Sunday, November 22, 2015

Amazed by Aparo : Brave and the Bold 173

Since I´m probably going to post a story form Jim Aparo´s amazing run on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD this Christmas I thought it would be a great idea to put up this comic to help you through the time until the third volume of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT - JIM APARO comes around.


Which according to amazon will be on July the 19th 2016 and you know that when you read it on the internet it must be true. Anyway, it´s kind of nice to delude myself into believing that all my posts about Jim Aparo have finally shamed DC into publishing the next batch of stories from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and I´m sure THE PHANTOM STRANGER will be next to get the hardcover treatment as I just this Halloween did a post on him.

I just hope that WHEN DC finally decides to do this the reprint quality will be better than in the second volume where almost half the book is printed really bad. I don´t know if the quality of the originals was bad and this kind of bad reprinting is the reason why I never bought volumes 3 and 4 of CLASICOS DC - THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD ( my longtime readers may recall me mentioning that in my discontinued series on those comics ). As someone who has worked in a printing company I just can´t spend money on something our clients would have thrown into the can or at least they would not have paid for it. But it´s too soon to cry foul on something that may yet never happen so let´s turn our energies to something more worthwhile. You may ask yourself why I picked issue 173 from all the ones available and the answer is that I not so much picked it but more like stumbled upon it while searching for - what else - women in bikinis.

Yep, that sound more like ye old pervert you all know and hate. A few days ago I mentioned THE BIKINI OPEN in the video section of one of my posts and as that part got a bit too long I thought maybe I should do a post on that. I had already done a few posts on this on my other blog so there was already something I had written which I could adapt to new posts but most of it was just a lot of pictures and download links. Since I don´t like to include download links in this blog ( yes, I know I stray from this too often ) I planned on putting some YouTube videos in the posts and as they always get erased maybe a few animated GIFs. Just as a back up. 


Now I have tons of stuff on my laptop like old episodes of Doctor Who I want to watch again or some award shows or Hammer movies I still have to watch but I had deleted almost all of the videos I needed for this post.

Because most of the download links from the website where I originally found the videos don´t work anymore I had to go through all my old CD Roms but since I just sorted them out a few weeks ago it was not that big of a problem. It still took up all my time Yesterday and as usual I came across all kinds of old files which is one of the reasons why I try to keep the CD Roms in order. You never know when you want to listen again to old episodes of Comic Geek Speak, Los Comic Geekos or some now defunct podcasts like Red Jazz Radio. Or maybe listen to my old collection of jazz tracks or John Sinclair audio dramas. So there is all kinds of stuff and a lot of it is comic stuff which I had collected in Spain while I was looking for a job there a few months. Without a comic shop nearby and no disposable income I had to get most of my american comic reading from the internet or I had to order from my comic shop in Esslingen to send me some comics since I could pay the order from my account in Germany.

It is strange which countries ship to others sometimes. When I was in Spain I had no problems getting comics sent to me - I was a regular customer I have to add - but when I try to get comics sent from Spain here to Germany now the shipping cost is almost twenty bucks. With that kind of postage it´s almost cheaper to fly down there myself and buy the comics. Anyway, while I was in Spain I read a lot of my usual comic books through the internet ( don´t worry I bought them in printed form once I was back again and even bought some issues twice because I had them sent to Spain and needed an additional copy ) and while most I found were translated for spanish readers there were a few which I found in english. 


Now I think I have mentioned once or twice how difficult it sometimes can be to find the right material for a post which is one of the reasons why I´m thankful for all the people who put so much time and effort into posting all the comic pages - sometimes entire issues - on their blogs.

So when I came across some stuff from my favorite Geoff Johns run of JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA or from George Perez´s issues of LEGION OF THREE WORLDS, THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and LOGAN´S RUN - in english to boot - I had to snatch the opportunity. George Perez is one of my all time favorite artists and I´m still writing a lot of posts about him so I plan on using all that material, especially his issues of LOGAN`S RUN since I already did a long post on the movie and all the various adaptions to tv series and comics that ended up in my linked best of the best list .

Now within the folder with George Perez´ issues there was also another folder that said old stuff. Which was some pages from some weird mini series with Green Arrow but also a lot of stuff from Jim Aparo including the complete issue 173. And since the response to my Big Christmas Contest has been less than overwhelming I decided to take a page from link partner DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND and put it on the blog.

