Welcome back subscribers. It’s Easter Sunday 2024 and what better time to share a flash memory of my comics collecting heyday.. hope you enjoy!
Happy Easter Satellite subscribers. I had no intention of writing this morning however while read my Twitter Pal Dave’s blog this morning I ran into a comic I have always had a particular fondness and memories of! As it is Easter Sunday as of this writing I’ll quickly share this story if for nothing else than to preserve my memory.
Part of growing up for me were weekly trips to the grocery store with my Dad! Thursday which must have been payday we’re guaranteed trips to the local Co-op or the new Sobeys store in Clarenville and always scored me an action figure or a comic, or two.. sometimes three!! I was lucky! Not only picking out great food like C3POs cereal (Spoiler.. it sucked) but I always got a “treat”.
I am in this pic! I could not find a picture of the Handy Andy store but I did find the Handy Andy dory used in the Clarenville Day festivities!!
I recall a weekend, it was particularly sunny so it was definitely summer. It seemed to be early in the day and my father needed to go to the local Hardware store called Handy Andy in my hometown of Clarenville, NL Canada. Andy’s was overlooking the water and on the corner of a turn at the beginning of Clarenvilles “Lower Road”. It was originally called Handy Andy Associate store and was located on Marine Drive in Clarenville Newfoundland my hometown! It sold camping and fishing gear, bikes, and automotive parts. I can still smell the bike tires!! It was filled with bikes, camping stuff, and seemingly endless Bike tires.. I cannot downplay that smell! It was here I got three of my favorite comics and my official introduction to Captain Carrot!
I LOVED this book!! Fun memories triggered here! I bought this at the afore mentioned Hardware store on a trip with my Dad at the age of 7! I had ONLY seen Captain Carrot in ads in comics and that DC insert up to that point, so I remember it was a huge deal!! They had a small wooden book shelf about mid store that housed a few car magazines, some decently sexist magazines of hot women, and in the middle of all that issues of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! They clearly didn’t rotate their magazine because there were three consecutive issues there that day and I begged my Dad to get them and of course he did!
This one sat around my house for eternity. My copy is respectfully battered and sitting in a box in my parents basement. I just felt the urge to preserve this memory!
Here are the other two that ended up leaving Handy Andy with me that day! Thanks Dad!
Well with that out of the way, go read my pal Dave’s blog post which triggered this memory in my mind! Enjoy! Tell him Hero sent ya!
The long awaited Superhero Satellite Podcast Episode 3 has arrived! I feel this needs explaining. I promised 4 episodes of The Superhero Satellite would be produced and had a very specific set of guests lined up to participate. All of them relevant to my likes growing up. Industry people who really knew their area of expertise! Episode one I was honored to have one of my personal podcast mentors and blogging friend Peter Rios, he of Comic Geek Speak and The Daily Rios Podcast fame to join me for a discussion on Podcasting, comics and everything under the sun. Episode two was dedicated to my love of toys growing up. I was joined by supreme toy collector and Executive Producer Of Mark Hamill’s Pop Culture Quest Mr. Scott Kinney to go deep on the top 10 toys of our childhood and general industry talk!
Suddenly as I planned Episode 3 I had planned to discuss a childhood favorite Television series of mine and even lined up guests from that very show. If you follow me on Twitter you may take a guess on exactly what that show may be but for now we will leave it for another episode! The planning was fine, the scripts were done, intros and outros recorded and then we ran into our first delay. One individual had taken issue with the script and wanted a rewrite to which I happily agreed but this was the first delay of about three weeks. Finally the script came back with their proposed rewrites…it was a considerable difference but I was okay with it. I sent off a potential schedule times and was ghosted…again two more weeks of delays. I enquired and landed on tentative dates but again..more drama. At this point my point of contact went missing and was being shaky on a time frame so I aborted the show. It maybe something I will look at down the line but when something no longer becomes fun we step away. I promised myself I would NOT put out another single show unless it was special, had importance to myself based on one of my passions and was FUN! Well I found it! My Blogging squad the Super-Blog Team-Up are a group of like minded rock solid comic fans who love to produce content on the subject so we choose something that meant a great deal to yours truly growing up…The debut of Image Comics! We all know the deal. 7 of Marvels top artists leave in one mass exodus from the number one comics publisher to embark of the biggest single creator owner revolution the comics industry had ever seen taking a massive gamble by betting on themselves and creating Image Comics! The story of Image is an incredible one with amazing highs and deveastating lows that shook its foundations to the core! Alliances made, friendships broken, million dollar checks, and a brand new landscape of comics is born and we talk about it all!
Episode 3 is a super powered discussion on comics and more specifically the debut of Image comics! I am joined by the host of The Source Material Comics Podcast Jesse Starcher to discuss our thoughts on the launch of Image comics and when we discovered this hot new brand. We also break down the Image 7 founding fathers and give our score card on their history and the contribution to Images launch!! Its a fun discussion that you wont want to miss!! As a special bonus we will air a clip of a huge interview done by myself and Adam Pope for the Wizards Files show for The Wizards Podcast Guide To Comics by former Co-Founder and Publisher of Malibu Comics and an individual instrumental in the creation of the 90s super imprint the Ultraverse Mr. Dave Olbrich. The clip showcases the genesis of the meeting between himself and the Image team to start the revolution of the Image group!
Be sure to check out Mr.Olbrich’s amazing YouTube channel Geekview Tavern where our friend Dave talks comics shop with his guests and so much more! His shows are certainly a favorite of this author and he would enjoy having you visit the tavern and join the conversation! Click the link below to visit GeekView Tavern! Tell em Hero sent ya!
Thank You for joining us for the show now check out the rest of our amazing team of super bloggers/podcasters!! Super-Blog Team-Up continues below with tons more Image Comics related content. Check out the rest of our amazing contributors by clicking the links below!! Check us out our back catalogue and past events on Twitter by using hashtag’s #SuperBlogTeamUp or #SBTU
**In DEEPEST SPACE lie’s the dormant Superhero Satellite, a hulking historical archive long abandoned by its crew sits in dark silence. A lone beacon light flashes to indicate functionality. A suddenly flicker illuminates the main monitor as the ships living computer for no apparent reason activates its internal systems. The hum of the onboard fans and motors whirl into almost life like a life support system kicks in. Yes despite its abandonment this Satellite is very much functional..very much still alive technologically speaking. The screens fill with images…comic panels of its former owners youth. Images of a Universe wide Crisis, others showcasing a female Amazon Warrior doing battle, Super Teams from different universes colliding, the birth of a universes most versatile villainous threat donning a fearsome gauntlet. As the screen toggle’s through thousands of images it lands on the image of their creator…a legend in our archives and this writers introduction to a life long hobby. That name is George Perez. Welcome home heroes this blog is back for a celebration…a celebration of artistic excellence. *
I was spoiled as a comic’s fan. My introduction to comics, I will argue, is a case of starting out on top and then everything else is a downhill situation. My first comic that I bought on my own free will was the George Perez/Marv Wolfman New Teen Titan’s number 1. I was absolutely hooked. It shined with brand new characters, plus my favorite DC character at the time was Robin, he of Batman fame! The book was electricity to this 6 year old’s eyes. I didn’t know it at the time but this was my gold standard that all else would be compared to. Perez was special..if there was such thing as a PERFECT draftsman it’s George. On December 7th George announced to the world he had terminal pancreatic cancer and had 6 months to a year to live. The outpouring of love for George on social media was nothing short of incredible and heartwarming. This article is not an obituary. It is not a career retrospective this is simply a note to George to thank him and tell him how much his work impacted me. So Mr. Perez.. this ones for you.
