Friday, May 22, 2015

Flash Friday : always those damn redheads

There´s always something left to be said. Which is why my posts keep getting longer and longer but in some cases like my post about casting the female members of a Justice League movie you just have to know when to stop. Even if there are things about Maxima I wanted to add.


It had been brought to my attention that in my last post there was a very small amount of actual comic content and a disproportionate amount of bodacious women. Which is why I don´t do these posts that often and why it´s been a very long time since I´ve done my last COMICBABE BATTLE.  


But the whole reason of doing these kind of posts - at least for me - is to put a lot of hot and sometimes even topless massitas on the post. It helps me do my more serious posts by getting the hot chicks out of my system.

I don´t know how other bloggers do their posts but I´m not a machine and even if I planned for certain posts - in fact I do more often than not - it doesn´t mean I´m always in the mood to write a post. Believe me, I have to be ready to do a post because you don´t want to read a post where I´m not all fired up to go. Sometimes it´s something I think I have to address because it just bugs me like gay Iceman or black Captain America which came out of a really bad Captain America series and I feel obligated to tell readers to stay away from this. Some other times it´s to talk about runs on comics I really enjoyed like THE MIGHTY THOR 401 and beyond and the whole THUNDERSTRIKE series, MarcSilvestri´s run on UNCANNY X - MEN or SECRET WARS II where I just bought the omnibus so there will be more.


But I know that when I´m lying in my bed trying to sleep and my head can´t start thinking about my last post and keeps writing the follow up that it´s time to get up and add to the old post. Or start a new one.

So since my last post is long enough as it is I´m making a new one that has hopefully more comic content. I´m not sure because unlike most of my posts I´m writing this one in reverse. When I do my posts I start with the idea, with something I want to say and then I write what I have in my head, then I have to look for some pictures to add, then I have to look up some websites to confirm certain things or brush up on my info and at the end of the post I have all this open windows. Too many to work properly so either I have to book mark and put them into the link section later ( and often forget them ) or my computer crashes and I have to restart.

This time there are certain things that I could not put in my last post but because I realized that I did not have the necessary material for the post I decided to do the research first, put all the links on the post and leave the main part for later. That way I can make sure all the websites I found while preparing for the post don´t get ignored and I can sort out the stuff I found. It also means I don´t know how much of the Flash series is really going to be in this post since that is the main bulk of what I found.


Going from one redhead to the next I want to mention Batgirl ( Barbara Gordon ) from my JLA movie casting, who I had cast with Diora Baird.

When I chose her as Batgirl it was mostly based on her stunning physique and the small clip I had seen from YOUNG PEOPLE F - WORD - ING. Where she bonked with Callum Blue, who later on played SMALLVILLE´s Zod so there is your comic connection right there. Anyway, back then I didn´t know much about her but since then she has become quite a well known actress with roles on tv shows like TWO AND A HALF MEN and a whole bevy of movies of which THE WEDDING CRASHERS is probably her most famous part. Which could have something to do with the fact that she is nude in it. Do I know how to pick `em or do I know how to pick `em ?


But coming back to my Justice League of America movie casting, I put Maxima on the list to have Christina Hendricks in the movie but I totally forgot that Batgirl was also a redhead - at least in the old DC universe, I don´t know if that´s still true in the NEW 52. Not that it would ever have worked to have Christina as Batgirl, she´s much too OOOOOmpf for that.


Batgirl is too much of a goody for any really raunchy stuff even if DC tries to put her into that kind of environment. I remember reading the story THE CAT AND THE BAT and being slightly pissed off because the writer put a scene in the book where Batgirl had to get rid of most of her clothes knowing that the reader would not get to see any skin ( about which I wrote in this post which took me almost forever to find since I didn´t have a Batgirl tag when I wrote this ). Yep, the writers of DC put Batgirl in such a scene well knowing that only they can get any satisfaction from that while the people who pay money to read the book end up frustrated. And then I´m called the pervert when I put Batgirl on such a countdown.  


And speaking about sexy gingers, if I ever do an updated version of my Justice League of America casting I should probably include Mera now that AQUAMAN is such a big hit with the NEW 52. Who´d have thunk, right ?


But enough of the foreplay it´s time to get to the main feature. You have waited long enough. I admit that when I put Maxima in the list for my Justice League movie casting it was just to include Christina Hendricks but it turned out to be one of those happy accidents that make sense.

Why should I not include Maxima in my JLA movie ? She´s sexy, she´s powerful, she knows what she wants and she sets out to get it even if it is nookie from the Man of Steel. I would even get as far as to say that Maxima is one of the most emancipated women in the DC universe - she does not put herself second to anyone as she sees herself even superior to Superman - if I hadn´t heard rumors on the internet that Maxima is back with the NEW 52 as a lesbian. What´s wrong with Today´s comic writers that they can´t have a new take on a strong and independent woman without making her a lesbian. It seems they can´t think outside of the stereotypes of " So here´s this strong, sexy, powerful woman who Superman didn´t want to have sex with. I know, why don´t we make her a lesbian ? " Don´t get me wrong, I don´t have anything against lesbian or gay characters in comics per se but I just hate this GAY / LESBIAN IS THE NEW BLACK mentality that panders to these communities lately without really trying to help their causes. It´s only cheap hyperbole to get in the news, boost sales and ruin existing characters for all that follow. It´s a one way street down a cliff and a clear sign of creative capitulation.


