HOPEFULLY I CAN RETURN TO NORMAL POSTING AND VISITING VERY SOON.
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STILL FIGHTING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS – IT’S STILL NOT LETTING ME VISIT OR LIKE OR COMMENT AT MANY OF YOUR SITES.
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X-MEN: THE NEW TEAM IN 1975
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the first twenty stories of the “All New, All Different” X-Men beginning in 1975. I have a soft spot for superhero stories because reading them as a kid served as a gateway to two of my adult passions – mythology and opera.
GIANT-SIZE X-MEN Vol 1 #1 (May 1975)
Title: Deadly Genesis
Villain: Krakoa
NOTE: This was the very FIRST appearance of the new team of X-Men who replaced the original, blander team launched in 1963. That team’s original series had been canceled and reduced to reprints (reruns).
Synopsis: The story opened with a series of vignettes featuring Professor X traveling the world rounding up a new batch of mutants detected by his invention Cerebro. Three of them had prior history in the Marvel Universe:
*** WOLVERINE (real name unknown at the time), who had fought the Hulk and the Wendigo in Canada. Wolverine willingly joined the X-Men and angrily resigned from Canada’s Department H, which had been sending him on missions up to that point. This would have repercussions down the road.
*** BANSHEE (Sean Cassidy), a sometime foe and sometime ally of the original team of X-Men. This Irishman had also fought Captain America and the Falcon.
*** SUNFIRE (Shiro Yoshida), a Japanese mutant who had fought the original X-Men as well as Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Captain America.
The rest of the mutants Xavier rounded up were new:
*** STORM (Ororo Munroe), from Africa, where her weather-controlling powers had made her revered as a goddess by an isolated tribe.
*** NIGHTCRAWLER (Kurt Wagner), a German circus performer whose monstrous appearance made him the target of a mutant-hating mob from which Professor X saved him.
*** COLOSSUS (Piotr Rasputin), a Russian teenager working on a Collective Farm in the Soviet Union.
*** THUNDERBIRD (John Proudstar), a Native American mutant from a reservation in the American Southwest.
Once they were all assembled at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the professor introduced them to Cyclops (Scott Summers), the leader of the original X-Men, who briefed them. He had led the original team – Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl, Polaris and Havok (Beast was joining the Avengers at this point) to investigate a new mutant detected by Cerebro on a Pacific Ocean island called Krakoa. The original team vanished and only Cyclops escaped in their aircraft, but with no memory of what happened there.
Continue readingFiled under Superheroes
THE PESHTIGO FIRE: THE IGNORED DISASTER FROM THE SAME DAY AS THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE
THE PESHTIGO FIRE – This piece of neglected history may be one of the most Balladeer’s Blog-ish topics in Balladeer’s Blog’s sixteen-year history. On October 8th, 1871 Peshtigo, Wisconsin burned down in a monumental conflagration that killed OVER FIVE TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE KILLED!
Both fires happened on the same day, but Chicago’s greater renown caused its disaster to overshadow what happened in Wisconsin to this very day.
The Peshtigo Fire is still the deadliest wildfire in known American history. The flames spread throughout the Door Peninsula and even spread to the Upper Peninsula. Roughly 1.2 million to 1.5 million acres were destroyed and estimates of the death toll go as high as 2,500 people. Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
THE AENEID: THIRD PART
FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE SECOND PART CLICK HERE.
THREE – Aeneas and his fleet of survivors of fallen Troy arrive at Latium in what is now west central Italy. They are made welcome by King Latinus, who offers his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas as a bride per the oracles foreseeing the arrival of strangers possessed of greatness and whose leader he should marry to Lavinia.
King Turnus of the Rutuli people is infuriated because he had been promised Lavinia’s hand. The goddess Juno, still hoping to prevent the founding of Rome, causes Latinus’ wife Queen Amata to insist that the original plan to have Lavinia wed Turnus must be adhered to. The situation prompts Turnus to declare war on the Trojans.