First, an introduction to our Mighty Marching Super-Blog Team-Up (YES I KNOW it doesn’t rhyme work with me here!!) Super-Blog Team-Up is a collective effort that occurs quarterly and involves blogs, podcasts, YouTube networks and more to create content on a single theme and launch on one specific day. We all know the amount of content out there in 2022 in regards to podcasts and video platforms can be overwhelming and the blogging format often takes a back seat. The folks at the SBTU believe that great work should be shared and this is the heart and soul of our band of brothers (and Sister!) to keep the heart beat of bloggers and content creators alive and visible. If you enjoy this post the good news is there is much more to enjoy. At the bottom of these writings you will see a whole host of links for more Super-Blog Team-Up action. If you are a Twitter nerd like me why not use the hashtags #SuperBlogTeamUp or #SBTU for access to all of our past events! Now with formalities out of the way on to the reason we have all assembled to celebrate the works of one special artist in our industry Mr. George Perez.
I had read plenty of comics growing up. I was reading nearly everything on the rack and grocery cash lanes. The All-Star artist’s of my era were John Byrne, Frank Miller, Neal Adam’s, Jim Aparo, Gene Colan just to name a few..a heavyweight line up if there ever was one. Another “Hero fact” was that I was a tried and true DC Comic’s kid! Batman and Detective were my go-to books first every month.
I had noticed George’s work on the Avengers but at that young age I did not have a discerning eye enough to say “that’s George Perez book!!”.. or “That’s a John Byrne book.!!” You just knew what felt right. You just knew that this was what the characters were meant to look and feel like. One of the biggest qualms I have with looking at a modern comic is that they simply didn’t feel like a comic. Digital artwork simply doesn’t look like pencil on paper. It just doesn’t. There is a defined rule set that makes great comic art for me. They are simple rules magnon
First it’s the visual. Do the characters look they way they should? Did the artist get Superman’s face right? Were Batman’s ears big enough? One of the biggest disappointments of my life was reading Jack Kirby do Super Powers. Superman just wasn’t right, Wonder Woman looked like a cro-magnon cross dresser. I realize now looking back the issue was not Kirby….it just wasn’t George.
Two. Is the artist able to convey realistic characters in not only action poses but just acting and living on the page like regular humans??
Three. Bombascity. Did the work jump off the page. Was it exciting? Visually challenging?
Finally. The details!! A good artist can draw a solid character shape on the page. A great artist can design a living and breathing world for these characters to live in with great backgrounds, lush environments and mind blowing original sets that just send you deep into your imagination.
For me Perez checks everyone of these boxes and in many cases wrote the book on them!! Character’s looked and felt alive inside the pages. He conveyed emotion in all the characters he created and drew and for that 15 minutes you held a Perez book in your hand you lived in his world because it was real!
Back to New Teen Titans. Starting with just the cover alone this book was special. The covers made the books “MUST SEE” and it featured a toy box of new characters like Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg who were born under George’s pencil. Whether it was battling Deathstroke, or Brother Blood you had someone making these hero’s and villains live on the page. Robin a character decades old never looked so good and George matured him and it felt “right”. The New Teen Titans were my team!!
As my exposure to comic’s advanced I was introduced to such Legends as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. , and John Buscema to name a few but none of them seemed in my young eyes to be on the level of Perez during this time. As I said at the start, I was spoiled out of the gate. Of course as years went by I learned to love all the aforementioned names but I also knew what outstanding pencil work looked like.
George who had cut his teeth on such books as the Avengers in the 1970s, as well on books such as Werewolf By Night, Fantastic Four and the InHumans…It would be the opportunities he received at DC that would propel him to superstardom.
Perez was the man to call on when DC wanted to reset their entire run of books that they had published since 1937. Competition between Marvel and DC had heated up and the once mighty DC comics were now no longer the top dog in the industry as Marvel had found its way into the hearts and minds of comic readers. DC responded by buying up other companies such as a now defunct Charlton Comics and other existing properties in an attempt to realign their offerings. One massive problem DC thought they had was something that is very popular these days…the idea of the multiverse. The idea of multiple earth’s and realities was an issue creatively. The years of continuity was a creative hindrance for DC creative and the decision was made to wipe the slate clean with an all encompassing event known as Crisis On Infinite Earths. The idea was to streamline the years of muddled continuity into a clean linear singular universe. A massive undertaking to be sure but the question was who would bring this epic to life visually? George Perez was the man behind the 12 issue epic and it was incredible! It was here Perez showcased his magnum opus.
All of George’s strengths were on display. Not only could George make magic in a multi person team book drawing multiple characters and scenes ..with Crisis On Infinite Earths he had to draw the entirety of the DC Universe. Every single character..drawn with style guide perfection.
His mastery of scenery and intricate detail that was George’s signature. Every world, every space, scene, building , landscape all picture perfect. George Perez had arrived..and no one could touch him.
Every artist has their signature book..a signature Hero or maybe a team they hang their hat on. George had already made waves with epic runs on Avengers and The New Teen Titans. Now with DC rebooting its entire history it challenged it’s creative teams to re energize their core heroes to make them compelling to a very Marvel loving comics buying audience. Somewhere DC lost their “cool” factor and Marvel was the buzz at the comic shops. The first thing in DC’s plan was to inject the Trinity (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman- DC’s Big Three!) with life blood with big time creative engines. Miller revitalized Batman following the legendary Dark Knight Returns 4 issue Limited Series. John Byrne re imagined Superman with Man Of Steel. In 87 Perez took full creative reigns on Wonder Woman both writing and drawing the book for 24 issues but staying on the book until issue 61 after stepping away from his artistic duties For me it was the first time Wonder Woman had felt and looked significant in forever. George drew her as a strong and powerful female super heroine who didn’t play second fiddle to the boys. The books direction became grounded as Perez took steps to develop her supporting cast of Amazonian’s, and pulled deeply into her Greek god roots. It was a transformation. This version is the same model they use in her modern incarnations in comics and on the big Hollywood Screens.
Perez’s Wonder Woman is such a departure as he establishes her as a force to be reckoned with better than any arc prior to this. The third string, love sick girl running around in her underwear was replaced with a dead serious Amazonian warrior, a creation of the gods just as powerful and certainly a more experienced fighter than her trinity counterparts. Wonder Woman was finally a full fledged top shelf character in DC and the magic of this shift in narrative set the table for everything we know about Wonder Woman today.
Where does George Perez stand in the pantheon of comics greatest artists? I get that opinions are subjective. Every one has their favorite’s and have good reasons for them. I am a fan of “Comic Book” art. I know great pencils when I see them. I look for detail. I look for emotional resonance. I look for realistic character interactions and I would argue that George Perez has mastered every element of what I love in a comic. He was my introduction to the comics world and was an entry drug like no other. They say you always remember your first and as I said at the beginning I was spoiled out of the gate holding that issue of The New Teen Titans. I would love to think that George himself may some how stumble upon this blog and my words and if he does I want him to know that his work meant something. It inspired people to read and create inside this medium and future generations of artists at this very minute are trying to emulate the work that he has done. Super-Blog Team-Up was created out of love for the comics medium and I know I speak from every one of our team when I say THANK YOU George you are loved and appreciated.
This is only the beginning. The Mighty SBTU have so much more detailed analysis of the very best Perez work out there. I urge you to check out all the amazing talent that makes up the Super-Blog Team-Up and their incredible articles and podcasts all about the master of the pencil… Mr. George Perez!
