Gene Colan Benefit

Speaking of Captain America, the great comics artist Gene Colan drew issue 601 of CAPTAIN AMERICA just a year or two ago and as many of you may know, Gene has had a rough time on many levels lately. Clifford Meth is helping Gene out by auctioning off his original art pages from that issue (which was printed in color but also in an edition just from the artist's pencilled pages. Go here for details and sample pages: http://genecolan.blogspot.com/.

For those who may not know, Gene had already had a good career doing romances, horror stories and even some humor work when he turned up at Marvel under the name "Adam Austin" in the mid-sixties doing SUB-MARINER. No one was fooled and soon his real name was gracing a long classic run on DAREDEVIL and another one on IRON MAN. Gene also drew AVENGERS, DR. STRANGE, CAPTAIN AMERICA and really came into his own in the 1970's with THE TOMB OF DRACULA. Later he had a long and well-remembered run on BATMAN at DC and turned up in a number of mini-series and short run titles for various publishers, big and small. Mr. Colan even did some work for ARCHIE comics and had it singled out in various reprints!

If you collect original art, check out the link above for some absolutely beautiful and unique comic book pencils from a true master of the art of comic book storytelling.

Cappy 4th!

When I used to go to Cons all the time back in the seventies and eighties, I wasn't one of those folks who just had to get a sketch from the guest artist(s). Not that big on autographs, either, really. I'd rather have some interaction with the person to remember. Nonetheless, as I am and always have been essentially shy, I rarely interacted with the guests at all. At one point, though, I had a plan. I would take a poster board in a big ol' folder to every single Con I attended and I would get each guest I spoke with to draw me a quick headshot of my favorite hero, Captain America. I actually did carry it to one show but it became obvious that it wasn't helping me break the ice. Shyness hurts. And remember, I was a teenager and an adult during this period. I was also a store manager for part of it dealing every single day with the public and a dozen employees and I was damn good at it! I did get a quick self-portrait from Frank Thorne in 1977 and a full page Uncle Scrooge from Don Rosa at a local signing ten years later but that was literally it.

So this year, I decided to make a virtual CAPTAIN AMERICA collage for the blog here on Independence Day only to find that if my Mac can do that as well as some Windows programs I'm stymied as to how that w

ould work. So instead, I took the Cap Heads I had snipped and scanned from various sources and posted them on Facebook...and the first two folks to comment on them were pros. People I would probably even now be too shy to speak with in person. One of them was the underrated Stephen DeStefano and the other was our old friend here at this blog, Michael Netzer. Longtime readers will recall that I actually did see Mr. N at a con once many years ago. I stood voyeuristically eavesdropping as he talked to others but I couldn't say anything. And now, today, at long last, Mr. Netzer has contributed the first original Cap head to my long dreamed of collage! Wow! Too cool. And then a second addition shows up! This one is from Stephen DeStefano, artist on the great 'MAZING MAN amongst many other things. Things change. Thank you, sirs! And a happy, CAPPY 4th to you all!

Wonder Woman's new Costume-1995

Ben Franklin-the First American Cartoonist

Here, from a WWII era issue of the comic book STARS AND STRIPES (as opposed to the newspaper of the same name), is a one page Ripley-style bio of the one and only Benjamin Franklin! Credit is given to one Joseph A. Kaliff. AMAZING MAN was the star hero of the issue, thus...AN Amazing Man. Get it? Happy 4th of July! Time to break out 1776 for our annual viewing.

The Bionic Book by Herbie J. Pilato

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN is one of those TV series that has not weathered memory well with me. I wouldn't miss it in the 1970's and the companion series that emerged, THE BIONIC WOMAN, was--if anything--an even better show! Those rare few episodes of either one of them that I've seen in recent years, however, have left me less than impressed except on a purely nostalgic level.

That's where Herbie J. Pilato's BIONIC BOOK hit me: right in the nostalgia. As TV show books go, the author has demonstrated previously that he knows how to write them the way I like them. I like a detailed history of how the series came about, how it was cast, the behind-the-scenes network issues, the important episodes, the success stories, the failures and just enough behind the scenes gossip without getting into any major negativity.

Then I like a nice long list of every single episode, its title (whether given on the air or not), its guest cast and just a succinct retelling of the plot (as opposed to some nameless writers who pad out most of the book with the plot summaries!), followed by relevant behind-the-scenes tidbits on that specific episode. That's here also.

The fun for me in THE BIONIC BOOK is in the memories it invokes of those more innocent days when a slow-motion run with sound-effects constituted super-speed and we all accepted that. Excerpts from interviews with anyone and everyone connected with the two series from Martin Caidin (who wrote the original CYBORG novel) and stars Lee Majors (a Kentucky boy himself and a distant relative according to my wife the genealogist), Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson to individual episode directors and tech folks are interspersed throughout the narrative.

By the end of THE BIONIC BOOK, I can't say I had a new respect for the actual episodes but I certainly DID have a new respect for what everyone went through to make what were some good, entertaining, inspiring, family-friendly action series episodes that were very much of their time. As TV books go, a good one like THE BIONIC BOOK can be as enjoyable or more so than the shows it covers!

Random Panels of Comic (Strip) Weirdness # 73

As seen here, Mandrake and his hitherto unknown identical twin brother Derek (Manderek?) may both have had the slicked down Wildroot hair but once the former grew that pencil thin 'stache no one would ever again confuse them again! It was like MAGIC!

Booksteve Transcriptions

Not much there yet but my latest blog is an attempt to start a writing and transcription business along the lines of the piecemeal work I've been getting over the past few years. Check it out and contact me if you need any kind of writing or behind-the-scenes work done.
http://bookstevetranscriptions.blogspot.com/