Aeneas tries to avoid a conflict in his people’s new home region, but Juno causes our hero’s son Ascanius to accidentally kill a deer sacred to Latinus’ people during a hunt. This cements the impending war and Aeneas has no choice but to seek allies just as Turnus is doing.
Tiberinus, god of the Tiber River, visits Aeneas in a dream and instructs him to form an alliance with the Tuscans, who are already enemies of the Rutuli. Aeneas does so. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
MOVIE HOSTESS MACABRA (1982-1985)
MACABRA – This hostess of Omaha’s Theatre of the Macabre (1982-1985) has accomplished the seemingly impossible – she has managed to keep her real name a secret all these decades! She was an Omaha businesswoman who beat out over 150 other applicants for the position of WOWT’s Movie Hostess for their new Friday night at 10:30pm Bad Movie show.
WOWT was one of the many television stations across America which were trying to launch their own hometown phenomenon after Elvira’s Movie Macabre had become a syndicated hit in 1981. Ironically, Macabra may have won her market, but she was pretty much the antithesis of Elvira.
This mystery woman redefined “leggy” but her outfits were comparatively modest by Movie Hostess standards. As she pointed out in a 1984 interview “After all, I knew my mother would be watching.”
On top of that, Macabra rejected the over-the-top humor that characterized Elvira and her cash-in imitators in favor of a wry, understated approach that put me in mind of a combination of Movie Host legends like Moona Lisa and Fritz the Nite Owl. For an airing of Attack of the Mushroom People (1963) this hostess munched on mushrooms completely deadpan rather than hit the viewers over the head with the joke.
Occasionally, Macabra would share the screen with guest figures like the cat hand-puppet she used for her showing of The Black Cat (1934) starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. That flick is one of the LEAST faithful – yet most Psychotronic – Poe adaptations ever. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – LANCELOT LINK: SECRET CHIMP (1970-1971)
LANCELOT LINK: SECRET CHIMP (1970-1971) – From Sandler-Burns-Marmer Productions came this fun children’s show that presented trained chimps in a spoof of secret agent stories. Dialogue was dubbed in over the usual twitchy mouth movements of chimpanzees to attempt the illusion that the “performers” were speaking.
The program presented a Good Guy Spy Outfit vs Bad Guy Spy Outfit situation like UNCLE vs THRUSH, SHIELD vs HYDRA, etc, but mostly Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp was based on the spy comedy Get Smart. That show’s villainous Bernie Kopell even voice acted for some of the bad guy characters.
Lancelot Link was a secret agent for A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil), the heroic spies who opposed the agents of C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan). Lance’s cover was that he was a guitarist and singer for a bubblegum pop band called the Evolution Revolution. His fellow agent Mata Hairi was also in the band along with other chimps, and novelty songs credited to the group were released in the real world.
Lance and Mata’s boss at A.P.E. was Commander Darwin, setting up jokes like “What’s your theory, Darwin?” In charge of C.H.U.M.P. was the monocle wearing Baron Von Butcher. The Baron’s underlings included Dragon Woman, Creto, Dr. Strangemind, Wang Fu, the Duchess and Ali Assa Seen. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: MR. GHIM’S DREAM (1878)
MR. GHIM’S DREAM (1878) – This anonymous work is set in the autumn of 1877. Mr. Ghim is a poor American who dreams of ending the “current” unemployment crisis through a massive construction project that will employ thousands. Ghim tries to enlist some of the most well-known tycoons of his day – William Vanderbilt, Robert Roosevelt, Jay Gould and others – in his scheme.
Ghim envisions the construction of first one, then many more gigantic vessels which we would today call cruise ships, except his designs make them more like floating islands. Our narrator feels that not only would the construction of these massive ships employ countless numbers of laborers but would serve as an entire industry for the investors since these vessels might attract millions of passengers who want to travel across the Atlantic Ocean (or elsewhere) in just seven days. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
THE AENEID: SECOND PART
FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE.
TWO – Aeneas and his companions, the survivors of the Fall of Troy, are still lingering in Carthage. Queen Dido, not knowing that the Roman State which Aeneas will spawn will also be the future destroyer of Carthage, remains deeply in love with Aeneas.