Until next time Satellite Subscribers we will see you all again…after a while! For MORE Super-Blog Team-Up action you need to go right now and check out the work of my fellow collaborators by clicking the links as we continue to discuss the work of one George Perez!
Hey what’s going on Heroes, it’s your old pal Charlton Hero back at ya with another installment of the Mighty Marching Super-Blog Team-Up!! If this is your first time stopping by let me fill you in on what the mighty SBTU is all about! We are a collective of like minded bloggers, podcasters and content creators who come together 4 times a year to collaborate on a single topic event and put our own unique spin on the selected theme! Then we all release our content on one defined day and share in the community that is comics and pop culture. This time out our theme is “The Doctor Is In”. This event is a celebration of “The Doctor” characters in all forms throughout Pop Culture. From the Sci-Fi World of Doctor Who, The Mystical realms of Doctor Fate to the super badassery of Motley Crews Dr. Feelgood! Doctors have existed in multiple versions and personas and are a staple of any genre. We at Super-Blog Team-Up deep dive some of the most famous Doctors all the way to to the super obscure practitioners as we let the Blog-o-Sphere know that “The Doctor Is Indeed IN!!”
For this installment the Satellite has tracked activity in our veritable time scanning probe to the late 70s where we will encounter an old friend of ours working on an experiment on Gamma radiation that will not go particularly well for our subject today Dr. David Banner… aka The Incredible Hulk!! More specifically we are discussing the 1977 Television Series The Incredible Hulk!! We will deep dive this amazing series and walk through Dr. David Banners TV Origins, Its importance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its overall place in the lore of The Incredible Hulk story as a whole. At the end I will provide you with my top 5 recommendations of the very best “Bill Bixby-David Banner” episodes of the series!!
Lets not wait anymore strap into the Satellite Heroes we have a Monster to catch!!
Transmission Date : May 12th 2021
There are things in life that you can remember the exact time and date of where you were and who you were with and as we get older sometimes these memories fade into the time. Then there are those things are are as vibrant in your memory as the day you experienced it. This is my experience with the 70s Incredible Hulk TV Series. I stumbled upon the series as a child in the very early 80s staring at a 13” Black and White TV set or if I was lucky a nice color version at my Grandmother’s house. We had two glorious channels both amazingly 100% Canadian in CBC and our local network NTV. Its all I knew and my knowledge of pop culture was limited to this tiny box to view the world through. There was no on demand, heck there weren’t even any VCR’s to watch your recording later. You had to be there!! If not these shows existed only in conversation the next morning at school.
The show was from the mind of Kenneth Johnson (yes he of “V” fame) and of course was based on The Marvel Comics Character created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee! He first appeared in the pages of his own title The Incredible Hulk in May 1962. His origin differs slightly than his Television Origins in that Robert Bruce Banner (Not his TV persona David Banner) is exposed to Gamma radiation while saving his best friend Rick Jones from the explosion of a Gamma Bomb. The effects of this exposure alters Bruce Banner’s life forever. When he is subjected to great amounts of stress or anger Bruce transforms into the Rampaging Hulk. As history had it Bruce is altered into the giant Grey monster The Hulk. Against his will when the moment strikes Bruce when triggered becomes the out of control rampaging monster who at times is part hero and part public menace. The Hulk was always a fixture of Stan Lee’s vision of Marvel and one of the top projects he pitched to studios around Hollywood. Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk began proceedings with their own televised series in 1977 but would be followed by an ill fated Doctor Strange TV Movie in September of 1978 on CBS followed by two Captain America live action TV Movies The January 1979 self titled Captain America and its sequel in November of the same year Captain America 2: Death Too soon! None of the shows or movies listed had the impact or cultural importance of Johnson’s The Incredible Hulk TV Series.
I recall being very unsettled by the opening scene of the TV Show as a kid at about the age of 7 or 8. Take a look at that opening and tell me this would not scare the living bejesus out of any kid seeing this for the first time. The rain, the dark, the car accident and that insidious transformation into the monster. This was a game changer for me. My childhood heroes were alive and on my screen and for once they were taken dead serious. Don’t take my word for it see for yourself! Satellite Initiate Viewing Screens for our Heroes:
“Dr. David Banner, Physician/Scientist,searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have.
Then an accidental overdose of gamma
radiation interacts with his unique
body chemistry.
And now, when David Banner grows angry
or outraged, a startling metamorphosis
occurs.
(HULK GROWL) RRRRRRRRAAAAAAA!
Narrator:The creature is driven by rage
and pursued by an investigative reporter.
BANNER: Mr. McGee, don’t
make me angry. You wouldn’t
like me when I’m angry.
(HULK GROWL) RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAA!
Narrator: An accidental explosion
took the life of a fellow scientist
and supposedly David Banner
as well. The reporter thinks
the creature was responsible.
McGee: “I gave a description to all
the law enforcement agencies. They got
a warrant for murder out of it.“
Narrator: A murder which David Banner
can never prove he or the creature
didn’t commit. So he must let the world
go on thinking that he too is dead,
until he can find a way to control the
raging spirit that dwells within him.
(HULK ROAR) RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA!!!”
The TV Origin!
Dr. David Bruce Banner your lead character in the show was played by the incredible (Pardon the pun!) Bill Bixby. Bixby appears in 82 episodes of the show. After the shows cancellation Bixby would even reprise his roll of the nomadic Doctor/ Monster for three made for Television movies with the 1988 “The Incredible Hulk Returns” followed the next year by “The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk” wrapping the trilogy with the 1990 The Death Of The Incredible. The following is as much as I could gather from various sources detailing the origin of our TV David Bruce Banner!
Dr. David Bruce Banner was born in Trevorton, Colorado, in the first half of the 1940s. His father, D.W. Banner wanted David to stay on the family farm and take it over from him someday—D.W. went so far as to tell David that he would pay his son’s entire way through any agricultural college of his choice. David, the son of a farmer ,had always wanted to be a doctor, as young as the age of 5 years old. For background it was noted that David’s sister, Helen, walked in on him performing a play surgical procedure on one of her dolls. David suffered trauma early in life after discovering his mother dead in her bed as a child. He harbored a sharp resentment for his Father whom he placed blame for the death of his Mom which made him want to leave his hometown to make it on his own and live his dream as a Doctor David eventually did attend medical school. It was here he met his future colleague and fellow classmate Elaina Marks. Following school David would go on to marry Laura Banner who horrifically perished on a cold rainy night during an electrical storm. The story originates when Dr. David Banner and his wife Laura are riding in their car when a tire blows out. The car rolls over. David gets thrown out, but his wife does not. He tries to save her by lifting the car to get her out, but was unsuccessful.
David’s grief and loss was overwhelming years later Elaina went on to become his colleague at The Culver Institute of California. They were working on intense research around the mystery of the enormous physical strength that all humans possess when under stress or extreme circumstances.. The loss of Laura and his inability to alter her fate changed David’s daily existence. He became motivated to discover the secret of superhuman feats of strength that the body has the ability to access and the interviews he conducted with Elaina of people who also had had loved ones in as much life-threatening jeopardy as Laura had been in, but were able to tap into that well of enormous strength to save, accomplished little more than to make grief, resentment and frustration a major part of David’s everyday existence.
