Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 63 of 581)

The PopCult Comix Bookshelf

SMASH!
written and drawn by various creators
Rebellion/Treasury of British Comics
$6.99

SMASH! is a one-shot anthology comic featuring a mixture of new and veteran talents reviving eight long-dormant British comic book concepts in seven short stories.

This book is right in my wheelhouse as an anglophile who loves short-form stories and revivals of obscure characters.

The stories range from six to ten pages, and there’s not a bad one in the batch.

I was not familiar with any of these characters, but each story is preceded by a page with a quick history of the character to bring you up to speed. The concepts are straight out of the same mid-1960s primoridal ooze that gave us The Prisoner, Captain Scarlett, Thunderbirds and the original Doctor Who. With a mix of science fiction, the occult, anti-heroes, super-evolved cavemen and a giant robot gorilla, this cmic book is sequential art heaven for me.

More than anything else, SMASH! reminded me of the pure Brit-feuled comics-loving joy that I first experience nearly forty years ago when I found the first issue of Warrior Magazine at Comic World (then in Nitro).

This is all-new stuff to me, but each concept has a rich backstory, and makes me very likely to seek out the reprints of the original stories of these characters that Rebellion/Treasury of British Comics has been publishing of late.

SMASH! was originally solicited early last year and was to have been published in May, but the pandemic, combined with crossing the Atlantic meant that I didn’t get my copy (ordered from Westfield Comics as a gamble) until December. I didn’t have time to read it until a week ago.

Sometimes with a gamble, you hit the jackpot.

This book is packed with greatness.

The Spider written by Rob Williams and John McCrea revives “The World’s Greatest Super-Villain,” The Spider, who is so super-intelligent and smart, but also so vain, that he has been known to turn on his criminal allies and actually help put them away. This story explains where he’s been for the last few decades, and leaves everything wide open for a full-blown revival.

Thunderbolt the Avenger by Helen O’Hara and Valentina Pinti serves as an origin story for the new person who has taken on the mantle of the original Thunderbolt, who gains superpowers for two hours at a time thanks to a special wristwatch. This is a straight-up superhero adventure.

Johnny Future by  Anita Break and Tom Raney continues the adventures of a “missing link” who was discovered, on an expedition, then brought back to the UK where an accident caused him to super-evolve into a man from the future with all sorts of super-abilities. This story finds him in suspended animation to prevent him from evolving to the point where he accidentally destroys the Earth.

The Steel Claw by Charlie Higson and Charlie Adlard (Adlard being the artist most associated with The Walking Dead), is set on December, 31st, 1999, and tells a lost adventure of The Steel Claw, a British super-spy who, due to an electrical accident, has gained the ability to turn invisible, with only his prosthetic hand remaining visible.

In this story he has to deal with a Millenium plot to assassinate the Queen. Mick Hucknall is involved. Elton John also shows up, but not really.

Mytek the Mighty by Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Anand Radhakrishman bring us up to date on Mytek, a giant Robot Gorilla created to bring peace to a region of Africa. Mytek was stolen by a dwarf named Gogra, but was later recovered, and did battle with a series of other giant robots under the control of Gogra. In this story, the long-missing Mytek is discovered, and appropriated by a billionaire with unknown intentions.

Cursitor Doom/Jason Hyde by Maura McHugh and Andreas Butzbach unites two classic paranormal investigators in one cute and amusing story.

House of Dolman by Simon Furman (Transformers) and Chris Weston (Judge Dredd, Enemy Ace, The Twelve) is the shortest story in the book, but also my favorite.  Dolman is a wheelchair-bound eccentric inventor/ventriloquist who has created a team of animatronic puppets, each of whom he provides with a unique personality and voice.

Naturally, they fight crime while he controls them remotely. My description does not do justice to how much fun this story is.

Every story in this book left me wanting more. I would love to see this anthology continue, with the same creative teams. After decades of decompressed storytelling afflicting the comics industry, it’s an absolute treat to read top-quality comics that give you a fully-realized plot in six to ten pages. This is what good comics should do.

SMASH! might still be available from hipper comic book shops, or online dealers, or you can order it directly from the publisher.

The AIR is going to be in rerun mode Tuesday.  Your PopCulteer has been a little under the weather (It’s not the ‘rona, don’t worry) and didn’t feel like finishing this week’s Radio Free Charleston, or recording a new episode of The Swing Shift.

