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Fourth of July Showdown: Uncle Sam vs Captain America

Posted in comic books, holiday, nostalgia, pop culture with tags Captain America, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, comic covers, holiday, Photoshop, Uncle Sam, vintage, Vintage Comic Throwdowns on July 1, 2016 by Paxton

Happy 4th of July! To celebrate today I’m back with a quick holiday themed Cavalcade Comics cover. If you remember, July 4th last year, I showed you Uncle Sam: The Ultimate Ninja. Well, I thought it was time to bring Uncle Sam back. But instead of my Ultimate Ninja version, I’m bringing you a more traditional version of the character. And he has a few words for Captain America.

Yikes, Sam, that’s gonna leave a mark. I thought this idea was too perfect to pass up on this, the celebration of America’s Independence Day. And I thought labeling it Civil War II was appropriate since Marvel is actually doing Civil War II right now.

So, where did I get the images? I found Uncle Sam from the cover of Freedom Fighters #8, June 1977. The cover was done by Rich Buckler.

Captain America was taken from his own title, issue #124 from 1968. It was drawn by Marie Severin.

CA_124_87

I had to jockey around a few things but for the most part the images fit together nicely. Now, the background. I’ll admit, I had the HARDEST time finding a background that worked. I originally wanted the background from Freedom Fighters but it was a generic city street. I wanted something more “Washington DC”, like the White House or Capitol Building. I was close to using The Flash #200 from 1970 as it had the dome in the background. But then I happened upon another Cap issue, #444 from 1995. And I decided to roll with that.

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As you can see, it’s got the nice government building in the background and I thought it would be great to have Cap and Sam slugging it out on the steps of that building. I had to change the perspective a little and use layers upon layers to hide Cap’s shield, but I think it turned out nicely.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: The Dell Comics Monster Squad

Posted in comic books, Dracula, Frankenstein, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, werewolf with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, Dell Monsters, Dracula, Halloween, holiday, monsters, vintage, Vintage Comic Throwdowns, werewolf, Wolf Man on October 27, 2015 by Paxton

Yesterday, with my review of Dell’s Frankenstein, I finally completed all three infamous 60s Dell superhero monster comics reviews (Here’s Dracula and Werewolf). I love all three of these zany re-imagining of the classic monsters. And as I mentioned in my reviews, the only thing that was missing was a team up. We did see Frankenstein pop up briefly in a one panel cameo in Dracula, but other than that, no other crossover ever happened. It’s time I rectify this situation.

So, issue #10 of Cavalcade Comics features the debut of the Dell monster super heroes in a team up. Finally we get the Dell Comics Monster Squad.

How did this never happen? I’ll tell you how, the comics never sold. It’s why we only got three issues of each title. I would love to see these characters come back in a cool retro reboot. I don’t even know who owns the license to them anymore, but with the right writer and tone, they could be fantastic.

I had only three covers of each of the three heroes to try to make work, but I luckily found Marvel’s Where Monsters Dwell #3 (1970) which works as a really nice base image for this cover.

where-monsters-dwell

I love all those 70s horror comics from Marvel. Such good cover artwork and great to use as a base for these types of Photoshop projects.

The Dell Monster Squad logo was going to be a re-interpretation of some awesome original art by Nathan Milliner.

Nathan created these awesome EC-style vintage comic covers I just love. I really wanted to use that logo, but no matter how I manipulated it, it didn’t fit in the 60-70s vintage comic cover I was trying to create, so I sadly had to abandon it. I then went back to the original Where Monsters Dwell logo and just created the new logo off those letters and I think it turned out pretty good. I’m happy with it.

As for the monster heroes themselves; Dracula comes from Dell Dracula #4, Frankenstein comes from Dell Frankenstein #2 and Werewolf from Dell Werewolf #1.

I also had to change the background a bit and add the night sky with the full moon which I believe I got from Marvel’s Werewolf by Night #11.

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

Cavalcade Comics #8 – Kool-Aid Man gets some NAHTZEE scalps!

Posted in comic books, Kool Aid, nostalgia, pop culture with tags Cavalcade Comics, comic covers, Kool Aid, vintage, Vintage Comic Throwdowns on May 26, 2015 by Paxton

I mentioned last issue that I had a few holiday issues coming up. This was the first one. This is the Memorial Day issue of Cavalcade Comics Vintage Comic Throwdown! And in honor of all the men fighting in our armed forces, I have created this cover featuring Kool-Aid Man doing all he can for the war effort by conquering all those damn NAH-tzees.

Back in the Golden Age, it seemed like EVERY super hero got into scraps with the bad guys. It’s time Kool-Aid Man got in a few shots of his own. Last issue with Magnus, I went for a more serious, hard sci-fi cover. This is a little bit more of a goofy, Golden Age cover. And I love it because of that.

