Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Monday, August 8, 2011

Picture Perfect Special:
Princesses of Mars, Part Twelve

Welcome to another trip to Mars, where beautiful alien princesses prove every day they don't take crap from anyone, no matter how many arms they have.

Kicking things off, we've got another retro-portrait of John Carter and his love-of-the-ages Dejah Thoris from Michael Kaluta.

By Greg Motafis
By Aaron Lopresti
By Tom Hodges
By Gene Colan

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Who knew the ocean was that deep?

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues (1956)
Starring: Kent Taylor, Kathy Downs, and Michael Whale
Director: Dan Milner
Rating: One of Ten Stars

When dead fishermen and skin-divers start washing up on the beach near a small university, with radiation burns on their bodies, marine researcher and scientific genius crack-pot Dr. Ted Stevens (Taylor) senses that maybe it is his theories that have been put to nefarious use. He hooks up with the beautiful Lois (Downs), the daughter of a marine researcher who is at the very least Stevens' equal in the scientific genius crack-pot department, Prof. King (Whale). Can it be that King has accidentally (or purposefully) created a super-weapon using oceanography and atomic radiation? The agents of sinister foreign powers and the square-jawed Defense Department investigators think so... and the bizarre sea creature lurking in the waters off the coast tends to agree with the theory as well.


"The Beast from 10,000 Leagues" is a Z-grade example of the 1950s-style sci-fi/monster flick where a scientist successful proves that we won't have better living through science, and that there really are Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know.

Unfortunately, the extreme low budget (much of which was probably spent on a rather nicely done special effect toward the end of the movie--assuming that wasn't footage borrowed from some other movie), tragically bad and dull camera work, the same rowboat used in every shot that requires a boat, a goofy-looking sea monster whose preferred method of attack seems to be hugging his victims to death, and a script that's even more illiterate than the film's title might imply add up to a disaster of a movie. Its only saving grace is that it moves along fast enough, and offers enough moments of unintentional comedy, to not send the viewer completely into a boredom coma.




Friday, August 5, 2011

The coming of the Space Girls!

The "Princesses of Mars" post series is starting to wind down--I think I've just about mined that vein for the best it has to offer--but we're moving on from sci-fi flavored fantasy to pulp fiction-tinged space fantasy! Please welcome the Spacegirls to Shades of Gray!

If current plans hold, each post in this series will present a couple pin-up style Spacegirl drawings and a batch of Travis Charest's "Spacegirl" comic strip. There will be a new installment every Friday until I run out of stuff (or until someone asks me to stop tromping all over their copyrights).

By Mark Brooks



SPACEGIRL
by Travis Charest
Part One

To Be Continued....

By Josh Howard

(Much of what will be appearing in this series comes from the art collections of Jeff Amason and Eric Thrower, and the imagination and amazing talent of Travis Charest.)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Proof Smoking Will Stunt Your Growth

Gadzoopie, the delinquent son that the very mention of causes Godzilla to level not only Tokyo but also Osaka, took up smoking shortly after he hatched. Now 35, he's barely taller than Tom Cruise.


(Gadzoopie is seen here with his wife Flo, arriving at my house last month for the July 4 BBQ. He may not be big enough to trash cities, but he sure did a number on my downstairs bathroom. The plumbing still isn't working right.)

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

'Bat Lash' is lighthearted reading of Wild West

Showcase Presents: Bat Lash (DC Comics, 2009)
Writers: Denny O'Neil, Sergio Argones, Len Wein, and Cary Bates
Artists: Nick Cardy, Dan Speigle, George Moliterni, and Mike Sekowski
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

"Bat Lash" is one of the many titles and characters in DC Comics' long publishing history that was deserving of greater success than it enjoyed. The series centered on the title character, a drifter who moved from town to town in the Wild West of the 1860s, trying to avoid trouble but always finding it... usually because of an attractive woman or because of his sense of right and wrong couldn't let him stand by while innocent people suffer.

From the collection of Alex Johnson

Collected in this budget-priced, black-and-white book are all of the initial Bat Lash tales from 1968 and 1969 (including his debut appearance in "DC Showcase" and every issue of his short-lived solo series), another try-out tale from the late 1970s, and a trio of back-up tales from "Jonah Hex." Skipped entirely are the stories where Bat Lash served as an ongoing supporting character in the excellent "Scalp Hunter" series from "Weird Western Tales" (which I hope means DC Comics will be collecting those as well, even if it's a slim hope because the Political Correctness Brigade would probably freak out over the title), so there's a little bit of a disconnect from the 1960s stories where he's a shiftless rogue to the ones from the 1980s where he's a professional gambler.

The tone of the "Bat Lash" series has been compared to some commentators to the TV series "Maverick," but a more accurate comparison would be to the second-tier Italian westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you enjoy the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer Western vehicles, I think this is a book that will be right up your alley.

Most of the stories in the book feature art by Nick Cardy. His is a style that never impressed me on his superhero work, but his covers and artwork on DC horror titles like "Witching Hour" immediately spring to mind when I consider comics art that is top-notch. With "Bat Lash," he is just as great, and these are comics I admired as a kid and that I admire even more as an adult. Whether Bat Lash is comically trying to escape death at the hands of a fling's angry husband, or tragically carrying a dying child across the desert, Cardy invokes exactly the right mood at the right time. His artwork is so effective that you can even just look at the pictures and get what is happening on the page, story, mood, and all. This is work that many modern comic book artists should be forced to study and internalize as most of them can't tell a story if their lives depended on it.

"Showcase Presents: Bat Lash" is slimmer than most of the DC Comics books in this format, and it can be digested in a single long afternoon. However, the price is right, and if you're a lover of Westerns or just good comic books, it's a book you want to pick up.