So we’ll be bringing you high-quality encores all day Tuesday. However, I do have an RFC in progress, and I plan to finish it up and debut it Thursday at 3 PM. The Swing Shift will return with a new episode next Tuesday.

Luckily, our repeats are better than everybody else’s new shows, so tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in our right-hand column, to hear our high-quality independent internet radio all the damned day long!

To make up a little for the reruns, check PopCult later Tuesday afternoon for a review of a really cool comic book, plus a surprise or two.

This week’s art is a quick mixed media piece I did Sunday afternoon/evening. It’s a portrait of Lana Clarkson (based on photos from the internet), an actress who starred in a few genre movies in the 1980s, and had a loyal cadre of fans. She was a fixture on the convention circuit, and by all accounts was a friendly, outgoing and upbeat person. Sadly, she is most famous for being murdered by a former record producer, who was sentenced to life in prison for shooting her in the head. That happened back in 2003.

The news broke Sunday morning that her murderer had died in a hospital a month after contracting COVID in prison. Rather than mention him here by name, I chose to celebrate the life of his victim.

This is mixed media on watercolor paper, about six inches high.

If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday at 9 AM on The AIR, we bring you six episodes of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack. Nigel alternates weeks with NOISE BRIGADE, our Ska/Punk showcase.  Then you can tune into an encore of a recent episode of  Prognosis at 3 PM. This week Herman Linte brings us a salute t Robert Fripp.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Above you see the first installment of Spider-man’s adventures on the 1970s children’s educational show from PBS, The Electric Company.  Three years before his first live-action, primetime series, Spider-man appeared as a regular character on The Electric Company, starting with the show’s fourth season.

The Electric Company was a production of The Children’s Television Workshop, who introduced the show after the success of their first project, Sesame Street. The Electric Company was a half-hour show targeted at older kids, and focused on English and Grammer, without covering Math and other subjects like its predecessor.  It also featured a cast of notable perfomers who would go on to greater fame, like Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno and Irene Cara.  Animated segments featured mostly uncredited voice work by Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers and many others, and before they brought in Spider-man, the show worked out a deal to include new animated segments of The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, directed by Chuck Jones.

As with Sesame Street before it, The Electric Company attracted a large adult viewership, and when they signed a deal with Marvel Comics to include Spider-man, it was proof that Marvel had fully crossed over into the mainstream.  The first season of Sesame Street included animated segments starring Superman and Batman, but five years later, Spider-man was big enough to be considered a hipper, newer superhero to help trick kids into learning.

Spider-man appeared in 29 full-blown segments (plus a few cameo appearances) over the course of three seasons of The Electric Company, and Marvel published a kid-friendly companion comic until 1982.  It took many years before Spider-man finally made it to the Big Screen, but prior to his primetime TV show, he had already worked his way into the hearts and mnds of America’s kids.

Because of rights issues, only handful of these have been officially released commercially, but some of them do turn up on the the Shout Factory releases of The Electric Company. You can probably find all of them tucked away in various corners of YouTube.

Here are a couple of other installments. They have a certain charm, with Spider-man speaking only in word balloons, to encourage reading, and short, simple stories.

This week we go back to November, 2014, for a loaded full-length episode of Radio Free Charleson.

This week Radio Free Charleston presented music from Anthony Hoey, Diablo Blues Band and The Company Stores, plus Third MInd Incarnation and Frank Panucci animation from the RFC vault and more.

This show was called  “Hellblinki Doll Head Shirt.” and you can read the full production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
January 15, 2021

Friday On The AIR

Friday afternoon we offer up this year’s first new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio shation. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music enters 2021 with a line-up of classic tracks from the golden era of excess and intense dance floor fever. Just check the playlist for this bodacious bit of boogeymania…

MIRRORBALL 016

Odyssey “Use it up and Wear It Out”
Barry White “You See The Trouble With Me”
Tina Charles “I Love To Love”
Boney M “Rasputin”
Patti Brooks “After Dark”
Bacarra “Yes Sir I Can Boogie”
Eruption “I Can’t Stand The Rain”
Gibson Brothers “Cuba”
MFSB “The Sound of Philadelphia”
The Three Degrees “Dirty Old Man”
Eddie Kendricks “Ain’t No Smoke Without Fire”
Ashford and Simpson “Found A Cure”

You can now hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at 10 AM, Sunday at 11 PM, Tuesday at 1 PM and Wednesday at 7 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a very special episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that is near and dear to your PopCulteer’s heart. Sydney devotes the entire program to a two-hour mixtape of DEVO music from the first dozen years of the band’s existence.