During David’s case study he concluded that the cause of accessing super human strength was in an elevated adenine-thymine level of a person’s DNA. This was not possible organically so David concluded there was some other force at work, some external factor introduced into these humans to get this elevation in strength namely Gamma Rays! Dr. Banner predicted that bursts of gamma-radiation on the surface of the sun were able to reproduce the exact effect of enhanced human strength ability in a laboratory setting! Banner went as far as to strap himself into the Institutes radiation emitter and subjected himself to Gamma Radiation for 15 seconds. Unbeknownst to Banner the device had been updated to emit up to 6 times the amount of Gamma rays beyond what is considered the maximum exposure a human was said to be able to endure!!
With this extreme exposure Banners level of adenine-thymine was elevated beyond any normal means which as a result caused a massive transformation into the huge musclebound Monster, The Incredible Hulk which in the future would be triggered at moments of great stress or anger.
Wow…that’s a lot to take in right? The show was actually a simple concept. Dr. David Banner on his search for a cure to his inner monster In each individual episode, Banner wanders from town to city, using false aliases and getting by doing odd jobs to stay afloat and to continue funding his research. Each episode he is faced with a dilemma where he feels compelled to help the people he meets get out of some sort of predicament . It’s the old monster of the week design that we all know and love and with the exception of a couple of two part episodes, each show can be considered a one and done and viewed on its own merits. Of course as David attempts to help out folks many times he is triggered with anger or intense situations and metamorphosizes into the Hulk. These Monster sightings have gained the attention of Investigative Reporter and TV show bad guy, Jack McGee who is Banner’s foil for nearly the entirety of the series.The Hulk usually rages on the side of good and generally helps out those in need yet at the end of each episode he is forced to hit the road to the ominous tones of the song “Lonely man” to move on to the next town in search of one day finding a way to silence the Monster.
This show was staggering to me as a kid. Not only was it an opportunity to see my heroes on the small screen every week in my living room but it was a different time. Super Hero fare was not the norm like it is in 2021 where the amount of comic book related shows and movies often outweigh regular shows on every network. It was scary and electric. It was also tragic. Bixby as David Banner was a revelation. Outside of all the “Green Monster” fun and the “Hulk Smash” moments the story of Dr. David Banner trying to find himself always spoke to me. The plight of the lonely man misunderstood by society and battling his own large green skinned demon who in the end only wants to make things right speaks to me personally. Despite its differences to the source material this show is well above the grade of what was being aired at the time. These days the Marvel Cinematic Universe is hitting us on all levels with big budget blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame which broke records all over the world, to Netflix producing gritty street level beat cop style shows with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, the Punisher and more. Don’t forget DisneyPlus giving us cinematic quality series such as Wanda Vision, The Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Loki! We are spoiled as an audience. Picture yourself in 1977 with NOTHING else to judge it against and then you were given The Hulk!! It would be a Loooong time before Marvel would even come close to the hemisphere of beating the sheer quality of the show.
Let’s be fair..it debuted in the pre-CGI era and kids watching today may think that old “Big Green’ may look a little cheesy but it was the actual writing on the show that made this thing more than a show about a big green monster. You got to know the MAN…David Banner. There were many episodes that held off on the Monster side of things and dealt with Banner himself and really built the human element of the show which really spoke to me as a kid viewer who tuned in for the “Hulk Smash” but stayed for the human element.
First we can start with just the amazing casting Bixby and the Hulk himself. Lou Ferrigno evolved into their characters to the point I could not see anyone else in their roles. Lou was perfect as the Hulk. As said before there was no CGI but Lou a world class bodybuilder didn’t need computers to be larger than life on screen as he was an absolutely immense man of size and muscle. With a questionable wig and green oil paint Ferrigno WAS The Hulk and no one questioned his legitimacy in that role.Now that you casted the Monster now you had to find the MAN! None better than the very first choice for the role Bill Bixby who was already an accomplished actor in such roles in My Favorite Martian , Rich Man Poor Man, The Twilight Zone, Fantasy Island, The Magician and many many more. Bixby WAS Bruce Banner!! They needed someone who could project as an actor to show intensity, torment and rage but yet be likeable. I am sure if you watched the show its hard to argue that Bixby didn’t pull off everyone of those criteria! He was the everyman that you could relate to and that is what made this show sing to TV audiences all over the world.
If you were a kid in that era you always did “The Quote” you know the one… “Don’t Make me Angry..You Wont Like Me When I’m Angry”. Seriously if you were a kid of the 80s and into comic books someone at some point got levied that particular ditty their way!
All you had to do was watch the opening and closing of the show and you “Got” what the show was. There does not exist a more appropriate intro and outro for a show that sets you up with all you need to know from drama and intensity. The outro in particular always stuck with me with a song titled “The Lonely Man Theme” as a song that nearly netted an Emmy award for the Incredible Hulk in 82!. If you listen carefully they even do a variation on that in the Hulks 2008 Cinematic entry!!
The Incredible Hulk show was also unique from everything else at the time in that Marvels iconic Figurehead Stan Lee who was trumpeting Marvel in Live Action as hard as he possibly could was said to have only liked the Hulk outside of the other Marvel small screen adaptations up to that point namely The infamous Dr. Strange Movie and The Amazing Spider Man show. Calling the productions a Nightmare he was all in on the Hulk fortunately!
Interviews of the day saw Lee boldly and giddy expound his appreciation for the show as well! Heck as famous as the “Stan Lee’ cameos were in the MCU it was the Trial Of The INcredible Hulk TV Movie that featured his first onscreen movie cameo!! Keep in mind Lee would be waiting a LOOOONG time following the Hulk and its follow up movies before Marvel would give us another attempt at cinema in the 1990 Captain America basically direct to video release which Lee considered a step backwards again and a disappointment!
The show itself would be considered a big hit in the ratings for Marvel in the ONLY hit it would see until the X-men Trilogy would release many moons later. We can argue that “Blade” was a hit but when you consider the criteria of a Superhero film Blade falls in the category of a stand alone horror film which in my mind disqualifies it as the “First SuperHero” film to be a “hit” for Marvel.
The Incredible Hulk Tv Series and its three follow up Made For Tv movies would begin the idea of Superhero crossovers on screen! Now we had seen shows cross over in the past but minds were blow when the likes of Thor and Daredevil made their appearances with Bixby and Ferrigno further cementing the franchise as a historically significant happening for Marvel in a time they were trying to find their way along the path to what would become the Box Office Juggernaut known as the Mighty MCU!
Consider what Superheroes graced the screen in the past. Yes the serials produced excellent fare such as TVs Superman starring George Reeves, The Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, Batman, and we also got Shazam and not to mention Isis on Saturday mornings! Of course the pinnace of all Super-Hero television was the 1966 Batman live action show starring Adam West and Burt Ward which up to that point was the measuring stick for comic book onscreen success! The issue was most of these were popcorn fillers and not particularly taken serious. A serial in the theaters was not considered high theater at the time, and certainly West’s Batman was intended to be tongue and cheek. The Incredible Hulk was the first show to be taken seriously and when you stack up all the others our show stands like a giant above all the others.
Now that we get the big picture on how this show was received we need to get into our theme this time round for Super-Blog Team -Up and that being “The Doctor Is In”. With all that said these are what I consider the best “Dr. David Banner episodes of The Incredible Hulk. These shows are lighter than normal on the “Big Green Monster” aspect of the show and more character pieces that flesh out the struggle of our good Doctor as he attempts to shed his Inner monster.
