The Vigilante and Peacemaker teamed up against the war on terror back in the 80s

Left click to enlarge

I recently grabbed issue 38 of The Vigilante (1987) out of a 3 for $1 box it seemed like it would make for a fun read. In this issue these two Checkmate affiliated characters* team up to take on a docked freighter ship full of Middle East terrorists. Unfortunately toward the end of the issue they ended up turning on each other over who gets to kill one of the top priority targets and as expected that fight ended in a stalemate. Over all it wasn't bad, certainly worth what I paid for it I hope you enjoy the clip art I posted.

* Peacemaker made multiple appearances in the The Suicide Squad series during the Janus Directive story line https://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/search?q=duchess

Fan art by Steve Erwin

Gal Gadot hosts Saturday Night Live tonight

Gal Gadot's $820 million world wide block busterWonder Woman has become one of the biggest BDS (the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel) fails of all time. Her next appearance as Wonder Woman in The Justice League next month is guaranteed to be another massive commercial success. SNL has had something of a sketchy record for episodes that don't suck vs ones that do but Gal hosting tonight's episode in and of it's self should make it worth watching.

I just got done watching the episode and it was great! Gal Gadot did part of the monologue in Hebrew and according to her this was the first SNL episode broad cast live in Israel. Also, I can honestly saw most of the skits (both with and with out Gal) were funny especially the one with Gal on a date with O.J. Simpson. Hosting SNL is always a milestone for any up and coming celebrity so we can consider tonight yet another BDS fail. Jew haters every where who have tried to defame her would love nothing more then to see Gal Gadot be discredited as a role model for woman and see her career go down the drain.

Left click to enlarge

A funny socio-politically charged moment between Amanda Waller and then president Ronald Reagan from the pages of Secret Origins issue 14 (1987). Can you just imagine what Amanda Waller would think about donald trump?

Just throwing this out there for the Hell of it. Anybody remember this DC Comics series based on the mini-series hit TV show from the mid 80s? V taught us that fascism isn't just a human concept, not by a long shot.

Len Wein...and now Harry Dean Stanton

Bill Sienkiewicz

Ya know it's ironic that this tragic news about Len Wein's passing should come just over a week after I fished this issue of Comics Interview 32 out of a quarter box. Which as you may have guessed I grabbed because of The Swamp Thing article inside. Cheesy as the early 80s Wes Craven film was it seemed really cool to me at the time and it was actually my introduction to The Swamp Thing character. And then one day I saw an issue at a drug store some where and that would be the beginning of what was a pretty big Swamp Thing collection. I even had this Swamp Thing action figure at one point it was actually kinda cool it had this detachable hand with a line attached to it that pulls the hand like a fisherman's reel.
As for Wolverine, I was a fan long before it was hip to be a Wolverine fan in the 80s I collected every appearance I could find. Back then a Wolverine appearance in a non-X-Men title was always guaranteed to bump up it's value but I didn't care much about that I just wanted to read more Wolverine and seeing him interact with other Marvel super heroes from Captain America to Spider-Man and even ROM was beyond awesome. Ofcourse Wein's body of work went far beyond just co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine and I think it's nice to know all that will still be around for future generations to enjoy.

Len Wein and Hugh Jackman at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con

Over the years I've done a few unique Swamp Thing centric blog postings over here if you never saw them or don't remember them you suck, but here are the links anyways...
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-didnt-squad-ever-run-into-swamp.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2016/11/swamp-thing-and-golem.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2013/12/poison-ivy-vs-swamp-thing.html

September 15th Update: So now we have it happen again this week. Another big name from our child hood as comic book and sci-fi fans has passed away. This time it was Harry Dean Stanton who died at 91. Stanton has had a long career on both the big screen and small spanning for decades. I knew him best as Brett from ALIEN and as Brain from Escape from New York. And don't forget about Stanton's brief appearance in the first Avengers film where he plays a security guard who finds Bruce Banner amid a mass of debris caused by him falling through the roof of an abandoned building while he was The Hulk.

