THE DEFENDERS: VALKYRIE’S QUEST AND MORE (1974-1975)

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post looks at the Defenders from where my previous post about them left off.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #17 (Nov 1974)

Title: Power Play

Villains: The Wrecking Crew

Defenders Roster: Dr Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Power Man (Luke Cage)

Synopsis: This story opens up an undetermined amount of time after the previous story, in which the newest Defender Son of Satan (Daimon Hellstrom) helped the team rescue the Hulk from Hell and Asmodeus.

Kyle Richmond (Nighthawk) has used some of his massive wealth to convert the Richmond Riding Academy on Long Island into a secret high-tech headquarters for the Defenders, so that they don’t have to keep using Dr Strange’s Greenwich Village home for such purposes. Continue reading

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BALLADEER’S BLOG’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM SEPTEMBER 25th

NJCAA

ONE-POINT WONDER – The ERIE COLLEGE KATS took it on the road against the COLLEGE AT BROCKPORT GOLDEN EAGLES. The Kats converted their 9-0 1st Quarter lead into a 16-2 advantage by Halftime. The 3rd Quarter ended with Erie College on top 23-2 but the 4th saw the Golden Eagles furiously rally only to fall just short as the Kats held on to win the game 23-22.  Continue reading

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SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH ROUNDUP OF NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOONS

Time for another current events roundup from Independent Voter Site Balladeer’s Blog, coming to you from an America where bloodthirsty Democrats continue to kill and to call for even more violence.

PRIVILEGED WHITE TERRORISTS OF ANTIFA (KLANTIFA) ONCE AGAIN CALL FOR MORE KILLING AND OTHER VIOLENCE.

THREE ARRESTED IN SHOOTING OF YOUTH BASEBALL COACH WHILE HE WAS LEADING HIS TEAM IN A PRAYER. Sorry, Democrats, he’s still alive! Arrested were Mahmood Abdelsalam Rababah, Ahmad Mawed, and Mustafa Mohammad Matalgah. I’m sure blackface performer Jimmy Kimmel will be claiming Mahmood, Ahmad and Mustafa were Trump supporters any minute now. 

CORRUPT FORMER FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY INDICTED. Hey, no one is above the law. More HERE.  

TRUMP EFFECT: THE U.S. ECONOMY GROWS EVEN MORE THAN PREDICTED UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP’S POLICIES. He is the greatest president for the working class and the poor during my lifetime.

TRUMP ASKS DEMOCRATS TO “STOP DEMONIZING LAW ENFORCEMENT” IN WAKE OF LATEST DEMOCRAT-INCITED SHOOTING AT ICE FACILITY. The shooter missed the ICE agents he targeted and accidentally killed two illegal immigrants in custody instead. More HERE.

PRESIDENT ALIYEV USES HIS U.N. ADDRESS TO ONCE AGAIN THANK TRUMP FOR BROKERING THE PEACE DEAL BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA.        

ALSO, QUATAR’S PRIME MINISTER CALLS PRESIDENT TRUMP THE “ONLY ONE” IN THE WORLD WHO CAN ACHIEVE PEACE IN GAZA

MORE ABOUT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FINDING AND STOPPING A PLOT TO DEFRAUD FOURTEEN BILLION, SIX HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS FROM MEDICARE, MEDICAID AND OTHERS. I will point out again that the corporations and other white-collar criminals that Trump is exposing like this keep growing more desperate to destroy him. No one else has been as successful against America’s cesspool of corruption as President Trump. Continue reading

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ALCAEUS: ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES

For this installment of my examinations of Greek comedies I will focus on one of the ancient Greek comedians whose entire corpus is very, very, VERY fragmentary, touching briefly on all of their known works. For background info on ancient Greek comedy plus my previous reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/ancient-greek-comedies/ 

ALCAEUS – This comic playwright came along for the tail end of Attic Old Comedy. Alcaeus’ career ranged from approximately 405 BC to the 380s BC and we have fragmentary remains of eight comedies from an unknown total body of work.

1. TRAGI-COMEDY – This play gave comedic treatment to the traditional rivalry between comedy and tragedy on the ancient Athenian stage. The comedy had fun with the inherent tensions between the two dramatic forms, including the fact that tragedy took pains to preserve the audience’s suspension of disbelief while comedy reveled in bursting the dramatic illusion via constant meta-theatrical breaking of the fourth wall.