Top 5 Doctor David Banner Episodes Of The Incredible Hulk
5. “Married” Our good Doctor finds himself in the warmth and sun filled beaches of Honolulu where he goes in search of someone who may be able to “Cure” him or at least let him control his inner Monster, a one Dr. Caroline Fields. Fields struggles with a life threatening disease of her own and David sees an opportunity to help her as he knows he possesses a healing factor that exists when he transforms into The Hulk. It’s a very touching episode as it allows Banner to have a very rare few minutes of actual happiness as he is able to fall in love again and even remarry!!. Not to spoil things but this one ends tragically. This is the one episode where David nearly gets a chance at happiness in his life again and can almost forget about the big green monster inside him. Heartwarming and tragic.
4. “Pilot”: No better beginning than the first episode. We get everything we need to understand the tragic existence of one Dr. David Banner. Banner is grieving after the loss of his wife Laura whom he did not have the strength to save from a terrible car accident. He sets out to find out the secret to unlocking hidden human strength and decides to experiment on himself with Gamma rays…which of course is the beginnings of his eventual tragic transformation into the monster that would haunt his life forever afterwards. If you are just starting the Hulk series this is your starting point! You can mix and match episodes afterwards but this one is your base!
3.”The First” (Parts 1 and 2). This is cheating because this is actually a two part episode but this is my blog and ill include both because I can! Deal with it!! Doctor Banner stumbles upon the news that there were “Hulk” sightings that are happening around a small town years BEFORE Banner became the Hulk!. Is it possible that there is ANOTHER Hulk on the loose?? David is determined to find out! He sets out to the small town to find out that a scientist who embarked on a similar road as David has passed away leaving an incomplete set of notes leaving his trail empty…until we meet town local Dell Frye who catches Banner transforming exposing his secret!! Frye swears himself to secret but is interested in helping David find the previous scientists notes to assist him in finding his cure. What a nice guy right!! WRONG. No deep spoilers here but Frye has his own agenda and all I will tell you is that this episode features the first Hulk vs Hulk battle ever put to film!! Go out of your way to see this one!!
2. “Homecoming” This season 3, episode 8 show was a “Special” Thanksgiving Episode! Remember when we had “Special ” Holiday episodes!! Well Hulk fans who were expecting a super sized Green Monster episode would be disappointed as this is one that deals with most David “Going Home”. He stops , for the moment anyways, his journey and visits his Father and Sister! It’s here we see the effect his mothers death has had on him and how that fractured his relationship with his father. This one really gives us that background into who David Banner was Pre- Green Monster era took control of his existence.
1.”Prometheus” (Season 4 Episodes 1-2).This episode opens season 4 and is another 2 parter!! See I am cheating again but these are two of my absolute favorites and very Dr. Banner heavy episodes. In this set of episodes David meets a blind woman just before a meteor strikes the location where they are at. This situation nearly triggers a Hulk transformation however something unique happens here as Banner’s transformation into the Hulk stalls midway leaving him as half man and half monster!! (Basically bulkier with green eyes!!) He is later tracked down and captured by the government who are convinced this “Man-Monster” is born of Area 51 and an alien!! Of course eventually David is able to complete his transformation, escape and disappear into the world again to start the 4th season. This set of episodes hit at the outright tragedy of the character. Instead of trying to control the rage monster inside him now the Doctor was stuck in physical limbo as he is even more tragically now part monster on the outside and tracked down like an animal. This ones hits at the heart of the Hulk character.
The Incredible Hulks Television Shows Place in Marvel History.
The Television series swings away from the established continuity set up by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in the 60s but offers its own important contributions to the Incredible Hulk Mythos.
Its the first introduction to the Green Eyes during the transformation into the Hulk. This was the audiences cue that s*** was about to get real! The show used this to its absolute perfection. Horrifying and effective when David turns to the camera the start of the epic transformation into the Monster was on!! No matter how old I get I always LOVE this part of the transformation!
It’s also introduced us to the Hulks antagonist ace reporter Jack McGee!! The ever present McGee would track Banner’s Hulk throughout the series and appears in 56 of the series 82 episode run and eventually makes his return in 1988s Return of the Incredible Hulk where he relents on his chase of the Hulk finally and begins chasing Thor appearances!! The name Jack McGee would resurface once again in the 2008 Hulk movie as a character of the same name is introduced as a student at a school. A nice wink and a nod there!!
One would be remiss that this show also is the official introduction to the name “David” being added to the Bruce Banner name. Mythos has it that show producers thought the name Bruce was too closely associated with the gay community which sadly in the late 70s was still struggling for acceptance and as a result those with say fought to have it changed and were successful and thus was born the new and improved (??) “David” Bruce Banner was born. Sigh…a real sign of the times with that one. I could not find official confirmation of this but this has been the lore forever. I’ll give the showrunners the benefit of the doubt and leave this one as a myth for the benefit of all involved. Origins aside I did dig the name David being added to his name especially when he needed to disguise himself in the show.
As you can see this show not only had a huge impact on me but definitely made its mark in the eyes of the fandom and was an early brightspot for Marvel in the infancy of the live action genre. With that said this draws our discussion to a conclusion
Well that’s all Satellite fans!! I truly hope you have enjoyed our visit to the late 70’s rediscovering the magic and vision of Bill Bixby’s Incredible Hulk show I know I have but wait…we have plenty of more Pop Culture Doctors to discover as Super-Blog Team Up keeps on rolling with “The Doctor Is In!!” Check out all of our amazing contributors below.Till next time Satellite Subscribers..
Transmission Ended…
VISIT THE REST OF OUR AMAZING TEAM!! “THE DOCTOR IS IN” Continues BELOW!!
Its another installment of the SHS Podcast and this is one you are NOT gonna want to miss!! Click the link below and start listening but check out this blog post first for plenty of visual eye candy!! If you are a toy collector look no further than this action packed episode!!
Begin Transmission: 1/28/2021
Super-Hero Satellite Podcast Episode 2 is HERE!! In this episode we deep dive into vintage toy collecting. I share my memories of growing up a Toy Collector and all the memories around Christmas toy hauls and random stories of how I came upon some of the most classic toys there ever existed! I also brought in an expert to provide professional analysis as Mr. Scott Kinney, who happens to be the executive producer of The Game Chasers Motion Picture as well as the Executive Producer for Mark Hamill’s Pop Culture Quest Youtube Steaming Series joins me in the conversation!! Hang with us as we discuss our favorite childhood toy lines, collecting stories and plenty of industry discussion.
Scott has been a long time collector and has amassed an amazing collection of some of the greatest and rarest toy-lines out there!! Our discussion goes deep into his passion for collecting and many of the stories attached to finding some of the essential key collectors toys in the wild. Scott is no stranger to selling vintage toys and always finds himself at Flea Markets and conventions buying and selling some of the worlds most coveted collectibles. Dont believe me? Check out the proof below!! You may need to sit down as this collection is staggering!!
You are not a true Toy collector without showcasing Kenner’s Super Powers collection!! A key collection featuring the best DC Superheroes and villains all on display right here. For those with a kean eye..yes that is the mega rare Cyborg figure behind Clark Kent in that picture!! Dont forget one of my favorite pieces as well that Super Powers Hall Of Justice!! Just a beautiful set right here!!
Serious Toy collectors know the value of the next set of toys the Super Elusive Shogun Warrior figures, but not just the Shogun warriors but BOTH versions of Godzilla from that line. These are considered the crown jewel of that collection and the Godzilla variant is on the very top of Vintage Collectors checklists of holy grails!
Possibly the most incredible collection of Shogun Warriors I have ever seen. Do a careful scan of this picture and just see the deep cuts that exist in this wall of toys. A true collector knows that when it comes to vintage hot toys there is nothing as pure as what is on this photo. We cover all the details of Shogun Warriors in the show so be sure to check out the stories associated with acquiring this giant collection.
