Dreadstar #1-38

I first discovered Vanth Dreadstar in the pages of EPIC Magazine, as my friend was a big fan of the serial, but it wasn't until a regular comic came out (under EPIC Magazine's new line Epic Comics) that I really became a huge fan myself! Ifollowed the comic for its whole initial run, including its' jump to First Comics, until writer/creator Jim Starlin kind of moved away from illustrating it and finally giving up writing it as well.

I never got into the later Peter David written stuff (though I'm a big fan of his), but the Starlin stories are a joy to return to and re-read every so often, and I felt it was the time to re-life the exploits of Vanth Dreadstar and his Galactic Crew!

Heartland

I initially picked this one up because it was done by the incredible team of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and though I was first surprised to find it wasn't a super-hero comic per se, I was soon taken in by the powerful and emotional story of Hellblazer character Kit Ryan and her life and childhood in Northern Ireland. VERY moving story.

The Pro

AHAHAHA, A wonderfully crass and bawdy take on the super-hero genre much like the similarly flavoured MARSHALL LAW where archetypical super-beings run rampant all over the world and a skewed eye is taken on what it would be like if these heroes got a dose of darkened reality, The Pro follows the exploits of a harried, foul-mouthed woman with child who suddenly becomes the latest super-heroine on the block, and the rude, crude and outlandish things she does once empowered!
Another Comic I love re-reading over and over again!

The Eaters

An absolutely AWESOME Vertigo one-shot story, this one from Peter Milligan and Dean Normston about a tight-knit and loving family of cannibals and the perils they face as EATERS.  A fun (if VERY black-humoured) comic I LOVE re-reading over and over again!

Hellblazer #47-93,129-133 + Special

As you can see, I'm a big fan of Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer, especially his collaboration with Steve Dillon on art. and after reading the trade "Dangerous Habits", I began buying the individual issues starting with #47 to issue 93, with one Special in between, and later when Garth Ennis returned with Mike Higgins for issues 129-133.

Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits

The beginning of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon run of Hellblazer, this trade was so damn good that I ended up buying every individual issue that followed it!

Hellblazer: Original Sins

I was a HUGE fan of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon Hellblazer stories (the first Constantine book ever read was the Fear and Loathing trade) so I had to get original sins, which collected the very first Jamie Delano Hellblazer stories,  just so I could experience where it all came from, the characters, the country and the whole mythos of the John Constantine legend, and this first book is pretty great!

Fantastic Four #120-233

I've read and re-read the Lee/Kirby and Lee/Buscema stories (Issue 1-119) and the later John Byrne run (#236-291) so many times that I know them like the back of my hand, but aside from the pivotal Doctor Doom story arc in 196-200 and the Galactus/Sphinx Storyline in 203-214, there were quite a very issues in the late Silver Age/Early Bronze age that I didn't know too well...so I decided to dig them all out and re-read them again in order, from issue 120 all the way to issue 233! Was really refreshing, some of them I'd only read maybe once before, and ending it on the excellent Byrne "Mission for a Dead Man"was a great way to end it!

The Complete Peanuts 1950-1990

Yeah, I dedicated about six weeks of evening reading to reading the entire Peanuts strips from 1950 all the way to 1990 in chronological order. yeah i know there was more after that but i have no sentimental attachment to those so never got the collections surrounding those years.
Man, how I loved these comics growing up. probably the single most important comics of my life, if I think about it. These strips and Richard Scarry storybooks made me the Graphic Novel/Comic Book aficionado I am today!

The Road Warrior

  Just watched "Mad Max' and "The Road Warrior" this afternoon- GOD, what classic movies! When I was a senior in High School, Mad Max and its sequel were two of my favorite movies, and even today they're still in my top 40 movies of all time! Though I first taped it off the Television, I soon owned copies of it on Beta, later VHS, and later even Laserdisc, luckily for my viewing pleasure, I've now got both of 'em on DVD!
   I'd actually seen The Road Warrior BEFORE Mad Max- It was shown on Television one night, and as a high school student who had recently become a huge fan of the Sci-Fi Fantasy magazine HEAVY METAL, this Post-Apocalyptic  Masterpiece seemed liked  the epics storylines I was reading coming straight to life in vibrant, bloody, gory colors! 