Tragedy was the long-standing, prestigious and revered art form while comedy was the comparative newcomer and was still perceived as an upstart medium by the established writers of tragedy. One might also think of the Strauss opera Capriccio   with its light-hearted rivalry between the music and the libretto in operas, with a writer of each claiming greater importance. Continue reading

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THE CRYBABY KILLER (1958) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Before MST3K we had The Texas 27 Film Vault! (I often emphasize this to cut down on freakouts by people who don’t pay attention to the broadcast dates and accuse this show of ripping off MST3K, which is impossible because this show came first.)

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Per another Texas 27 Film Vault fan Saturday June 15th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: Before showing The Crybaby Killer our members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed an episode of the Mascot Serial The Phantom Empire (1935). 

In that classically campy serial Gene Autry played a singing cowboy who saves the world from an advanced underground civilization that comes complete with killer robots who wear cowboy hats.

FILM VAULT LORE: The movie ticket give-away this week was for Prizzi’s Honor.

THE MOVIE:

THE CRY BABY KILLER (1958) – Jack Nicholson made his film debut in this Roger Corman production. Jack plays a JD who mistakenly thinks he has shot two rival gang members to death and, believing he has nothing to lose, grabs hostages and holes up in a standoff with the police. Continue reading

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NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOONS ROUNDUP: SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

Independent Voter Site Balladeer’s Blog does another current events roundup from a country flooded with Democrat hatred, lies and callousness toward the survivors who mourn their dead victims. Long time readers may remember when I titled a 2017 blog post Democrats: The Smirking Jackasses of Life. Well, Democrat Fundamentalists have spent the years since then more than living up to that designation. Anyway, here we go.

DEMOCRAT PARTY

ALPHABET PLATFORM ADMITS THE BIDEN REGIME PRESSURED GOOGLE AND YOUTUBE TO SHUT DOWN DISSENTING OPINIONS. In other words, Democrats really did what they are lying about Trump doing to callous capitalist and blackface performer Kimmel.

THE FIFTEEN WEALTHIEST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS ALL ELECTED DEMOCRATS. This isn’t new and it continues to prove that Democrats haven’t been the party of the working class and the poor in a very, very long time.

DEMOCRAT-INCITED ATTACK ON ICE FACILITY RESULTS IN THE SNIPER ACCIDENTALLY KILLING TWO DETAINEES BUT NOT THE ICE AGENTS HE TARGETED.

REPUBLIC OF CONGO PRESIDENT PRAISES PRESIDENT TRUMP’S U.N. SPEECH.

GEORGIA DEMOCRATS IGNORE COURT ORDER TO SEAT TWO REPUBLICANS. It’s against the law to do that, but Democrats only pretend to get upset about ignored court orders when they want to use that against President Trump. 

VIDEO: THE LATEST MONTAGE OF FORMER DEMOCRATS DRIVEN TO LEAVE THAT HATE GROUP OVER THEIR CELEBRATION OF THE CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION AND THE HARASSMENT OF HIS WIDOW. Not being cruel to people who just lost a loved one isn’t a very high bar, but Democrats STILL weren’t capable of reaching it. 

DEFEATED AND HUMILIATED KAMALA HARRIS MORONICALLY CALLS PRESIDENT TRUMP A “COMMUNIST DICTATOR.” Unreal.

DEMOCRAT HATEMONGER JASMINE CROCKETT CALLS LATE VICTIM OF AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT “A RANDOM DEAD PERSON.” But Democrats unceasingly claim to be oh-so-compassionate. The mother responded HERE. Continue reading

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THE DAY OF RESIS (1897) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

THE DAY OF RESIS (1897) – This sci-fi novel was written by Lillian Frances Mentor. The main character is Enola Cameron, a strong-willed 20-year-old American woman from a well to do family. She purchases a very old goatskin document describing a hidden African kingdom called On.

The goatskin also features a rough map of the route to On. Enola proclaims that men don’t have a monopoly on leading lives of adventure and names herself the commander of a co-ed expedition to find On.

The participants consist of her lady friends, mixed male and female relatives and Henry, who is in love with her. In a gross element common to a lot of stories back then, he is also her cousin. Enola boldly leads the expedition to Africa and a march to the interior.

At length the party reaches the mountain range which supposedly conceals the Kingdom of On. Enola and company manage to find the secret tunnel that leads to the enormous canyon which houses On. Continue reading

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FORGOTTEN TELEVISION: A YEAR AT THE TOP (1977)

A YEAR AT THE TOP (1977) – What a cast! PAUL SHAFFER, GREG EVIGAN, Gabriel Dell (from the Dead End Kids/ Bowery Boys/ East Side Kids/ Little Tough Guys), Priscilla Morrill (Lou Grant’s wife Edie), Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas, Julie Cobb (Lee J. Cobb’s daughter) and Nedra Volz in her usual “sassy old lady” role. 