One of my favorite Toy lines is one that many times gets lost in the conversation and that is Sectaur’s. Sectaurs: Warriors of Symbion was a line of action figures released by Coleco in 1985 and were a deluxe and often time very expensive toy-line that I ate up as a kid. The central collectible of the collection is The Hyve Action Play-set. A super rare massive play set that is highly sought after by collectors that finds its home in the incredible Kinney Collection! (Super jealous Scott!! LOL)
Scott’s collection has also been highlighted by the amazing Netflix series dedicated to Toy Collecting called “The Toys That Made Us” As you can see in this picture the incredible vintage 12″ Star Wars figures as well as a load of vintage Boba Fett figures THE hottest Star Wars toy burning up collectible websites everywhere these days hot off the heels of Disney’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian! You gotta hear our reflections on the Star Wars figures and that incredible Kenner line of amazing collectibles in the show!!
Find Scott on Twitter at @kidkosmic and as well at @Popculturequest and enjoy all of his tweets which happens to be heavy with amazing pics of collectibles and other super nerdy and fun stuff!! One would be remiss to not tell you of Scott’s own attempt at making his OWN Toy!! I present to you Brogun Warriors! Yeah they look a little familiar but that’s the point!! The first toy was commissioned by http://toyworth.com as an NYCC exclusive. The first pic was a mock up Scott put on Instagram and was then contacted and asked to produce a limited number for NYCC!!. The toy was even bought by Robert Bruce while at the con and was showcased online!
Making our own toys is what dreams are made of!! If you ever wanted to make your own toy what would you make?? Let us know we would love to hear! In the meantime thanks for checking out the blog and I hope you all dig the show…its a real labor of love for me! If you are a visual person and a Youtube only type of person you can see the completely unedited discussion right here as well!! Now that’s being SUPER SERVED!!
Drop us a comment here on the blog or on my Twitter @Charlton_Hero or on email at charltonhero@gmail.com! We would love to hear from you! Come on back in February for the 3rd of 4 episodes of The SuperHero Satellite Podcast as we tackle Sci-Fi Television…and a little thing called “V”…Oh yeah!!
Welcome Back Heroes!! Fans of this here little blog know that when it comes to vintage action figures we could debrief all day. I have gathered the team here today in the viewing chambers for a very niche pocket of the action figure universe known as Adventure People. Settle in Heroes..OUR Adventure begins NOW!
When you consider the fact that my childhood was defined by action figures of the 1980s you will quickly understand why today’s topic is so vital to our meeting today. Like many I was raised on the classics, Star Wars, G.I.Joe, Masters Of The Universe were among my absolute favorites. Like all great toy-lines of the day these miniatures occupied hours, days and weeks of my youth. All of my friends were onboard as well. We shared the same interest in all the aforementioned franchises all of which boasted their own motion pictures, cartoons , comic books, TV shows you name it!!
One toy line that predated them all had no such media offspring and literally existed unearthed in several of my friends toy boxes waiting for me to discover them. As was such a story as with the 1975 Fisher Price Toy Collection The Adventure People! These particular toys as we would come to find out were soully responsible for adventures to come in distant barbaric planets, on battlefields across the world and in Galaxies Far Far Away…The very Genesis of our playtime in the 80s with action figures could not have occurred without these 3 ¾ inch trailblazers. Meet Fisher Prices Adventure People.
Transmission Date: Feb 23 2019
I constantly talk about being raised in a small town with little shopping options. I think I have established that fact in my blog chronology. Whats little know is that for the first 4 years of my life I was born in a VERY small town of Harcourt NL Canada. It wasnt until I was 4 that I moved to Clarenville, NL where I would live out my childhood and have my main growing up experiences. The majority of my action figure purchases spawned from that glorious Christmas season. While I did very well over Xmas in super isolated Harcourt when I moved to Clarenville my fortunes multiplied. I remember several of my first Christmas’s at 75 Memorial Drive, one in particular my parents went shopping and not so secretly picked out many of my Christmas gifts while I was THERE!! By bringing me to a store called Lovelesses. They had a selection of everything there including a mini Toy “Department”. Exactly 4 shelves of them to be perfectly clear. As I pointed and ogled at some of these cool-ass toys in front of me I remember pointing out the Weeble Wobble Haunted House as well as The Weeble Wobble Clubhouse. Both items became childhood favorites that far outlived their expiration as being GI Joe and Star Wars play-sets long after the Weebles went to toy heaven. As a couple of side gifts I also pointed out the Fisher Price Adventure People. They were two seemingly harmless Divers in lime green swimwear. There was a guy and a girl..I thought they were cool and guess what they magically appeared under the Christmas tree on our first Christmas in our new home! Who would have guessed Santa had been blessed with clairvoyance?
I had no idea or context at the time what these toys were. I just knew they were fun to play with in the bathtub and that’s all that mattered.As time passed and I was in primary school I happened upon a strange kid with quirky hair and a different kind of look. When I think back he resembled Carmine Infantino’s Luke Skywalker in the 70s Marvel Star Wars comic book. His name was Leslie Card. “Lezz” as we called him became fast friends with me and we hung out all the time as he lived just a two-minute walk from my house. Lezz came from a small town from the west coast of our island of Newfoundland and as a result had an assortment of “Different” toys! I had become a good enough friend that I was invited to one of his Birthday parties and it was one of the first times in his home. It was a Blackstar party and we watched a Blackstar VHS tape as the main event! How amazing is THAT!!
After this I frequented his house especially in the summer. It was common to just hang out in his backyard and read comics in his camper that his parents had parked in the back of the house while sipping “Hires” Root Beer. As we grew tired of reading books like Royal Roy, The Amazing Spider Ham and Wally The Wizard one day we drifted inside his house to his basement. Inside its cavernous interior of his unfinished basement / laundry area I noticed a fine stash of toys in a series of storage bins. While Lezz didn’t have the socially acceptable toys of the Town of Clarenville he had something DIFFERENT!! The first thing that grabbed me was that he had Micronauts…and plenty of them!!
Instead of He-Man toys he had Blackstar figures. There were no Go-Bots to be found but there were Shogun Warriors! This was like bizarro world for me! That being said there were a few common Star Wars toys for good measure but a few things always stood out were a fleet of vehicles…toys that I had not seen before but looked mighty cool and became playtime favorites.
In this one box I uncovered a Sports Van, a Plane, an outdoors recreational vehicle and more. I had these to be Tonka Toys before but these were different!! These toys could fit our Star Wars figures inside them!! I had no idea what these toys were but I did note that they were very well made and colorful. We played with them all the time that summer mixing them seamlessly with our other favorite toy franchises…I would later find out that these belonged to the same family of toys as my two Divers. Remember kids these two Diver toys in particular would become VERY important to the layout of the entire Adventure People line! More on that later!
Fisher price had not been known for their action figures. Prior to this Fisher Price handled mainly young kids with their licensed lines for Sesame Street and other properties. Typically these toys were targeting pre-school children and you could spot a Fisher Price toy from a mile away. No matter where you went, schools, day cares, Doctors offices, you name it, they had some sort of Fisher Price toy looming in its fibres. The classic pop maker, and The Fisher Price Cash register were commonly found everywhere.
For myself I was blessed to have had two of the coolest playsets, The Fisher Price Garage and the Sesame Street Playhouse!! Both of these sets were long time stalwarts of the Hero action figure play time sets. These always doubled for other things during play of course. The Clubhouse was always a Cobra Strong hold as it was incorporated into my main line playtime. I always imagined these item as something else and that was half the fun.
