, a name all old school D&D fans should recognize, comes Gidget Meets The Squirrel Dogs From Outer Space.

2>

The man tormented by the whispers is Doc Mason from John Findley's tolerably awesome Tex Arcana, a tale of which i've been a fan long enough that back in the '80s, before going full time into the artwork the electronics technicians with which i worked were called the Techs Arcana ("We're so good, we're magic").

3>

The might of Marveldom assembled was gathered to end the threat of...  the F.F.'s mailman...?


I told you there was something odd about Willie Lumpkin.

page art from Heavy Metal (April 1979, March 1981) and The Fantastic Four Roast (1982)

29 June 2018

Friday Fun & Games Quickie


As you may already know, we currently suffering from major computer death and most of our archives and material are currently inaccessible. So, for our late edition of FF&G today we've just a quickie Whozit Quiz with three questions.

1> Who is the girl featured in this painting? (Bonus points for full title)


2> Who is is hearing the dreadful whispers on this page? (and from what tale?)
 

3> Whose butt has this assemblage of heroes gathered to kick? (again, bonus for source)


As usual, despite the current circumstances, answers in tomorrow's Saturday Solutions post.

you know i'm not going to tell you today!

28 June 2018

A Day Adrift

As mentioned this morning, there was another Caza tale already prepped and ready to run, so let's use that for a bit more substantial post today. Last time we looked at Philippe Cazaumayou's work, we saw Marcel, his recurring Everyman character.
The other primary character appearing in his tales is his Artistic Self, who is featured in this story. (Though he can be seen in the previous tales, too)

With my main computer having sunk and finding myself adrift today, Shipwreck actually seems like a quite appropriately chosen strip -


Have i mentioned how much i love Caza's use of colour?

Alas, my lovely lady of the sea dwells nearly 3000 miles away, so i won't be following his course while adrift.

pages by Caza, from Heavy Metal (June 1980), translated from the original in Pilote Mensuel # 37 bis (1977)

And How Was YOUR Day?

Because mine...?


That sound, with the accompanying flash of light, erupted from the main computer system this morning. (Yesterday morning, at the time this post goes live.)
Either it had an origin and is in some embryonic hibernation state, or the poor critter died a hard death.
And no telling if it took the data on the drive with it.

That was just the morning...

My standard medical monitoring was so badly out of specs that i've gone from every six weeks to now being tested every fortnight. (Which is going to create a huge spike in my shoe wearing hours per month!)
We won't even get into how badly the government has screwed things up for my upcoming procedures. And that's before the current screw-the-populace rampage.

The day did not dramatically improve from there.

But none of that affects you, except for the death of the computer. All my archives of material gathered for the blog are there. Much of it has been backed up on external drives, but they're too big for this ancient beast to fathom what it's looking at. So none of it can currently be accessed. The technology gap also prohibits use of the scanner. This old beast doesn't speak the modern lingo, and can't communicate with it.
(Let's not get into how ancient this machine is. Let's just leave it at the fact that it has a single core processor.)

But, i do keep an ancient version of Photoshop on hand, so it can at least do some basic prep work. And i'm hoping that a couple of the old external drives are small enough for this machine to read them. That will enable access to some older back ups. And there are a few bits hanging around on this system and some of the transfer sticks. (The main sys was a secure system - only sneaker net connections) So, we'll still be getting some posts of some sort. But certainly no insane sprees like two days ago. (On the other hand, that did leave at least one more Caza story prepped & ready) Best guess is perhaps two weeks before a replacement system is up and running. In the meantime, we carry on.

Okay. Enough explanation and ramble. This post goes off to the queue, and i go crawl to the back of the cave.

We'll see how badly the computer explosion burned my brain and psyche when i wake.

oh, come on! You know who that page is from, right? Simonson & Workman ... you know that already, sure you do! from Thor # 337 (1983)

27 June 2018

Widow, Black & White

A lot of us are waiting for Marvel to catch up to DC in one of the very rare areas in which it leads in the cinema. Ant-Man & The Wasp will finally give us a female hero headliner, and Captain Marvel will at last deliver a female solo superhero, but the one many have been eager to see is, of course, the Black Widow.

While we're waiting...


Back in 1981, Ralph Macchio and Paul Gulacy showed us what a Black Widow film of the time might have looked like in the first issue of Bizarre Adventures magazine - in glorious Noir (et blanc) -


I hope that helped.
If not, maybe try that Black Widow/Punisher animated movie team-up for a temporary fix. (Avengers Confidential - 2014)


pages by Ralph Macchio & Paul Gulacy for Bizarre Adventures #25 (1981)

26 June 2018

What You Watching Out There?

It likely won't come as any surprise that hermits don't get out to watch the latest movies very often. So, while i obviously likes my movies muchly, i'm often not watching what everyone else is watching at the time.
For example, after Sunday's matinee featuring the Boy King's Giant fighting a Nazi Robot Tyranosaur, i decided i needed to re-watch the movie version...


Hmm...   No. I don't think that's actually what i was watching, just what i saw.

Perhaps i'd best leave it to you readers to identify what i've been watching lately...














(Looking more prescient every day)



what are you looking here for? I already informed you that i'm not telling!