For more background on Maxima the great SUPERMAN ´86 - ´99 blog by Maxwell Yezpitelok and Don Sparrow that offers a thorough chronological examination of the best / worst period in Superman history has entries on Action Comics 645 and 651 , SUPERGIRL COMIC BOX COMMENTARY has a larger entry on Action Comics 651 , she also gets featured in COMICS ALLIANCE´s post on The Many Loves of Superman , in THE UNSPOKEN DECADE´s post on GODKILLERS : DOOMSDAY AND BANE ( Maxima was a member of the Justice League of America during the Doomsday story ) and on COMIC RELATED´s comic kiss post. And if that´s still not enough for you COMIC VINE has the complete lowdown on the ravaging redhead

I also found this spanish website quite by accident ( I don´t know how a search for Maxima leads here but that´s the internet for you ) which has tons of stuff on the Flash and the Superman versus Flash races and other stuff like John Byrne´s LEGENDS series. Which also had Gypsy in it.


Anyway, the good news is that I have now much more stuff to post on my FLASH FRIDAY posts. You can never have enough material for your posts and especially interior pages of certain comics are hard to come by. So that´s a plus. The bad news is that I will spend most of Today going through all the stuff and putting it into the right order. Oh, and there are another few issues I need to complete my FLASH run since apparently there was a crossover with the MANHUNTER series during the INVASION.


Since I have already mentioned the Detroit version of the Justice League of America here´s another link that gives some background on Vixen, who will be in the next part of my Justcie League movie Hollywood casting.


One of these days I have to do another post about the Detroit League, maybe in the DEATH IN COMICS series as a few of their members have kicked the bucket. In the meantime you can consult the JUSTICE LEAGUE DETROIT BLOG or read my post on the only story I read with the Justice League Detroit ( JLA CLASSIFIED 22 to 25 and JSA CLASSIFIED 14 to 16  ).


Coming to this post´s video section I wanted to post a few videos about the Flash. I´m really enjoying the current tv series and I was planning to do a FLASH FRIDAY post about the Reverse Flash and his origins and his history in the comics but since I´m not sure when I will get around to do it - if I ever do it at all - I have decided to put some of them on this post.


People often ask me why I´m such a big fan of him since he only has one superpower and most think it´s not even an original one. He´s just fast.

The thing is I have always been a believer in keeping it simple and the thing I love about the Flash is that under a good writer he´s the best character ever. He´s one of the most human characters - he´s not an alien or invulnerable - but he has the potential to be the greatest hero of them all. Over the decades there have been some great Flash sagas and it´s no wonder he has been adapted into other media numerous times. So to celebrate this I chose this video, mainly because it doesn´t just focus on Barry Allen and also includes MY Flash, Mister Wally West. And it has the best Flash moment EVER from the Justice League cartoon at the end.



Speaking about adaptions of the Flash into other media here´s a BEHIND THE SCENES of the 1990 series starring John Wesley Shipp as the Flash.



Apropos John Wesley Shipp, here´s an interview with him about the new Flash series, where he plays the father of Barry Allen´s father. Originally he was supposed to play Jay Garrick ( I hope they still bring the original Golden Age Flash into the Flash fold at some point ) but when he read the part of Barry´s Dad he really liked it and said " That´s the part I want ! "



And finally here´s a video with more actors from the series. One of the things that get me all worked up about the show is how they inject actors who have previously played a role in the old Flash series into the show ( for instance Mark Hamill reprises his role as the Trickster ). In most of the cases they manage to pull it off in such a way that you don´t ever see it coming. So this may be a spoiler for some of you but one of the main characters of the show IS featured in the double page from LEGENDS by John Byrne I posted above. That´s right on the left side you can see none other than Detroit League member Vibe a.k.a. Franciso " Sisco " Ramon.


But there´s more : in the regular Pre - Crisis DC universe Caitlin Snow was Firestorm´s nemesis Killer Frost. By the way, thanks to this post by Gerry Conway I learned about DC´s new policy regarding copyrights that claims that Caitlin Snow was created by nobody . It´s just a big pile of BS to avoid that they have to pay anybody. The only problem is that one of their own biggest franchises - Superman - owes the bible for part of his origin so according to their own rules they would have to pay the catholic church royalties and every character in the Superman universe would be a derivation and they could not claim copyright and get any money on that.


Which of course those greedy bastiches will deny unto their last breath. As if we really needed any more proof that the NEW 52 is totally evil.



And to close things out here´s another Bill Ramsey classic.



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1 comment:

Terry Hooper-Scharf said...

I LOVED John Wesley Shipp's The Flash -though he stated in interviews he never read comics. That series had a knack of suddenly producing characters out of nowhere -oh, and Blue Flash or "Baby Flash" as we called him!