The Parking Garage was an addictive toy that involved a multi level parking garage with a working elevator to the top floor. It boasted a ramp for cars to roll down to ground level and something so simple occupied my young mind for hours. Countless minutes spent mindlessly churning the elevator bringing my mini cars or ‘Dinkies” to the top floor and then rolling them down the ramp at a high-speed! These little cars which seated exactly one Fisher Price peg figure in its seat careened from the rampway of the garage across the kitchen floor to my delight. Mindless fun…but that was the trap of Fisher Price products. They were infinitely playable, incredibly sturdy and compact and stood the test of time while other toy lines often did not survive the rigors of the toy box.
The Fisher Price figurines were iconic and unmistakable. They did not have 10,000 points of articulation…in fact the ONLY thing they could do was turn their heads! They had a peg like body with a shortened molded base to allow them to fit into their environments. The signature piece of them were the classic round head with painted face. Sometimes the heads had an accessories like a hat or a helmet which made them decipherable from others in the line. When I see these today I cant help but smile. They were incredibly basic, but that’s all 4-year-old me needed.
Fisher Price however would not be content with simply letting their customer base walk away when they turned 6..they had to expand…they had to capture that lucrative 6-10 demographic that other companies like Hasbro and Mattel monopolized. Hence in 1975 Fisher Price unveiled a new brand of figures..a set that would change the way we play to this very day. It was here we were about see the beginning of the fall of the 12-inch giant toy..and things were about to get smaller..3 3/4 inch to be exact!!
Adventure People encapsulated a new shift towards action figures. Action figures and dolls mostly up to that point had been of the larger variety. G.I.Joe was a primary kids toy in the 60s and 70s with each figure looming in a 12 inch variety! The vehicles were equally as massive to fit this line. The Six Million Dollar Man line of figures debuting in 1975 as well continued on the 12 inch trend. For girls at the time Barbie was equally as sizable along with all her friends , vehicles and accessories. Big was the norm during this time so with Adventure People launching in its 3 3/4 format was considered radical at the time. The FOOLS!! No one would play with 3 3/4 inch figures…right?? Fisher Price was not known to dip its toes in the big boy toy market but maybe …just maybe kids of the 70s would want their adventures on a smaller more compact scale….and they would be RIGHT!!
Meanwhile Kenner, the toy company known at the time for creating The Easy Bake Oven and The Spirograph was commissioned with the task of producing a line of figures for a new Science fiction movie that was by all accounts going to be popular…little did they know HOW popular. Mego another popular toy company of the day had recently declined the contract believing that this property would be a miss financially. They had already seen decline in general toy sales so taking a gamble at an unknown property was not a gamble worth taking. Besides this Star Wars thing was like all the other movie failures at the time right? That’s where up and comer Kenner came in, yet woefully unprepared to know the challenge that was ahead. The Christmas of 1977 would be a big challenge. There was pressure on to release a Star Wars toy line for the peak shopping season and demand for Star Wars was at a fever pitch. Kenner scrambled. Now you may ask..what does this have to do with Fisher Price Adventure People??
Well when toy company designers rushed production of their figures there was no time to develop physical prototype molds as was typically done in the creation of a new line. Kenner associates instead took several Adventure People toys remodeled and repainted them into prototype Star Wars figure concepts to sell to the marketers for production. The Toys were green lit and the most successful line of action figures ever made was born…with a little nudge from the amazing Fisher Price Adventure people.
The 3 3/4 inch action figure market exploded! Large scale toys such as Hasbro’s G.I.Joe, Mego toys and even The Six Million Dollar Man figures would all experience a sharp and sudden decline in the scale of their format. Some toys adapted with the times while others perished. On the surface level Adventure People were basic. None of the figures even had names. Which kind of worked out because pulling one of these very similar looking figures from the toy box and trying to differentiate them with a name could be a challenge for any 7-year-old. It was best off that we named them ourselves anyways! They were differentiated by their sex this group was strictly Male and female and also very super caucasian!?? The line not known for its diversity DID include only one African American figure named “Male Pilot”(That had two variants) as well as a black female news reporter! They also had one very cool Native American male (Not pictured) as well but that was it! None o the three figures appeared as repaints later which was a little odd! I assume we will give them a pass for the times being what they were socially but this was certainly NOT the era of diversity in which we live in now.
They reused only a small number of individual molds to make their figures. By simply repainting them and adding accessories to make them “New” figures! Before everyone gets boo boo faced and accuses Fisher Price of high crime, at the same time the beloved GI Joe 3 3/4 inch line did the same first when they launched . If you look closely at the GI Joe line you will notice that there was a great deal of head sharing going on. (Mind out of the gutters please we are talking plastic action figure heads people!!) Hawk, and Steeler share the same head mold. Clutch and Rock and Roll are the same guy with new hair and accessories!!! I noticed this with the Fisher Price gang as well! My Male Diver figure is also the most popular retread in the whole line as he moonlights as Male Swimmer, Male astronaut, Male TV Crew, Male Construction Worker, Space Commander, X-Ray Man…well you get the point!! No one even bothered to name them! There were other variants though few and far betwen like two female molds that played and a host of different moldslike a race car driver, a cowboy, a Kayaker and a hang glider to name the most common assortment of Adventure People varities! All of these figures were built so they could easily be repainted and repurposed in another set! It was genius when you think of it!
Another peculiarity of this line were the hands. Each figure had a hand that fit onto some sort of vehicle or corresponding accessory. This was a neat feature as unlike other toy lines at the time when you placed a figure inside a vehicle they just sat there and could not grip the wheel merely sit. Not Adventure People..these figures were meant to drive, work and heck even paddle a canoe down river and look the part! The coolest part of Adventure People however were the playsets and vehicles!! This is where play really began. Once you moved past the idea that your Mountain Climber, Male Swimmer and The Space Commander were the SAME toy then came the mega cool rides and you were over it!
The awesome Daredevil Sport Van was one that was a common find in toy boxes around my town! The classic green color with motor cycle and kayak accessories made this toy a win! The wheels and general construction looked reminiscent of the Barbie campers of the day! These toys featured very basic but iconic paper sticker decals that made these vehicles stand out!
Fisher Price Deluxe sets often came with plenty of figures and extra accessories to play with. The complete Wilderness Patrol team was one of my favorites! One incredible accessory was the Pontoon Boat that paired with the Bush plane! But separate all the vehicles and you had a boat a plane and an all terrain vehicle! Hell they even stuck a Collie in this set for good measure!!
The beauty of all these sets were they were super compatible with other figure sets of the day. Who would not have loved to have this super cool Rescue Truck for your GI Joe Medic Doc!! Come on you KNOW you would have!! How about Stalker and Gung Ho figures using all the cool Wilderness Patrol toys. These sets opened up new possibilities for your other toys that may have been collecting toy box dust!
My favorite set of all the Adventure People line however was the amazing Space Collection. With Kenner cleaning up in toy stores with their Star Wars line and other lines like BattleStar Galactica trying to take a slice to the toy profit pie. Fisher Price entered the fray with a solid entry into the game, Adventure People: Space
Fisher Price as usual did not invest millions into making new molds for this new line of toys as with all other sets this crew was made up of repaints of the original Adventure People. Space Commander was Fisher Prices answer to Commander Adama of BattleStar fame but upon closer inspection he was merely our old friend Male Diver with a painted beard and flashy new red space duds with decals! Hang Glider Male transformed into Astro Knight! Race Car Driver became Clawtron Male! Heck Male and Female Diver became my favorite figures of the entire line with their new space garb complete with the see through green X-Ray Man and X-Ray Woman! They didnt even try to cover up the diving suits! They were literally clear green androids with robotic detailing and yellow dots literally painted over their eyes…and I loved them!!