Sydney didn’t give me a full playlist, but she assures me that the show will feature a mix of their hits (“Whip It,” “Beautiful World”), deep album cuts (“Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA,” “I Desire”) and their trademark cover songs (“Satisfaction,” “Working In a Coal Mine,” “Secret Agent Man”).

DEVO is one of my favorite bands, and I didn’t know that Sydney was doing this show until yesterday, so I’m really psyched up for it.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer.  Check back for fresh content every day and all our way-cool regular features.

Cheesy Toy Knockoffs

Way back in the 1990s, your PopCulteer wrote a monthly action figure column for Toy Trader Magazine. In Facts on Figures, I covered the action figure world, and as an adjunct, I would do a sidebar each month called Cheesy Knockoff of the Month, where I would find a cheesy knockoff and sarcastically rip it to shreds.

I have occasionally revisted the idea here in PopCult, even though there are more than a dozen websites that do the same thing on a daily basis now. It’s fun to get out the hatchet and have at some poor unsuspecting delightfully awful imitation toy.

Today we’re going to look at Best Food Friends, a product, which I believe is no longer being produced, by PlayMind Ltd, a Chinese company who’s range of toys is sold at TJ Maxx and several online catalog. My favorite toy that they make is “Licensed Car Collection,” which is, of course, not licensed.

But today we are going to look at their product line that bears more than a passing resemblence to Hasbro’s classic, Mr. Potato Head.

A quick bit of history may be in order. Originally released in 1952, the first version of Mr. Potato Head was just a collection of facial and body parts that kids would attach to a real potato. The first toy advertised on TV, Mr. Potato Head was an instant hit.

In 1964, spurred by the pointy pieces not being safe and parents complaining of their kids playing with rotting food, Hasbro rounded the edges of pieces, and supplied a plastic tuber for Potato-eaded hijinks.

This is the Mr. Potato Head that I had as a kid.

This was the Mr. Potato Head that I grew up with, and his universe expanded to include Mrs. Potato Head, plus assorted plastic veggie and fruit friend like Oranges, Peppers, Cucumbers, Carrots and more. The cool thng was that you could interchange all the eyes, mouths and other features, and if you wanted to, you could create a Picasso-esque portait with unconventional eye alignments and such.

However, the parts of Mr. Potato Head were still too small for the tightening toy safety regulations, so in 1975 Mr. Potato Head was redesigned once again, and took the form that most folks know today, where you can store the pieces inside his potato body, and most folks just try to make him look like he does in the Toy Story movies.

When Hasbro redesigned Mr. Potato Head in 1975, all of his non-potato buddies disappeared.

Mr. Potato Head was no longer hanging out with his old gang.

Mr. Potato Head is, to this day, a top-selling toy icon, and it’s been decades since Hasbro has made any non-spudly friends for him, so PlayMind decided to fill the gap.

That’s where the Best Food Friends come into play. I found these in an online store, Lakeside, and it appears that they are no longer being made, but probably didn’t sell too well to begin with, so they have plenty left in stock.

The BFFs are sold in plain white boxes with only a barcode and manufacturer information.

I don’t know if these were ever sold in brick-and-mortar stores in regular retail packaging, but the white boxes add a cheesy charm to the concept.

The figures are stylistically similar to the post-1975 Mr. Potato Head.

There are three figures, with somewhat odd names. “Violetino” is an eggplant, with male attributes and his accessories are a tie and a tablet. “Beauty Belle” is a feminine red bell pepper, with blonde hair in pigtails, a giant lollipop, and she comes with a pepper stem that can take the place of her hair. Lastly we have a floret of broccoli with the confusing name, “Mrs. Afro.” Mrs. Afro seems to be an older character who comes with glasses, a butterfly for her hair and a shopping bag. She also has no nose, or even a place for one.

Right off the bat, all three figures are smaller than Mr. Potato Head by an inch or two. None of them have a place in their body to store extra pieces, and while the paper insert (printed in color on one side) says that they have compatible parts with each other, that is not entirely true.

In some cases, the parts don’t seem compatible with the figure that they accompany.

Ears don’t like to go in all the way, and on two of them, neither do the arms. The arms are not bendable, but they can hold their accessories.

