Happy Batman Day!

Some say it's on the third Saturday in September. Others say it's on September 21. Whatever the case, Batman Day is as mysterious as the Caped Crusader it is named after! And we're celebrating it with this gallery of fine art portraying Batman along with his friends and foes!

More Paul Gulacy: Promo art for 'Sabre'

It's Black History Month, so I am throwing out a couple questions for the assemblage: Was the Don McGregor scripted and Paul Gulacy/Billy Graham illustrated series "Sabre" the first American sci-fi comic book to feature a Black headliner?

And while it wasn't the first series to feature an inter-racial relationship--I believe that honor goes to Marvel's "Iron Fist"--was the first to have an inter-racial couple with children?

Picture Perfect Wednesday with Paul Gulacy

Although I think the poor ladies might disagree about this being a perfect day....

Countdown to Halloween with Vampirella

There are 26 Days Left...

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Exodus: When God Layeth Down the Law

Moses and the Ten Commandments, by Paul Gulacy

Half a century later, there has yet to be made a more impressive Biblical movie than Cecile B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments". It also remains one of the most successful Hollywood remakes of all time, being the second movie version of the Book of Exodus from the Old Testament that De Mille helmed; the first being a 1923 almost-as-grand silent version.

Is there a better way to celebrate Passover/Easter than to watch this great classic movie? (Well, except perhaps reading the original Old Testament story upon which it was based and taking part in various religious observances as your faith might dictate? I suppose either of THOSE might be better ways... but it's a great movie!)

Picture Perfect Special: In the dark, all cats are gray...

... especially if one of them is Catwoman!

Here's a selection of illos of Batman and his oldest and most dedicated "frenemy." (Comics Trivia: On at least one of an infinite number of alternate reality Earths, were marrued after she gave up her thieving ways and he hung up the Batsuit. Their daughter grew up to be the suerpheroine, Huntress. That Bat and Cat are portrayed in the last three drawings.)

Click here to read reviews of graphic novels starring Catwoman over at Cinema Steve.

Picture Perfect Wednesday:Paul Gulacy and Blood on Black Satin

This installment features a little more text than usual. Please bear with me.

Of Half-Remembered Horrors....

When I was a kid in the early 1980s, I got my hands on a few issues of "Creepy" and/or "Eerie" magazines and fragmented memories of the art for those stories have stuck with me-perhaps even haunted me--ever since.

One tale involved a guy who was either a real estate broker or just some poor schmuck who's car had broken down, who goes to visit a house on a hill that turns out to be a giant monster. I remember how the runner carpet in the hallway turns out to be a tongue.

Another take involved some kids and a bully who ends up locked in a fridge at the end. I think the art must have been by Tom Sutton, because I remember it being both scary and very ornate.

And then there's the story of a private detective or reporter or something like that who was fighting a killer in a jack-o-lantern mask, as he and a girl were trying to escape the clutches of a Satanic cult. I remember wishing I could have read the whole story--as what I was reading was but one chapter in a multi-part series--and I remember knowing that it would probably have been very cool, because it was by the same artist who was doing the James Bond-esque Kung Fu stuff over in "Master of Kung Fu," Paul Gulacy.



Of Horror Rediscovered....

Some 25-30 years later, I have finally gotten to read not only that half-remembered chapter with the Gulacy art, but the entire story, thanks to Joe Bloke's excellent Grantbridge Street and Other Misadventures blog.

Titled "Blood on Black Satin," it was a three-part series by Gulacy and writer Doug Moench, and it was well worth the decades-long wait. It's ever bit as excellent as the other masterworks these two collaborated on, such as the two "Six From Sirius" mini-series and their run on "Master of Kung Fu". It is perhaps some of the very best material to every appear in "Eerie," even if was printed during the magazine's twilight years in the 1980s.

Joe Bloke has posted crystal clear scans of the stories, and if you're a fan of gothic horror, I recommend you go read them. It's truly great stuff. Click on the links to read each chapter, and click on the sample illos to see larger versions. (The same is true of the scanned pages at Grantbridge Street.

Blood on Black Satin, Part One (from Eerie #109)


Blood on Black Satin, Part Two (from Eerie #110)


Blood on Black Satin, Part Three (from Eerie #111)



Click here to visit Paul Gulacy's website.