Have you experienced 'THE ASTONISHINGLY INCOMPETENT SUPERHERO ART OF FLETCHER HANKS'?

Hanks was born in 1887. We know he was married and had a son but then packed up and left around 1930. According to his son, who is named Fletcher Hanks Jr., he was an alcoholic and physically abused his wife and son. We know that he was found, frozen to death on a park bench in Manhattan in January 1976, at the age of 88. Hanks’ work had two primary characters, “Stardust the Super Wizard” and “Fantomah the Mystery Woman of the Jungle,” and a host of less interesting characters like Space Smith, Big Red McLane, and Whirlwind Carter. Hanks used pseudonyms like Hank Christy, Barclay Flagg, Bob Jordan, and Charles Netcher. As Karasik points out in the video below, part of the fascination Hanks exerts is that he is a rare early case of a true auteur, a comics artist who “wrote, penciled, inked, lettered, and, I think, colored his work.”...

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BLEEDING COOL's Octavio Karbank remembers Cathy Lee Crosby's terrible outing as Wonder Woman!

From BLEEDING COOL

Starring Cathy Lee Crosby, better known for anything else she ever did, and directed by Vincent McEeety, meet the powerless, karate-choppin’, lasso and tiara-less, blond Wonder Woman! Oh, and she has a utility belt. Do any of those things sound remotely like Wonder Woman? If you answered no, you’re correct! However, ABC didn’t really care what you or anyone else thought and figured this Wonder Woman should don an outfit that looked like an Olympic skiing jumpsuit. The only real connection to Wonder Woman is Crosby’s character, named Diana Prince, who just so happens to be an Amazon, and the relatively faithful origin. Similar to the comics, Diana is sent from her home in Themyscira to our world, but everything goes positively bonkers from there...

 

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Hmmm I wonder what kind of outfits are at Plaid Stallions today... OH GOD MY EYES!!!!!

From PLAID STALLIONS

Not only is John Kenneth Muir's article 'Déjà vu All Over Again' a fun read- it also has a picture of Robey I'd never seen before!

From FLASHBAK
Once upon a time, major TV series in America were expected to be on the air and producing new material for twenty-five to thirty weeks a year.

Sometimes, production companies fell behind in this rigorous schedule.

 Sometimes they simply ran out of money, or were budgeting for an expensive, upcoming sweeps installment, and needed a breather.

And sometimes, the producers were just rushing to put something together in anticipation of a writers or actors strike.

All such production disruptions could necessitate the creation of a terrible Frankenstein Monster: the dreaded “clips show.”

This was an episode of an otherwise beloved and entertaining series in which protagonists convened to recollect “events” in their lives, sometimes to solve a mystery or eliminate a threat. But the ploy was…transparent.

These character “memories” were visualized on screen as, literally, clips from previous episodes. The result was a rerun that wasn’t billed as one.

Even the best of shows in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were not immune to the horror of the “clips show.”

Here are five examples of this unfortunate necessity, and they are all pretty terrible...

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And now the pervy perfection of that pic!

Another week without the Night Blogger... I miss him too...

This is getting to be a habit isn't it? Usually my writing has been an escape from my troubles but not lately, lately any time I try to rev up the old creative engines I start thinking about my Mom and shut down. In a fit of desperation I finished up an old story I lost interest in called 'MR. CROAD AND ME'. It felt good to finish something and folks seem to like it.

Since all I want to do is sleep and mope, and also because we had to pawn her laptop to keep the lights on I am letting my daughter use my computer most nights. She has been experimenting with fiction and poetry of her own lately.

So, long and short of it, I have not given up on you my loyal readers, I am just trying to deal with things. I am hoping that after the holidays I can become prolific again.

I now return you to the standard geeky news and girly pics.

TELEPORT CITY examines David Lynch's facinating and frustrating 'Mulholland Drive'

From TELEPORT CITY
And so we are left on our own to drift through this freakish true crime dreamscape of Los Angeles that David Lynch has constructed. Mulholland Drive throws you into this world without bothering to explain the rules that govern it. It becomes something akin to a snake devouring its own tail. Lynch’s dream of Los Angeles is a patchwork quilt of real life and romantic legend, of old pulp and hopeful dreams and bitter disillusion set against a backdrop of back alleys and neon, cafes and glamorous parties and oddly remote mansions, and drawn from half a dozen decades. And that dark fantasy land Los Angeles feeds my own sinister romance of Los Angeles. Which is why Mulholland Drive has such an emotional impact with me. It is very easy to identify with Betty, the hopeful young romantic who clings desperately to her illusion of Los Angeles even as the more mundane and grimmer reality seeps in from all sides...

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GoFundMe update

Another week has come and gone. We are still trying to rescue my daughter's laptop from the pawn shop. The doctors have not cleared my wife to go back to work so we are still pretty much a one-paycheck family. 

We are also having one Hell of a time paying for prescriptions so anything you can to help would be appreciated.

Does anyone out there remember PIZZAZZ? Flashbak does! (I do too, I'm old.)

From FLASHBAK
What kid growing up in the seventies didn’t enjoy PIZZAZZ magazine? It was more a less a knock off of the popular Scholastic magazines Dynamite and, more closely, Bananas. However, this had the Marvel Comics badge, and so it was extra cool – Spidey and The Hulk were popping up everywhere on the pages of PIZZAZZ...