Then there’s the mystery of the missing Best Food Friend. We’ll get to him in a moment, but let’s look at the figures themselves first…

Violetino, who should be called “Mr. Eggplant Head,” looks the most like his potato-y inspiration. He only comes with one of each of his facial features, so his play value is somewhat limited if you only get the single figure.

Violetino, mostly unassembled.

He looks a bit like Mormon Missionary version of Mr. Potato Head

His ears and arms don’t fit well, but at least he can stand on his own. He comes with a tablet, which raises a question we’ll look at later.

There are other weird quirks with Violetino (including that name) but the strangest is that his collar and necktie mount behind his mouth.

Next up we have Beauty Belle, who, in spite of her name, appears to be a little girl character. True to form for a cheesy knockoff, my Beauty Belle came with two right ears. Her giant removable hair piece is so heavy that she can’t stand up well on her own. Also, her parts just don’t fit well at all.

True Story: After the photo shoot, I was unable to get all the parts to fit back in the box.

I know, what’s the deal with the yellow lips? Note how poorly the parts fit, too.

She’s a bit of a cool throwback to Mr. Potato Head’s pal, Pete the Pepper, but again, if she’s the only figure you get, you’re stuck with her in one basic mode.

Then we have Mrs. Afro. I suppose she took her name from the fact that her broccoli floret hair does look a bit like an afro hairstyle, but I think it’s safe to assume that this character was named by somebody for whom English is not their native language.

You get the impression that more time was spent on concept than execution

I don’t know why they went with a butterfly instead of a nose, but it made for a cool lighting effect.

The Pepper makes for a decent guy. Insert your own joke here.

You can trade her parts out with the other figures in the line, but they just don’t look right. Peppers don’t have florets you know.

I did do a little mixing up of the parts. The Pepper works better as a dude. The Egglant looks wrong with blond pigtails.

Lastly, we have to address the missing fourth Best Food Friend. He’s not shown on the instruction sheet, but if you look at Violetino’s tablet, you will see a tiny drawing of Larry The Leek. He looks like the coolest of the bunch and has a ball cap and a basketball. And he’s winking! I mean, how cool is that?

Where the hell is Larry? Also, there is no such thing as 14:30 PM, dammit!

Though his name may sound like an incontinent character from “Guys and Dolls,” Larry The Leek is actually an interesting non-existent addition to the ranks. He would provide an additional set of male face pieces, and would allow for these toys to be used to reenact “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

I mean, isn’t that what everybody does with Mr. Potato Head?

But he’s not here. Could it be that, on the slow boat from China, during that long and grueling trip, that the Best Food Friends had a Donner Party moment, and reduced their ranks by one friend?

The world may never know.

The Wonderful World of Wax Wrappers
compiled by Jason Young
Self Published
$20 plus shipping from Canada on eBay

This book is a real treat for fans of old-school non-sport trading cards. It’s a compilation of Wax Wrappers, which were phased out in favor of foil wrappers with ultra-high-quality printing.

The Wonderful World of Wax Wrappers celebrates the art and innovation that was necessitated by the limitations of printing on wax paper before all that happened.

Jason Young, who put this book together, doesn’t try to create a detailed reference work. This is a slim volume of gorgeous full-color photos of vintage trading card wrappers released from the late 1950s to around 1990. There’s a brief essay in the front of the book, and informative captions throughout, but he lets the art be the star. An added bonus is that Jason is based in Canada, and some of these wrappers are variants of the ones that are familiar to collectors in the US.

Because the printing presses used for the wax wrappers were, shall we say, a tad funky, the vast majority of wax wrappers had line-art, rather than photographs. Photos just didn’t look right when printed with limited colors on food-grade wax paper.

Food-grade wrappers were used because the vast majority of trading cards included a stick of bubble gum in those days.

Translating photographic images into low-res three-to-five color images resulted in artwork that come out looking like mid-1960s Andy Warhol silkscreens. These wrappers were Pop Art before Pop Art was a thing.

From Young’s eBay page, we see some of the TV shows that made it into trading cards in the 1970s.

In fact, on the few occasions when they did try to use a photo on a wax wrapper (Supergirl, for instance) it looked pretty bizarre. In most cases, these wrappers are like miniature billboards, with beautifully simplified images representing their subjects.

As a long-time writer for Non-Sport Update, I’m neck-deep in this stuff most of the time, but it’s really cool to have a book that just looks at the art created for this aspect of the non-sport hobby.

