Archive for Cavalcade Comics

Cavalcade Comics #1: Billy the Kid vs Dracula

Posted in comic books, nostalgia, pop culture with tags , , , , on March 5, 2014 by Paxton

Cavalcade Comics

I love vintage comics. I especially love vintage comics covers circa the Golden and Silver Age. That era of comics had such a cool style and their covers were always bonkers.  Like crazy as balls.  And there were always such cool looking match ups on the covers of these comics.

So, I was playing around with Photoshop one day (creating the banner above) and I thought I’d start a new photo series where I play around with old comic covers and come up with awesome character meet ups that never happened. Stuff like gunfighters, monsters and movie characters that I thought should have meet up but never did.  I decided to call the series Vintage Comic Throwdowns.

So for my first issue, I went back in time to 2010.  For Billy the Kid Week that year I reviewed a little known piece of D-movie history called Billy the Kid vs Dracula.  I sorta fell in love with the idea of that movie so I created a poster and casted a modern version of that movie right here.  I even wrote a fanfiction.net story about that concept.  So yeah, wet, sloppy love, me and that concept.

And that is what I thought should be the focus of the first issue of what I decided to call Cavalcade Comics.  So here is my comic book interpretation of Billy the Kid vs Dracula as it would have looked back in the 70s (during Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula era).

Cavalcade Comics 01

I know I personally would have snatched this right off the comics rack had I found it when I was a lad.  The idea of my Cavalcade Comics title is that it’s an anthology title similar to Action Comics or Detective Comics but doesn’t focus on one character.  It’s a revolving door of awesome characters as you will soon see.  Much like comics did back in the Golden Age.  I’ve mostly finished with the first few of these issues already.  You are going to see all types of characters showing up like Robin Hood, Frankenstein’s Monster, Godzilla, Wolf Man, Sherlock Holmes and possibly even James Bond.  It should be a lot of fun.

For those interested in some “behind the scenes” information on the above cover, I used Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula #26 for the main background image and then used Billy from Charlton’s Billy the Kid #10.  The “Billy” in the title logo came from issue #10 as well but “The Kid” came from a different issue.  I think it was issue #80.

tomb_of_dracula_26 Charlton Billy the Kid 10

So I hope you are as excited about this feature as I am. Expect Cavalcade Comics issues #2 soon!

Six Million Dollar Man Season 6 coming March 12!

Posted in Bionic Man, comic books, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags , , , , , , on January 29, 2014 by Paxton

Bionic Review

Not a review, today, just some news about the Dynamite Comics Bionic franchise.

Dynamite Comics announced that they are going to start a new Bionic Man series. Only this series will be a direct sequel to the 70s TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man. The title will begin on March 12 and be named, appropriately enough, The Six Million Dollar Man Season 6.

6mm1

Comic book continuations of TV shows have become quite popular since Joss Whedon allowed Buffy (Season 8) and Angel (Season 6) to be continued.  Now you can find comic book seasons for TV shows like Smallville (Season 11), Charmed (Season 9) and X-Files (Season 10).

According to Cosmic Book News, the new Six Million Dollar Man book will be drawn by Juan Antonio Ramirez and written by James Kuhoric.   Just like the last series, Alex Ross will be doing his awesome painted covers. Writer James Kuhoric should be familiar to fans of this blog as he wrote those awesome Jason vs Freddy vs Ash comics I reviewed for AWESOME-tober-fest 2012.  Cosmic Book News has an interview with Kuhoric as well as some early pencil art for the comic by Ramirez.  And the art looks GREAT. Click the image below to see a few more of Ramirez’s drawings within the Cosmic Book News’ article.

SMDMS6 art

It looks like Dynamite’s original Bionic Man title will stop in February and this new Season 6 title will take over. I guess that also means Bionic Woman will stop as well. I was enjoying the first Bionic Man title, but honestly, after Kevin Smith’s initial run, the title was holding my interest less and less. I think a reboot is a good idea and I LOVE the idea of actually continuing the original 70s TV show including the fashions and effects of the time.  Plus, Steve Austin will actually look like Lee Majors and Oscar will actually look like Richard Anderson.  That can be nothing but GOOD.  I wonder if Rudy will look like Darren McGavin or Alan Oppenheimer?

There are several other places to see more info about this new title. Bleeding Cool has an interview with Kuhoric and a lot of finished, colored art from the first issue. Also, if you head over to the 6 Million Dollar Blog you can see the cover to issue #2.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: 5 comic covers that homage famous zombie movie posters

Posted in comic books, monsters, movies, pop culture, zombies with tags , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2013 by Paxton

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Earlier, I did an article where I talked about comic covers that homage famous movie posters. While writing that aricle I decided to hold back a few entries in anticipation of this article.