Black Power

Fan art by Peter Temple left click to enlarge

Obviously I like this fan art other wise I wouldn't have posted it here but at the same time part of me wants to see even more black heroes from Marvel and DC in here kinda like those Marvel Universe Handbook or DC Who's Who montage covers. Off the top of my head specifically I'm thinking Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Blade, the John Stewart Green Lantern and Mr. Fantastic. Don't know if Amanda Waller quite fits the profile of what defines a "super hero" but I'd include her just on general principle.

Ok and now for another kind of black power. Just by chance today I passed through The 4th Annual Vintage Car Show in Downtown Hayward (California) while running some errands and look what they had there. Not at all a fan of the tim burton Batman films (or much of anything from burton for that matter) but I have to admit the batmobile in those movies was one of the few things they had going for them. The tumbler is my favorite though.

The Suicide Squad goes nuclear

Ya know with all this shit going on with north korea and their nuclear program not to mention renewed tensions with russia and the threat of islamic terrorists trying to get their filthy hands on that shit for years now it got me thinking about Firestorm 64 written by John Ostrander. The issue came out in 1987 in which the Cold War was still going on here in the real world even though it would be only a few years later that the soviet union would collapse. For about the next two decades or so we really didn't think about nuclear war as something that we had to worry about any more.
So this issue was part of a story arc in which Ronald and professor Stein (who was dying of a brain tumor at the time) as Firestorm attempted to coerce the nuclear armed nations of the world into dismantling their nuclear arsenals under the threat of doing it for them if they didn't comply. A some what similar premise to the awful Superman 4 film which ironically also came out in 1987. Yeah that didn't go over to well and as a result Firestorm was declared an outlaw and become subject to arrest. As a result Captain Atom (prior to this issue), Task Force X, The Justice League mixed it up with Firestorm in an attempt to end his crusade.
The story line continues and comes to a head in Firestorm annual 2 in which The Squad and The League start to fight each other. Adding to the mayhem The Parasite who at the time was in The Squad goes rogue. Firestorm manages to deal with The Parasite and make his escape only to be confronted in the Nevada desert by a russian super powered agent named Pozhar. The show down happens shortly before professor Stein's tumor finally kills him and disrupts the Firestorm bond in the process which happens only seconds before both the U.S. and Soviet governments try to nuke both combatants. Good stuff, makes me miss the 80s all that much more.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/marvelmasterworksfansite/suicide-squad-the-complete-ostrander-run-1st-time--t24588.html

Enter The Tiger

By artist Craig Cermak

I like this, Bronze Tiger has almost a Bruce Lee kinda vibe going on here.

Gal Gadot at Justice League panel with Wonder Woman cosplay fan

Just a heads up, there's a ton of 2017 Comic-Con videos containing panels of just about every up coming sci-fi/comic book movie and TV series both on cable and NetFlix this year. It's astonishing how many big time A list celebrities are at this event in San Diego now. Back when I went in 1994 it was pretty big but nothing like it is now. A Hell of a lot easier and cheaper to get into back then as well, now it's almost like you gotta know somebody on the inside in order to get into the con.

By the way have I ever mentioned here how much I fucken hate donald trump? Big thanks to Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool which is where I found this funny ass cartoon . . .

 http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/

Entertainment Weekly Magazine presents The Ultimate Wonder Woman Guide

I picked this up a couple of days ago at a local super market. It's pretty cool not only does it have a bunch of great stuff in regards to the production and cast of the Wonder Woman movie it also in general covers the history and evolution of the character in a very comprehensive and detailed way. The guide goes all the way back to the guy who came up with the Wonder Woman character (also the inventor of the polygraph) to the classic Linda Carter TV series, Wonder Woman's countless appearances in multiple forms of media over the years, her impact on pop culture and even the upcoming Justice League movie.

The back cover has some pretty sweet art work at first I thought it was John Byrne but it turns out I was mistaken. It was done by Jose Luise Garcia according to some research done by fellow blogger Dale Bagwell http://dbsuniverse.blogspot.com/

A fun photo spread with Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen and director Jenny Jenkins

You'll find a lot of nostalgia in this issue along with at least a few other things even some of the more hard core Wonder Woman fans out there might be surprised to see.

One other thing, my wife loves charm bracelets and started busting my balls for a Wonder Woman one ever since we saw the movie.

One of the most bad ass scenes ever in a comic book based movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIEwkn-Q2Oo