This epic battle between the white-robed “good guys” (looking like Bethlehemic devout worshippers):

 ...and the “bad guys” (looking like Zulu steampunk tribesmen) over the gasoline of the world was like seeing "Star Wars" again for the first time- this imaginative take of the dystopian future of our society  rocked my world! 

I mean, crap, the visuals ALONE could have been taken straight out of the Science Fiction  stories I read- (just look at how picturesque and stimulating these scenes are!) -Add together the story of Max's rise out of the ashes to a more heroic redemption through helping those in need, and you've got a movie of EPIC proportions!

The Road Warrior's look was reminiscent of the cult classic David Carradine movie Deathrace2000, artistic and mysterious "cars of death" figure strongly in BOTH flicks, and they both even featured cult fave Mary “Eating Raoul” Woronov as super-cool warrior chicks! 

The climax of the movie is, of course, the famous scene where Max drives the gasoline tanker out of the city and is set upon by the punk Vultures who have to stop him at any cost, and my GOSH, did this BLOW ME AWAY! One of the most visually dynamic and engaging scenes EVER, I was on the edge of my seat and holding my breath til it was all over! When I ended I remember looking around the living room screaming HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!!!!

I was fortunate to have had the VHS recorder running on that one, so I was able to watch it over and over, and the more I watched and rewatched that movie, the more intrigued I became to see the "origin" of Max, and so off to the Video Rental store I went, to FINALLY see the original MAD MAX movie! 
  I thought Mad Max would be as bizarre and abstract as Road Warrior, but what I got was a more down-to-earth toned film, with the family man Max living his life with wife and child, caring workmates and best friends.  

Though I'd already heard the story from the opening of "Road Warrior", I was fascinated to realize that this humble, soft spoken man:

...would become this dusty, detached loner in subsequent flicks:

But as you watched the movie, you saw how this man named Max, working for the futuristic MFP force, clashed with the motorcycle soldiers of "the Toecutter" til they took everything of joy he had, leaving him with nothing but a burning desire for vengeance. 

By the time he's hunted down and killed all the gang members, you see that the man known as Max Rockatansky is gone, transformed forever into the Road Warrior we now know!

 In the mid-2000's, they finally got around to releasing both of those classics on DVD, and here's where the confusing times came for me- 
  ONE: Mad Max was recorded with the ORIGINAL Australian voices, so for the first time, the dialog coming out of the characters' mouths were really "matching" and sounded a lot less "robotic" and more warm! But I gotta say, after 15+ years of watching the movie dubbed, it was JARRING to watch, and quite frankly when I watch it even today, in my head I still hear the "Hollywood" dubbed version! Perhaps I'll never get used to it!
  TWO: The opening dialog for The Road Warrior, with an aged "Feral Kid" croaking out the narration, was SO DIFFERENT from the television dubbed copy I had! The timing and flavor was SO weird...truthfully, I REALLY don't like the version on the DVD and WISH I could get a copy with the Television Version dialog!!!
 Ah, so much problems with the Post-Apocalytic Society going digital, I tell ya....

Dreadstar Revisited

Back in Intermediate School, I had a friend who was a BIG fan of the Jim Starlin strip "Metamorphosis Odyssey" in EPIC Magazine, and through him I learned the basics of the anti-hero Vanth Dreadstar and his mystical sword of power. When Epic decided to branch off into a comics line and one of the flagship titles was going to be new adventures starrring Dreadstar, I jumped at the opportunity to get in at a "jumping off point"!

 Well, I LOVED that comic throughout all my years in High School, (being a bi-monthly book, it had only reached 26 issues by the time I graduated) but by the time Dreadstar moved onto FIRST comics (after Epic Comics shuttered its doors)  with its first issue numbered at "27" to continue the Epic Comics storyline, I had largely moved onto other things. New writers and strips filled my time, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Los Bros Hernandez were all things I was more into, so my Dreadstar collection got put away, only to be visited from time to time when I felt nostalgic.