As usual I tried to put a little twist on it which usually means some black and white art or some foreign covers but this time there was not much I could find in that regard. There was not much I could find on the issue period - which finally made me decide to really post it. I don´t want to step on anyone´s toes or hear later " Why ? I posted this five years ago. " but apparently this is not out there. Like with a lot of the Jim Aparo issues of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD I read this issue first in the german version which was the first half of Ehapa´s BATMAN SONDERHEFT 24 .


Well, not the entire issue. As usual the german publisher crammed two american issues into on german Comicheft but to fit both of the issues - and have enough space for ads - two pages from issue 173 and three pages from issue 174 were cut . While it does make some sense to put both issues in one comic since it´s a two part story they could have as well put them into separate issues but I guess they didn´t have the rights for the NEMESIS back up. So for my american readers but especially my german readers here is One of us is not one of us ! by Gerry Conway and Jim Aparo. And to still make it a bit special I´m including all the ads, the letters page and the NEMESIS story by Cary Burkett and Dan Spiegle. 


Before we come to the video section of this post I have to mention the obligatory celebrity birthday which, because I was so busy the last few days was two days ago. For Today´s audiences this is probably not so important but 80s cinema cult icon Bo Derek turned 59 on this Friday. 


She appeared in a few movies when I was a teenager but the one that really put her on the map and forever cast her as the gold standard of bodily perfection all other women strove for was of course " 10 " the comedy with Dudley Moore in which she played - well, a perfect 10.

I don´t know how common it was to rate women on a scale from 1 to 10 before the movie but afterwards ALL men were doing it. Only from that moment on 10 meant Bo Derek. Yes, when I was in school she was the biggest erotic movie star with photos in in all the men´s magazines like PLAYBOY or LUI. I remember that I went to see BOLERO in the cinema which back then all guys in my class did. The movie was not that great in hindsight but it was all Bo Derek all nude. What more could you want ? I´m not sure if I also went to the theater to see that awful TARZAN movie which was in full effect of the downward spiral of her career. I mean Bo Derek was also fully naked in that one but unlike BOLERO the rest of the movie just dragged it all down. Strangely enough what was the begin of the end for Bo Derek was the beginning of Mile O´Keeffe´s career.

We´re starting off Today´s video section with a documentary about the 1960´s BATMAN tv show which is still so popular - not only with comic readers but with people in general - that brought us a hugely beloved and successful comic series with BATMAN 1966. Of course being DC and this a series which was popular with comic fans they HAD to go and cancel it.



Green Lantern also is in issue 173 of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD although officially Batman teams up with The Guardians of the Universe or A guardian. It´s says so right on the cover. For some reason on the splash page of the story they have Green Lantern opposite Batman in the little box for the guest star. I guess they thought it would be more dramatic than the guardian. The next video is a re - post because I first included it when the Green Lantern movie still hadn´t come out. I still think this song should have been in that movie as well as Ring Capacity by Kirby Crackle. Not that it would have saved the movie. Back then the comics were much better than the movie, now it´s the other way around. The last really good adaption of Green Lantern was in the animated series.



Because Christmas is coming around and I mentioned my time in Spain here is a video by El Comemente ( the braineater ) which I bookmarked ages ago as a tip off the hat to my spanish readers. For all those who are undecided what to get as Christmas presents besides the animated series of Green Lantern here is the BATMAN TOP CINCO DE MEJORES COMICS.



We are continuing our Doctor Who videos with another documentary ORIGINS which goes into detail about how the series came into being.



After I have finally watched all the old episodes of Doctor Who I still have to catch up on the current episodes because so far all the stories are in two parts and I always wait until the second part is available before watching it. Normally I would spend the Sunday looking for the newest episodes but lately THE FLASH and ARROW have been so excellent that I always wait until Wednesday before I look for new episodes. Especially ARROW has almost caught up to the sheer WOW ! factor of THE FLASH with a certain british mage whose own series has been canceled guest starring and last episode which resolved the plot of you - know - who who was you - know - what and that´s all that I can say without spoiling it. 

Speaking about excellent : here is another casting show video. I have never seen an episode of AUSTRALIA`S GOT TALENT but this trio called Uncle Jed just has got to be one of THE best groups on that show.



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