Biff! Bam! Eee-Yow! Batman Season Two

The cover for the latest book in which I participated, this one alongside some big names including Peter David and Paul Kupperberg! My essay covers the Clock King episodes and is entitled, "Bob Kane Gets the Finger or Batman Finally Gets the Bill."

Should be available for pre-order soon! Expected as early as March. 

Johnny Hazard TV Show-1962

I was never a big fan of Frank Robbins' comic book work but I did like his JOHNNY HAZARD newspaper strip quite a bit once i discovered it in the 1970s in THE MENOMONEE FALLS GAZETTE, a  weekly newspaper that was ALL comic strips!

And those were the then-modern strips! Still to come in the 1980s were multiple format reprints of JOHNNY HAZARD from earlier peak periods.

Tonight, whilst rummaging through old issues of VARIETY online, I found mention of a planned live-action Haz series dating from 1962!

One interesting point here is that it's implied that Howard Liss was writing the comic strip. Liss was a writer who wrote in various fields over the years but he was, as near as I can tell, not known to be associated with HAZARD. It's possible that the Introductions to some latter-day collections I don't have talk about his involvement... but Jerry Bails' online WHO'S WHO lists Howard Liss's strip work only as seen below. 

 

Congratulations to Jeanne Silver

 

 

Thanks to the Internet, my life can sometimes seem very surreal. My wife and I have, over the past few years, become cyber-friends with a lovely woman about our age named Jeanne Silver. Well, that’s not her real name. But that’s the name I knew her by when I first encountered her back when I was 18 years old, in a magazine called CHERI. Long Jeanne Silver! She either chose the name or it was chosen for her to exploit the fact that she was—and is—missing her left foot and a portion of her left leg due to a birth defect and an amputation in childhood. 

   Jeannie has a well-deserved reputation of being the sweetest, most caring women you will ever meet. I heard that even before we encountered her ourselves. But I hear she can also still summon the hell raiser she once was when the need arises. Above all things, she is a caretaker. If you are her friend, she is in your corner or, more often than not, pushing YOU back into your corner so she can protect you. 

 

But a little more than four decades ago, she was adrift, ending up in New York City a long way from her Arizona roots. I’m not going to say she fell in with a bad crowd, because she doesn’t really seem to see it that way. In fact, she fell in with a crowd that became very much a chosen extended family through the years, a family where so many of them still stay in touch with her via Facebook. 

 

 

If you haven’t guessed, Jeanne Silver was an adult actress in what is thought of now as the Golden Age of adult films—just after the “Porno Chic” era and just prior to home video completely changing the industry. With less than 20 films, the one that she is best known for is the self-titled, LONG JEANNE SILVER, a controversial 1977 release designed to both introduce her to the industry while also exploiting what made her different. Online newspaper archives show that the picture ran in a number of major cities for nearly a full decade, giving her a unique, long-lasting name notoriety other adult film stars usually never had!

 

But movies weren’t all Jeanne Silver did. She also modeled for a number of adult magazines of the day and even wrote a mostly serious column in one about sex and disabilities. 

 

In the decades since she left the adult film industry she has led a life just as interesting, even though it wasn’t all captured on film. A couple years back, though, Jeanne Silver did actually return to film, this time in a brief but meaty role in a horror film entitled CLOWNADO! She gave the best performance in the picture. 

  All of which is by way of introduction to the fact that today it was announced that Long Jeanne Silver, some 35 years after putting it all behind her, has been named to the ADULT VIDEO NEWS Hall of Fame, considered the highest honor that can be bestowed on members of the industry.

 

The adult film industry is, itself, thoroughly fascinating with its underground, outlaw aura, but looking deeper, it turns out there were some genuinely talented, if often troubled, people who banded together both behind and in front of the screen to create something that’s lasted, something that has in fact grown in stature over time. 

Me, I viewed that world from a distance, but my friend Jean lived it, in all its aspects, good and bad, and today, finally, with the AVN Hall of Fame announcement, I hope she sees that all the stupid, crazy, wild stuff she went through back then actually meant something to a lot of people. It still does, and she still does. 

 

 

Once Upon a Long Ago

Here you see the top of my first regular column, "Once Upon a Long Ago," in Jon B. Cooke's COMIC BOOK CREATOR. It premieres in the very next issue, the second issue to list me officially as a Consulting Editor after having been a transcriptionist since the mag's very first issue. It's due out soon from TwoMorrows and can be pre-ordered now at:

https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_132&products_id=1561

 

Superman/ Spider-Man UK Ad

"Only Marvel could give you!" says this UK ad. Weeeell...not really. In fact, you kinda needed DC to give you this one as well!  

Booksteve's Upcoming Back Issue Appearances

For those who like my writing, I have no less than four articles coming up in issues of BACK ISSUE starting mid-summer of 2021. The above issue features my piece on BEETLE BAILEY comics from Gold Key, Charlton, Harvey, and Dargaud.

This one presents my article on Gold Key's DARK SHADOWS series and interview quotes from previously unknown comics writer Merrie Spaeth, former child actress and later a political consultant.

This one compares the BULLWINKLE AND ROCKY comics from Gold Key, Star Comics, and Blackthorne to the original Jay Ward cartoons.

And here we discuss the DC Hotline gimmick from the mid-1970s, in an article expanded from an early blogpost on this very blog!

You can pre-order all of these issues now here. 

 

The Mel Blanc School Of Voice and Commercials-1972

  

In spite of it's several misspellings (including Mel's own son's last name!), this ad and the article below make this training program sound impressive as all get out. But does anyone know of any successful voice actor who ever actually went trough the program? I took a similar course in Cincinnati seven years later but mine was run by a local stage actor who was the "voice" of a local mall's TV and radio ads and had done a few bit parts on TV and in movies. In my case, we started out with about a dozen students and ended up with four of us by the end of the course. Even the teachers absconded! But THAT'S another story.

1959--New Year's Day in the Funnies

I was born in January of 1959. Here are some of the New Year's Day comic strips from about a week before I made my debut.