This Norman Lear series lasted just 5 half-hour episodes. Paul Shaffer actually left his gig as a musician on Saturday Night Live to take this role, but luckily it got canceled so quickly he was still able to go back to SNL.

Even worse, Greg Evigan turned down a role on Welcome Back, Kotter to star in this TV Turkey. But at least B.J. and the Bear lurked in his 1970s future. I’ll let you readers decide if that’s good or bad.

A Year at the Top sports a premise that sounds like it could work … as a made-for-tv movie, NOT a series. After three pilots – one as early as 1975 but still with Shaffer and Evigan – the producers went ahead with a tale centered around two would-be rock stars who sell their soul to the Devil’s son in exchange for the titular year at the top of the music industry. Continue reading

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QUISP VS QUAKE (1965-1973)

Previously, Balladeer’s Blog examined the Big Five Monster Cereals (Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy), now I’m taking a look at the forgotten Cereal War between two Quaker Oats brands – Quisp and Quake.

As a sign of the times, Quaker Oats had developed two new types of breakfast cereals but rather than name the pair themselves, they went to advertising agencies and Jay Ward Productions, creators of Cap’n Crunch, to come up with two advertising mascots for the new cereals.

Ward, famous for Bullwinkle and Rocky plus other characters, quasi-cannibalized his own Moon Men figures from his most famous series. The result was Quisp, a zany alien, as the name and mascot for one of the new cereals. For the other cereal, Ward came up with Quake, a muscular miner in a hardhat.

In a gimmick that the General Mills Monster Cereals mentioned above would later imitate, the animated Quisp and Quake would be rivals, each one insisting that their cereal was clearly the superior product. That tongue-in-cheek rivalry was even more successful than the Quaker Oats people had hoped.

The series of cartoon Quisp vs Quake commercials so appealed to their target audience of children that a true Battle of the Boxes broke out in grocery stores across the nation. Kids, as kids will do, badgered their parents to get the cereal represented by their preferred mascot even though there really wasn’t all that much difference between Quisp and Quake cereal. Continue reading

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SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND ROUNDUP OF NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOONS

Here’s another current events roundup from Independent Voter Site Balladeer’s Blog while we all wait to see who the Democrats will murder next, then lie about their late victim’s words and conduct. Plus they’ll refuse to be civilized and condemn killing people.

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND OTHERS PAY TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLIE KIRK, FREE SPEECH MARTYR KILLED BY THOSE HE TRIED TO BE CIVIL TOWARD. More HERE. And HERE.

MOURNERS SAY “WE ARE ALL CHARLIE.” But let’s hope this doesn’t fade away as quickly as “We are Charlie Hebdo” did back in 2015.    ARMED MAN IMPERSONATING A COP ARRESTED AT THE CEREMONY.

GELLER STATES “IN ONLY EIGHT MONTHS, PRESIDENT TRUMP LIFTED MORE PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY THAN BIDEN.” Donald Trump is the greatest president for the working class and the poor during my lifetime. 

PERSON WHO SHOT UP A SACRAMENTO ABC AFFILIATE IN HONOR OF JIMMY KIMMEL IS A PREVIOUS LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR FOR THE CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS. The term “Faculty Lounge Fascist” comes to mind.

ANIMAL SHOUTING “FREE PALESTINE” KILLS ONE AND WOUNDS MANY MORE AT A NEW HAMPSHIRE WEDDING. You’ll notice it’s NEVER the people who want Hamas to “free their hostages” who do all the killing.

MARK STEYN’S INSIGHTFUL LOOK AT THE CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION AND AN AMERICAN WOMAN IN ENGLAND BEING PRESSURED BY THE COUNTRY’S THOUGHT POLICE FOR SUPPORTING PRESIDENT TRUMP.

CHICAGO’S DEMOCRAT MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON INSANELY STATES “LAW ENFORCEMENT IS A SICKNESS THAT DOESN’T REDUCE CRIME.” It’s that kind of attitude that reduces Democrat-run cities to violent cesspools and makes their citizens cry out for federal help.   POLICE UNION HEAD CALLS MAYOR HYPOCRITE AND PIECE OF GARBAGE IN REPLY.

DEMOCRAT CONGRESSWOMAN JASMINE CROCKETT IDIOTICALLY STATES THAT COMMITTING CRIMES DOESN’T MAKE SOMEONE A CRIMINAL. What an imbecile. Continue reading

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