Batman (1943) chapter one

This came from the old message board... ah, the memories...

Right away, we are introduced to the Batcave(it makes it's first appearance in this serial) and Batman, the nation's number one crime fighter! the narrator tells us that Batman and Robin stand ready to fight Nazi spies to the death.

THE Batman calls Captain Arnold and tells him he has a nice package for him. one spy tells Batman Dr. Daka will not be happy, and Robin wants to wait around to see Arnold's face, but THE Batman reminds him that he has a date.

Our Man Flint (1966) trailer

I've had this DVD set for several years, but haven't watched them in almost as long. So I thought it was time to revisit them and watched the first one the other day. It sure is a lot of fun and Austin Powers sure borrowed a lot from the movie.

return of the sprocket monsters!

Remember this book?  Well, I have recently updated it, mostly fixed grammatical errors and added a title page and copyright notice.  What was I thinking when I did it the first time?  All this publishing sure has been a learning experience for me, but things just get better and easier each time.  It's still one of the more fun things I've done, plus one of the best things I've done and now it looks better overall. 

The Invisble Man trailer (1933)

I have the original DVD set of Invisible Man and sequels (though I've yet to watch Invisible Agent, which is odd) and the movies all hold up pretty well, even the Abbott and Costello one. Sven is showing this tonight, so I'll tune in. Rains is so good in the movie and we only see his face once.

Xenorama #19 lives!

It is live now here and will be available at Amazon in three to five days!  Here's the blurb:

Xenorama #19 (color)

The Journal of Heroes and Monsters

Authored by David McRobie, Blake Matthews, Christopher Elam, John LeMay
Cover design or artwork by Dan Ross

Xenorama #19 has been unleashed! This issue takes a look at Thunderbirds, Star Wars, Prince Planet, the Yes, Madam movies series by Blake Matthews, John Lemay says hello to Sayanara, Jupiter, Christopher Elam discusses Dairanger being released in the US, the Mexican Batwoman and more! All in glorious color with an astounding cover by Dan Ross!

Batman Season 3 DVD set

Got this finals season of Batman yesterday for a whole $7.12 at Best Buy.  I am still planning on getting the blu ray set, so someone in the future will be getting Batman DVDs.  I always loved seeing Batgirl swoop across the screen, as it meant more heroes, which is almost always good in my book.  And of course, that made Batgirl one of my favorites (why do you think I had to learn how to play "Be My Batgirl" so quickly?).  I;m looking forward to revisiting these episodes complete and uncut.  I've seen a few on MeTV, but not recently.

Avengers #61

I never got to read this book as a kid, though I had read Dr. Strange's transformation into a superhero in one of the tabloid reprints Marvel was doing at the time.  I like the look, still, but prefer the classic look.  Had they thought about it they could have used this as a "battle mode" look for Stephen and not had so much negative reaction to it.  Ah, the joys of hindsight.  This is the second part of a story that started in Doctor Strange Tales #178 which the Sons of Satannish had brought Ymir and Surter back to Earth to destroy it.  Or something.  I would have thought that Strange's first thought was to warn Thor, or even Odin.  Thor apparently was fighting the Silver Surfer somewhere else and thus occupied, but you'd think Odin might have sensed mortal enemies 'pon Midgard.

Thoughts on Superman

Still watching the first season of the Adventures of Superman. He sure does what he wants when he wants.  It's hard to believe there had only been 14 years since Superman had debuted in the comics from the time this show aired.  The true supervillains he would fight in the comics hadn't really started appearing, so this is pretty close to that original run.  As it progressed he got closer to what the Silver Age Superman would become, with writers just adding powers as they needed them to fit the story.  You could see where Superman would be headed by the mid-50s.

Time of Their Lives trailer

Here's a fun Abbott and Costello movie from 1946. It's quite a bit different than their usual fare, which I find hit or miss unless it has a monster theme. This doesn't use their usual formula nearly as much.

Ultraman wallpaper

I found this online, somewhere whilst looking for a cool backdrop for my computer.  I like it a lot, and I'm always look for new and neat pictures to use for them.  Trouble is so many of these style wallpapers are made from the newer shows (and comics, etc) that I have far less interest in, what with all that "realism" that's all the rage these day.  I loved the Vision in the Avengers movie, but I love the classic version even more, except for what Byrne did to him in the 90s.  The less said about that, the better.