So, in honor of my Halloween zombie theme this year, here are some comic covers that specifically homage famous zombie movies of the past.

Marvel’s third Zombies mini-series (I covered the Marvel Zombies comic franchise earlier this month) featured covers that mimic old zombie posters.  Let’s take a look at those four covers.

Army of Darkness poster Marvel Zombies 3 #1
Marvel Zombies 3 #1 (right) homages the famous Army of Darkness poster (left).  Front and center on the comic is Machine Man who figures prominently into the story.

28 Days Later poster Marvel Zombies 3 #2
The cover to Marvel Zombies 3 #2 mimics the poster for 28 Days Later.

Evil Dead poster Marvel Zombies 3 #3
Marvel Zombies 3 #3 looks exactly like the original Evil Dead poster.

Shaun of the Dead Marvel Zombies 3 #4
Marvel Zombies 3 #4 mimics the great Shaun of the Dead poster.

Another Marvel series that homaged famous movie posters was Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth.  It homaged a lot of famous posters like Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, The Graduate, Scarface and even Pretty Woman.  See them here on Comic Vine.  Only issue #3 homages a zombie movie.

Dawn of the Dead Deadpool Merc with a Mouth #3
Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #3 homages Romero’s Dawn of the Dead


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Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: IDW’s Infestation event (2011)

Posted in monsters, pop culture, vampires, zombies with tags , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2013 by Paxton

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Today we are going to look at a big comic book crossover event from 2011 done by the publisher IDW. It was called Infestation.

IDW Infestation

The crossover involved four of IDW’s licensed properties; Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Transformers and GI Joe, and one of their own titles; CVO: Covert Vampiric Operations.  On the outset, it was exciting to me because I wanted to know how the hell they were going to combine universes.  Would Kirk meet Optimus Prime?  Would GI Joe try to recruit Egon?  The concept brimmed with potential awesomeness.

In case you aren’t familiar, CVO is a group of vampires and other magical beings that work for a clandestine group in the government who fight supernatural attacks on Earth. It’s a pretty cool concept and the group is pretty cool. The story begins at a hidden weapons base in New Mexico. An interdimensional being called the Undermind tries to take over our world. The Undermind is a supernatural entity that takes over beings and turns them into, essentially, zombies who do his bidding. A vampire member of the team, Britt, is bitten by a zombie and becomes a vampire/zombie hybrid. The Undermind uses her dual supernatural nature to make her supremely powerful at wielding magic. Britt opens up portals in four other universes and minions of the Undermind escape into each. We soon discover that each of these portals leads to the worlds of Ghostbusters, Star Trek, GI Joe and Transformers.

Here’s a pic of Britt in her all powerful vampire/zombie form.

CVO - Britt

In each of the universes the Undermind attacks, an analog of Britt appears. You can see the analogs in the margins of this picture. So in the Transformers universe, Britt actually becomes this weird looking human-faced Transformer (upper left).

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Marvel’s Simon Garth: The Zombie!

Posted in comic books, monsters, pop culture, zombies with tags , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2013 by Paxton

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In 1953, the forerunner of Marvel Comics, Atlas Comics, released the fifth issue of their horror anthology title, Menace.

Menace 5

In this issue, in a standalone story written by Stan Lee and drawn by Bill Everett was the debut of a character known only as, The Zombie.

The Zombie

The short story offered no background, just the simple setup of a zombie walking the swamps who is controlled by a mysterious evil man in a hidden cabin. After the story first appeared the character sort of disappeared.

Then in 1974, editor Roy Thomas plucked the character from obscurity and made him the star of his very own horror themed magazine called Tales of the Zombie.

Tales of the Zombie 01

The magazine re-printed Lee’s original Menace story, but then Thomas had Steve Gerber and Joe Buscema craft a prologue story, Altar of the Damned, to fill out the zombie backstory and give the character a name; Simon Garth. Gerber and Buscema then did another story called Night of the Walking Dead to continue the character’s adventures forward.

New stories in each issue of the magazine were mostly done by Steve Gerber and Pablo Marcos.  Other notable contributers included Doug Moench and Chris Claremont.  Simon Garth’s final appearance in this magazine would be in issue 9 which awesomely culminated in a story arc at his daughter’s wedding.

Tales of the Zombie 09

The magazine would actually go release issue 10, but it featured the character Brother Voodoo and not Simon Garth.

Since the 70s, Simon has popped up in appearances all over the Marvel Universe including Spider-Man, Blade, Dracula and, most recently, was a main character in Marvel Zombies 4.

He’s not had his own series again, but he did get a few mini-series in 2007 under the Marvel MAX imprint.


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Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.