Most of the wrappers are presented larger than they were originally printed, and for fans of pop culture, this is a virtual timeline of the period from 1960 to 1990. We get all the high-water marks: Batman; Marvel Comics; Gilligans Island; Star Trek; Elvis; Happy Days; Jaws; Universal Monsters; WWF and several pages of wax wrappers for cards devoted to Star Wars and its sequels. Back in the day,  lots of movies and TV shows with kid appeal made their way into the world of trading cards. You’ll see a lot of them here.

The Wonderful World of Wax Wrappers is available from Jason Young on eBay, but you want to act fast. Young says that he is on his third and final printing, and if you love pop culture and trading cards, you probably don’t want to miss out on this book.

I’m taking a moment away from my normal routine of telling you about cool things like toys, books, comics, music and whatnot to tell you about an important thing.

Beth McCarthy, the daughter of longtime PopCult/RFC friend Tony Slack, is in need of her second double-lung transplant, and Tony has a GoFundMe page up to help with the expenses.  Beth was born with a rare medical condition and battled respiratory issues her whole life. Eventually it became apparent that this young mother of twins would need a lung transplant in order to survive.

Tony put on a variety of fundraising events under the banner of “A Beth of Fresh Air,” including improv shows with his group, The Mighty Schmucks, and they banked enough money to help the family get through the crisis, which involved Beth relocating to Pittsburgh with her mother for the surgery and a recovery period, and medical bills that stagger the imagination. I wrote about one of these in October, 2018.

Beth was on the transplant list. The family had to wait for a pair of lungs to become available.

The call came in April of 2020, and by July, Beth was back home, hopefully settling into a normal life.

But it was not to be. As Tony explains in the GoFundMe listing…

Beth received her new lungs this past April.  Unfortunately in the tradition of 2020, things have took an unexpected turn.  Beth is now hospitalized due to a series of ailments, and is facing a second double-lung transplant at UPMC.  That means more medical bills, several months of living in Pittsburgh, and all of the expenses involved with living away from home.

Beth is a real, live miracle.  After receiving her 1st transplant she got married, rode bikes with her children, and went hiking.  Lets do what we can to make sure she gets back to where she belongs again.  Which is raising her beautiful babies and growing old with the man of her dreams, Tim.

In addition to the need for a 2nd lung transplant,  Beth’s mother April has decided to become her primary care giver.  This involves April putting her own job aside to give Beth the care she needs up until,  and after the transplant.  Due to this April will also be in need of financial assistance to help cover her own bills and expenses.

Let’s show 2020 that we are stronger than anything it can throw at Beth!  And more than anything, let’s pray for this beautiful and strong young woman.

Once again, we only offer up one new episode of our speciality music shows Tuesday on The AIR with a fresh edition of Psychedelic Shack. RFC and The Swing Shift are taking the week off because plans changed and your PopCulteer got hit with a big last-minute rush job. We’ll be back next week at full strength.

Meanwhile, you may point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to that happy little embedded radio player over in the right column of the blog.

Tuesday on The AIR at 10 AM you can tune in for an encore of Radio Free Charleston V5 Episode 26, which you can read about HERE. This edition of the show opens with a very relevant tune by John Ellison, and offers up three full hours of great local and international music. We will return next week with a brand-new show that will open with an exciting new local metal band.

At 1 PM we encore last week’s episode of Curtain Call, which is split between being a tribute to the late Rebecca Luker and a showcase for the Ratatouille Musical on Tik Tok.

2 PM sees a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack. Nigel Pye blows our mind with a full hour of trippy-hippy brain-expanding music from the golden era of musical experimentation.

Check out the playlist….

Psychedelic Shack 038

Speed, Glue and Shrinki “Stoned Out of My Mind”Silbrerbart “God”
Wishbone Ash “The Pilgrim”
REO Speedwagon “Dead At Last”
Farm “Jungle Song”
The Mads “Fly Away”
Mother Sunday “Midnight Graveyard”
Blood Sweat and Tears “Go Down Gamblin'”

Psychedelic Shack alternates weeks with NOISE BRIGADE Tuesdays at 2 PM, with replays Wednesday at 10 PM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 1 PM, Saturday at 10 AM, Sunday at 9 AM and Monday at 7 PM.

At 3 PM, The Swing Shift brings you three encore episodes. Our Swing showcase will return with new episodes next week. You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 7 PM and Saturday at 5 PM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.