 Well, one of those nostalgic times came this past month, I took out all 27 of my beloved Dreadstar  issues and re-read them again from start to finish. Man, they still hold up after all this time, and in fact, looking at it as an adult I can see how much the storylines and artwork have influenced MY storytelling style and art!  Amazing, they're still as good as I remember them!
In fact, I made me curious as to how the FIRST Comic line did. Like I said, I only bought issue #27 (since it was the conclusion to a story started in the Epic Line) but didn't venture further.  I remember reading that Jim Starlin passed off his writing and art duties to others anyway, so there wasn't much reason to check it out.. but how many fo those issues DID he do before handing ove rthe reins?
Going online and doing a bit of research, i was stunned to find dthat Starlin had done a  good 11+ more issues- these were issues I NOW wanted to read very badly!
 I made a quick trip to online comic store sellers Lone Star Comics, and was happy to see they had ALL the Starlin penned issues I was missing, issues 28 all the way to 38 (though not the final issues of the last story, issues 39 and 40, which Starlin wrote, but didn't illustrate) so I didn't waste time sending in that order!
  Just today, my shipment arrived, and I have to tell you, it's pretty freaking exciting seeing all these "new" Jim Starlin illustrated Dreadstar covers! Can't wait to read them and catch up on the years I'd been away! along with my order, i'd also picked up a new collection  of Dreadstar collection ALL of his old  Metamorphosis Odyssey stories form Epic Magazine so I'm Totally gonna be in Dreadstar Heaven this weekend!
  After reading al of these, who knows? I may even be excited enough to check out the issues that came AFTER Jim Starlin's departure- Peter David scribed those issues, and I DO love his work on X-Factor and that classic run on the HULK- so best to never say never!!

Wait Until Dark

  

Just finished watching the 1969 Movie “Wait Until Dark” again, and MAN! I’d forgotten how GOOD it was! Audrey Hepburn is one of my very favorite actresses, and this was the very FIRST movie I’d ever seen her in! I had no idea how much I would come to love her later when seeing her in movies like “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, “Roman Holiday” or “Love In The Afternoon”, but it was her role as blind Susy Hendrix where I first discovered how awesome she was and prompted me to seek out all her other movies!

Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark

  I had been talking to a friend about Audrey (having just recently rewatched the aforementioned “Breakfast at Tiffany’s’) and he mentioned Wait Until Dark. “You Know”, I sheepishly admitted, “though I love Audrey and have quite a few of her movies, Wait Until Dark is one the that I didn’t own on DVD! I did own a VHS copy of the movie  I dubbed off TV years ago, but my VHS player has seen some better days, and I’m not even sure the tape would have played at this point! I decided right then that I HAD to get a proper copy of this classic movie!

  Good old Amazon- not only did I find a seller who was selling it for a very reasonable price, the shipping was free and arrived at my doorstep within the week! As SOON as I got that package in the mail, I immediately popped it in my DVD player and sat down to catch up on the movie! Like I said, I was blown away by how good it was even after all this time,  Audrey as perfect as ever, and one other element I’d forgotten about was how freakin’ awesome ALAN ARKIN was in this movie, playing the role of the oily and VERY sinister Roat!

Alan Arkin as Roat

  I’m so used to seeing Arkin as this old curmudgeonish guy, I forgot how slick and deadly he could be! With only her sweet sensibilities to guide her, poor Audrey is put through the wringer with the ruthless killer, as he tries to track down a doll with a hidden cache of heroin in it!

 Audrey didn’t make all that many movies after this one, but what a way to go out! Not only was this Terence Stamp (he of James Bond fame) directed movie as good as any Hitchcock flick, they even got Audrey’s music scorer Henry Mancini from Breakfast at Tiffany’s back to do the music for this chiller! VERY COOL!

Samantha Jones as Lisa

PS, Who’s this Samantha Jones actress they got playing the role of doomed drug trafficker Lisa anyway? So VERY pretty in that groovy swinging sixties kind of way, but I don’t think she appeared in anything after that!

PPS: Happy Birthday, Audrey!!