Again, like my double Ghost Rider issue, I have a variant cover for you.

This was the original cover concept when I began. Kool-Aid Man jumping out of a time machine ready to kick some ass. And I do love this cover, but I decided to use more of the original Nazi cover from The Victor 1971 Summer Special. Going that route though was a lot more work because I had to take out the soldier from the window and recreate all the breaking window glass. I also had to recreate several sections of the wall due to logo coverage. But honestly, I think it was worth it.

Below are the covers I mashed up. On the left is the aforementioned The Victor Summer Special. On the right is The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man #2. You can see the time machine concept and Kool-Aid’s body came from the latter issue. Surprisingly, I didn’t create Kool-Aid’s frown in my Nazi cover. That actually comes from The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man #4 where he’s scowling at the villain, Scorch.

Victor Summer Special - 1971-0001 [RobotArchie] kool_aid_man_002-001

I do have one other “holiday issue”. It’ll be for the 4th of July. So that’s when you can expect the next issue. Happy Memorial Day week everyone!

AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Review of Rawhead Rex (1986)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, horror, monsters, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria Movie Friday, Halloween, holiday, horror, movies, nostalgia, vintage on October 3, 2014 by Paxton

On Wednesday I showed you the cover to Fangoria #61 with a cover story on the movie Rawhead Rex. And I told you I’ve been fascinated with that movie since 8th grade. Yesterday I showed you the guts of that Rawhead Rex feature story (pun intended). Well, for my inaugral Fangoria Movie Friday I finally watched Rawhead Rex and now it’s time to see if it stands up to what I thought it was going to be.

As I’ve mentioned, Rawhead Rex was written by Clive Barker and released in 1986. Here’s the terrible and confusing poster for the movie.

What the hell is going on with that poster? Needless to say, that didn’t clear up anything for me about the nature of this movie before watching it. Horrible, horrible poster.

As background, I enjoy some of Clive Barker’s early stuff, but I’m not really a devotee. So his name alone on this movie isn’t really doing anything for me. The movie will have to stand on its own. Unfortunately, bottom line, it’s not very good. Very low production value. Very low kitsch value. Not a lot to love. Sort of straight forward slasher monster movie. No subversiveness. Really just a by-the-numbers job. Very disappointing.

The story is about an ancient pagan fertility god, Rawhead Rex, who is awakened in a small town and starts going on a killing spree. That’s basically it. And I’m seriously giving more information than the movie gives you. There’s long stretches of no killing and long stretches of no boobs or nudity. So, as an 80s monster/slasher flick, this really kinda blows.

You want to know how bad this movie is? They actually put the below sentence in the plot synopsis on Wikipedia:

“On the road, Howard’s daughter needs to go to the bathroom, so Howard pulls over and lets her go by a tree.”

Someone wrote that. Specifically to be published online. For the movie’s plot description. Seriously. However, they had to put it in there because that scene is a crucial part of the movie. THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

While I can’t really recommend it, let’s look at a few things worth mentioning.

RR_000 RR_001
Here’s the title card and a face shot of Rawhead Rex after he’s awoken from his thousand year slumber. The makeup/costume work on Rex is not good. You can’t tell by this small static picture on my blog, but it’s pretty bad. His design would be cool in a comic book, maybe, but on the screen, it’s less than stellar. And his big reveal during the awakening, which you see in the poster above, looks like complete dogsh*t.

RR_004
This is a stained glass window found in a church discovered early on by the main character played by David Dukes. At first glance he doesn’t find it odd that a church would have a giant red monster with huge fangs and bones and skulls all around him captured in a stained glass mural. I mean, I’d be like “HOLY SH*T! WHAT THE F**K IS THAT AND WHY IS IT ON YOUR WINDOW?!”

RR_002
A clear Easter Egg for fans of Angus Scrimm and the Phantasm movies. The first of which was released in 1979.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Fangoria #1 – 25 years of Godzilla (1979)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, monsters, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Godzilla, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, vintage on September 29, 2014 by Paxton

AWESOME-tober-fest 2014 begins!

Let’s begin this year’s AWESOME-tober-fest Fangoria celebration with a quick look at the cover to the very first issue of Fangoria from 1979.

As you can see, there was a feature about the history of Godzilla movies up to that point (25 YEARS!). I scanned in that article, so if you want to read it, here is page 1 on my Flickr stream. Just click to the right to continue through the article’s 8 pages.

There were two pretty awesome Godzilla pin-ups that came with the article. The first is an awesome painting featuring Godzilla battling Megalon on the top of the Twin Towers which I thought has to be an homage to the 1976 King Kong remake with Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin which featured a poster with Kong astride the same Twin Towers. However, if you read the article, the below poster was designed for the 1973 Godzilla vs Megalon movie. And it features a scene that never appeared in said movie. I love this poster.