Tag Archives: batman

Millionaire by day, spanker extraordinaire by night. Fascist vigilante or the champion of the meek? Almost 80 years of history allows for a lot of versions of the dark knight …

Gallery: Moebius does America

Still a bit short of time, but here’s some art for your eyes to feast upon … This time it’s no one other than Moebius and I am not even going to bother and try to write him up. You don’t know who it is, click on the wiki link. The one thing I will say, though, is that it’s a pity that we cannot expect to be surprised by guys like him or Kirby anymore … Also, that has to be the best-looking Iron Man ever.

Mandrake in Film

So, Mandrake in films … I will leave out the boring details (yes, there’s the serial, the pilot made in 1954 and the TV movie from 1979), to focus on the important stuff, so grab on to your top hats because here we go!!!

  • From Federico Fellini’s Intervista, Mastroianni playing Mandrake:

  • From Vittorio De Sicca’s segment of Le Streghe (with Clint Eastwood!):

mandrake-le-streghe

The daydreaming scene, which takes about 1 minute, includes other characters like The Phantom, Sadik, Batman, Diabolik and Flash Gordon … The inspiration for Defenders of the Earth? Most likely! (Yes, I just mentioned crossovers again, what do you want from me?)

le-streghe

  • And, last but not least, the Turkish Mandrake Killing’e Karşı, which features:

A likable enough Mandrake (Jean DuJardin’s father?):

mandrake

Classic Killing:

killing

Killing in disguise as a chauffeur:

killing-driver

Lothar Abdullah in full minstrel show make-up (let it to the Turks to make it so easy to link Mandrake and Jurgens):

lothar

The best thing is that the movie is fully subtitled (quality is so-so, but if you need more than that, maybe this is not the perfect movie for you) and available (for now, but I guess with lost Turkish movies, this means forever) at youtube, so enjoy without moderation:

Update: Seems I spoke too fast and the movie has been removed … Hope someone else was able to enjoy it, but I am sure there are other ways to find it.

Four-wheeled Wonders of Comics: The Anti-Mobile and the Errorcar

As part of an effort to catalog all things forgotten in the world of comics, we start a new section dedicated to the incredible vehicles in the different comics universe. There’s not much of a plan for this section yet, but I was reading the wonderful World’s Finest #159 when I noticed that both stories there (both the main Superman and Batman feature and the Green Arrow reprint) featured absolutely insane cars. My initial thought was ‘What are the chances?’ and then immediately ‘I need to find out’, so we will try to see if there’s anything better, car-related, than this issue.

The magic in this book starts with the cover:

WorldsFinest159

What’s that? Grant Morrison wrote comics back in the 60’s under a fake name? It possibly hasn’t happened yet!

The whole issue is brilliant from start to finish, with the convoluted secret origins of the Anti-Superman and the Anti-Batman being hard to explain in mere words. You could do worse things than getting yourself a copy (Showcase Presents World’s Finest Vol. 3 or Superman/Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Vol. 1, I don’t think they include the Green Arrow backup, though).

Of course, if we are talking about cars about the Anti-Batman, that can only mean one thing … Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … the Anti-Mobile!

anti-mobile

And from the backup reprint of Green Arrow (who actually had his own Showcase volume reprinting this story: Showcase Presents: Green Arrow, Vol. 1), from a story that involves a clown version of Green Arrow (following up on the birth of the Bizarros in the Superman comics the previous year) and a gang of furries stealing the Arrowmobile, the Errorcar:

errorcar

Appendix: And just in case someone thinks I am making this stuff up, here are the furries:

furries1 furries2

Improbable crossovers

As you might have seen on the collage I posted a few posts ago with my collection of inter-company crossovers, I am a bit obsessed with them at the moment. The quality is generally very poor but there’s something inherently fun about them.

I would like to take this moment to call for a minute of silence to the following crossovers, which might never happen:

Except the one with Darkseid and Thanos, of course … It’s already happened!

And, as a bonus, the King wanted to join the party too:

Captain America vs Batman

Captain America vs Batman by Jack Kirby

A week of art: Tradd Moore

Here is another great artist who’s been getting a bit more (very deserved) attention lately, Tradd Moore. If you want to enjoy more of his hyper-kinetic art, try either of the Luther Strode books (the only one in trade at the moment is The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, Vol. 1), the level of detail is insane!

Seems he’s getting more and more cover work from Marvel these days, so I guess sequential art from Marvel cannot be far behind.