RIP Sylvia Anderson

I learned late last night, or perhaps early this morning that Sylvia Anderson, co-creator of many Supermarionation teleseries had passed away. While I never saw her acting ability in anything other that Thunderbirds Are Go! growing up, I have to come to enjoy all of her performances that I've ever heard. Her commentary on the aforementioned DVD is wonderful as well.

Frankenstein meets the Wolfman review

This was so much fun to watch.  I hadn't seen it in years, but really enjoyed it.  I was very impressed by the quality of the actors, along with the sets and music.  It's not much of a Frankenstein movie, far more of a Wolfman vehicle, which is fine.  It's too bad that the Monster's dialog was all cut from the movie, since Lugosi gets a bad rap for his potrayal of the creature and it's not really his fault that the monster is portrayed as a lumbering brute, when his blindess from the previous movie should have been at least mentioned, not to mention the new brain he was given.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man trailer

This is airing on Svengoolie tonight, and I haven't seen it in years, so I'll be giving it a viewing. It's fun to watch these old movies, since Channel 2 loved them some Universal monsters back in the day. They aired most of them multiple times, which made me love them growing up.

the Godzilla series

I'm going to watch the Godzilla movies in order, starting from the beginning and going all the way through.  I've tried to do this before here and there, but always have managed to get sidetracked at various points along the way.  I hope by doing them here I'll be able to keep it straight.  We'll see how well it goes, right?

Twilight Zone openings

It's so cool. They did a few different versions, all of which were quite unique and yet kept the flavor of the show. These are from the first season and are so evocative of the series. And the narration is tops!

Avengers #59 & #60

"The Name is... Yellowjacket!"
and 

"... Till Death Do Us Part!" 

These issues were ones I read long after I'd met Henry Pym as Yellowjacket, so the origin was fun, if a little oddly set up.  I never understood why the Avengers wouldn't arrest someone who claimed to have killed one of their members.  "No corpus delecti" as Hawkeye put it, though it sure seems to me an admission of guilt was there.  And then they didn't have faith that Janet knew what she was doing either.  Add to that all the superheroes didn't stick around to help find Princess Python (I know, it would have made the final battle over in 2 seconds, but still...)

Phantom of the Opera (1962) review

Svengoolie aired this last night, and I didn't think I'd like it much since I'm not the biggest Hammer fan.  I've seen the 1925 version, which is amazing especially with the iconic Lon Chaney makeup.  I've also seen most of the '42 version, but I barely remember that, aside from the unmasking, which is always going to be hard to top in any movie after the first one.  I've also read the book, which Eric is not a pleasant person at all.  I'd like to read it again as it's probably been about 20 years now.  After seeing this version it would be fun to do, though this one barely resembles the book.

Phantom of the Opera (1962) trailer

I've never seen this version all the way through before. I had stayed up to see it when I was a kid, since I knew it was a monster movie, but wasn't sure at the time which version I'd be seeing, aside from it not being the silent one. I only got through the first 10 minutes before falling asleep. The joys of late night movies!

KING KONG (2005)

I wrote this for my long gone column in G-Fan back in the day, and thought it would be fun to revisit.  I'll be doing some of these here and there.

KING KONG (2005)

An ode to excess. There’s a good movie in this bloated beast, but Peter Jackson really needs to find out what an editor is for. It’s like he had to top every part of the original movie- it has one t rex, we have three! Instead of one pteranodan we have a swarm of bat things. And the added spider pit sequence proved that removing it from the original was the right idea. The constant video game like motion of the camera was very disturbing as well, and added to the overuse of slow motion really made parts of the movie hard to watch. Every scene with the “monsters” was too long.

Badstreet USA

Man, I hated the Freebirds. I wasn't introduced to them via Georgia, Mid-South, or WCCW, it was their run in the AWA that brought them into my life. They had feuded with Rick Martel and Jerry Blackwell but when they ran into the Road Warriors and cost them their World Tag titles (took all five heels to do it) was when they got my attention.

Batmobile patent

Here's a cool picture of what is still the greatest Batmobile of all time.  It was actually a poster that I cut out when I was working for a graphics company two years ago.  People could make their own posters this way, and there were several superhero related photos that came through, such as Avengers #4.  I took several pictures of the more interesting ones that came through during those long 12 hour days.  With such long shifts you needed something fun here and there to keep you going.