He returns her love, and having Aeneas remain with Dido and never found Rome fits the schemes of the goddess Juno (Naturally, Roman names are used for the gods and goddesses throughout this epic poem by Virgil). During a Royal Hunt in which Dido and Aeneas are accompanied by their courtiers, Juno causes a storm that drives the entire hunting party to seek shelter in an extensive system of caves.
Playing into (or maybe establishing) the enduring cliche about people in a burgeoning romance being driven closer by needing relief from a downpour, Dido and Aeneas start to feel even friskier. Juno manipulates things further by having nature and animal life in the cave behave in ways that parallel a wedding ceremony.
Dido is convinced that she and our hero really are married in the eyes of the gods now, so she and Aeneas not only consummate their love but openly live as man and wife during the days that the supernatural storm confines them and their respective retinues to the caves. They continue this arrangement even after returning to Queen Dido’s palace. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
ASTONISHING TALES 1-8 (1970-1971)
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Marvel’s Astonishing Tales Vol 1 when it featured separate stories about Dr. Doom and Ka-Zar.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #1 (Aug 1970)
Ka-Zar Title: The Power of Ka-Zar
Villain: Kraven the Hunter
Synopsis: After several guest appearances in series like The X-Men, Daredevil, and Spider-Man, Ka-Zar got this tryout for a series of his own. He is a Tarzanesque hero who operates in Marvel’s Savage Land, a hidden prehistoric jungle in the middle of Antarctica – a jungle heated by geothermal sources. Kraven the Hunter arrives in the Savage Land to capture Ka-Zar’s saber tooth tiger Zabu.
After a clash with our hero in the dinosaur-ridden jungle, Kraven wins and flees with Zabu in a net. Ka-Zar trails the villain to his ship where he plans to transport Zabu in a cage to the U.S. Ka-Zar defeats all of Kraven’s crew members but falls to a sneak attack by the Hunter himself. He survives a fall into the ocean and resolves to follow Kraven to America to rescue Zabu.
Dr. Doom Title: Unto You is Born … the Doomsman
Villain: Andro the Doomsman
Synopsis: Marvel’s popular villain Dr. Victor Von Doom got this tryout for his own series. From his castle in the fictional nation of Latveria, Dr. Doom watches the latest American Apollo flight to the moon. He teleports one of his communication devices to the moon right in the astronauts’ way on the lunar surface. Through the device he taunts the world that his teleportation technology is superior to any country’s rocket tech.
Meanwhile, Prince Rudolfo, the rightful ruler of Latveria, leads an attack on Doom’s castle with his freedom fighters. This distracts Victor from his just-finished android creation called Andro the Doomsman. While Dr. Doom defeats Rudolfo and his forces, Andro comes to life and wanders off. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
THE AENEID: FIRST PART
Recent movie news about the latest screen adaptation of The Odyssey happened to make me reflect on the lack of a big screen version of the poet Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. For newbies to the tale, I’m posting this very brief synopsis of the story – the first half a mythic voyage like Jason and the Argonauts and The Odyssey and the second half a tale of warfare as Aeneas leads his fellow survivors of fallen Troy in their mythic conquest of what would become Rome.
Previously, I covered neglected ancient Greek epics about the Trojan War, like Cypria, Aethiopis, Iliad Minor and The Sack of Troy. I mentioned the Trojan named Aeneas and how some Greek sources said he was killed and some said he and a fleet of other Trojans escaped the massacre and sailed away.
Roman legends written hundreds of years B.C. took over from there, linking Aeneas to the founding of Rome after a dangerous journey. Around 19 B.C. to 29 B.C. the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to give Rome its very own national epic.
ONE – Aeneas and his fleet search for the place prophesied to be the site of a new nation that the Trojan refugees will found. The goddess Juno (Roman equivalent of the Greek Hera) senses that the great people of this new nation will go on to destroy her beloved Carthage, so she throws assorted obstacles in their way. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
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