This set didn’t just rely on its figures!! Nooooo! It also bested anything on toyshelves at that time with simply incredible vehicles!! Enter: Alpha Probe!! An incredibly designed space ship with mini adventure ship and built-in and realistic space sounds and options!
Alpha Probe was the center piece to the space collection and in scale one of the largest toys in the entire collection! As with everything else in the sets its was wildly compatible with the Popular Star Wars/ Gi Joe sets of the day and just looked damn cool in anyone’s collection!
So your Adventure People could blast off to the stars for adventures beyond the imagination…but what happens when you get there?? They had that on lock too with more incredible set pieces, the first being the Alpha Star Space Exploration set. It came complete with the Alpha Star all terrain vehicle and full deep space exploration unit in tow! Throw in the figures, a mini explorer droid and a beast alien and this thing had it all! Oh and I didn’t mention it was motorized and could drive back and forth! These things were tough on batteries through so you would need a steady supply of D-Cell batteries to keep the action going!
Then the Alpha Interceptor! This one was a bunch of modular toys in one. It was a “Build Your Own” sort of toy that you could build basically three types of toys out of! I have not seen one of these in real life but this thing looks incredible!!
Now for kids on a budget Fisher Price also had you covered!! Fire Star 1 was a single vehicle black space ship that played well with your X-Wing and Tie Fighter battles in a Galaxy Far far Away!! It came with a connecting cable that attached to the vehicle and figure to give the illusion of weightlessness in space!! Yes that is good old reliable Male Diver as X-Ray Man inside the Astro-Suit!!
Bottom line…Adventure People were much more than a juveniles toy. The cross compatibility alone made these toys favorites during playtime back in the day! While there was plenty of cop outs design wise these toys were incredibly well build and durable. If you look around out there in that corner closet or that down stairs storage area you just may rediscover these classics! That kids…is one to grow on!
Thanks for checking out the Super-Hero Satellite! Do us a favor and drop me a comment in the box below! If you would like to chat about this article or anything retro you can find me on Twitter @charlton_hero! Give me a follow!! You wont be sorry…at least not right away! Till Next Time Heroes!
***YEARS AFTER THE SUPER-HERO SATELLITE IS FOUND DORMANT IN SPACE ..TODAY SYSTEMS ARE RESTORED***
*Systems Monitoring returning from sleep, awaken mode in affect…systems full Restored.* Welcome BACK Heroes!! It has been a LONG Time and I am SUPER excited to be BACK! There is no better time to return than with my baby..The Super-Blog Team Up!After taking a much-needed break from the blog I am back and this year will definitely be the Year Of The Satellite! More on that later!! We have so many things planned its gonna take an entire post to get to them all!! For those of you unfamiliar with Super-Blog Team Up we are a group of like-minded bloggers who come together multiple times a year to write about a singular topic on one designated day! Not only will you get to enjoy this post (Hopefully!!) but at the end you will find links to all our other top shelf writers! We have many long time authors who are back, we have a few who are making their return to the fold and several new faces (Or Pens as it maybe!!) who are now debuting members of the Mighty Marching SBTU!! Without further adieu….strap in heroes the Satellite is about to blast off to the not so distant past to talk about a subject that I had been meaning to do many years ago…The Walking Dead! The theme this month happens to be…
Transmission Date: Jan. 23rd 2019
The first thing you need to understand is that there was a dark period in my time as a comics collector where I moved away from the hobby that I loved due to economics. When I finally got back into comics it was on the heels of some new exciting books that spawned my returning passion for comics. In the late 90s I was driven out of comics a hobby that I loved. By the 2000s I was out of collecting completely as I had been priced out of the market. My pull list that was at 40 to 50 books a month had dropped to one or two and finally to NOTHING. It was a sad day. Through Wizard magazine from the magazine rack I stayed abreast of the business and following the big events going on in the big three. At least it was something. Podcasts however were a big source of fun for me and I was dumpster diving for whatever audio content related to things I enjoyed during the birth of the podcast market in the early 2000s. As I have mentioned many times before Comic Geek Speak was one of my go-to podcasts and the gang on there had spotlight episodes more so The Book Of The Month episodes! On August 2005 CGS put out its Book of The Month Club Selection: The Walking Dead
Little did I know I would become engulfed in this title like no other. It became almost an addiction..I could not put it down.
I had given up on most Image books around this time since many of the Superhero titles were gone by that period. Images offerings had not interested me for some time. However upon listening to the CGS crew rave about this book I wanted to know all about it. I had some time on my hands back then and I spent several hours a day reading comics on my computer. With one search, there was the entire collection..and a right-click later 35 issues of The Walking Dead were sitting on my hard drive. 35 issues was a daunting challenge but the CGS gang were rarely wrong in their recommendations so I was all in. I simply wanted to skim through the first few issues and get a taste for what my podcast compadre’s were raving about. For those of you who haven’t seen or read anything Walking Dead related let me set the table for you. The Walking Dead is a monthly comic book published by Image Comics written from the mind of one Robert Kirkman who was a relative unknown in terms of mainstream fame in the business at that point. That would change in years to come. The book was intentionally done in Black and White which was not mainstream popular at the time but still existed in some books. The book debuted in Oct 2003 but it would be 2005 before I ever gave it a glance. I remember reading the first issue of the Walking Dead and let me tell you I was….underwhelmed. It was a “meh” for me. I know…I know..you were expecting me to say great things about this book right!! That will come later. The artwork out of the gate was by Tony Moore and I just could not wrap my head around the art. For such a book with such a serious tone I just felt Moore’s artwork not the right fit for the title. It had a loose almost cartoony feel to the work and it was just hard to take the book seriously. I compare it to Joe Staton’s artwork from Green Lantern Corp fame in the 1980s, I just don’t like a cartoony look to characters facially. Both Stanton and Moore suffer from this “Fault” in their armor. I want to be clear it WAS good art but the damn faces drove me nuts. I was just turned off from it instantly. I valiantly read fours issues then stopped…for the time being. The story was solid enough though. A cop wakes up alone in a hospital only to discover that he is in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Sounds simple right? Well I was enjoying the story but not much else. Kirkman wasn’t just writing about zombies killing people he flipped the script and wrote about the human condition as they navigate through this new Dead Filled world. Life as we know it will be scarier, bloodier and more violent than ever….and that’s just the humans…THEN you throw zombies into the mix!
The bare bones of the story follows police Officer Rick Grimes as he becomes the unofficial defacto leader of a group of Zombie Holocaust survivors as they manage their way through the harsh new world. The humans all struggle for shelter food and weapons and the real fight is with each other. In this world however there is no power or luxuries like running water or plumbing. To make matters ever worse when you get bitten by the undead YOU become a Walker yourself!! Factions are created, battle lines are drawn and as food and shelter runs out we find out that desperate people will go to great lengths to survive including imprisoning, killing and murdering each other. The people themselves..the survivors find out it is not the Dead they have to worry about, it’s each other…they themselves have become The Walking Dead! The realism of the tragedy of the breakdown of civilization and of the human condition is what makes this book amazing. As I said after 4 issues while I was enjoying the book..visually it was a turn off so I walked away. It would be 6 months later that I would see a random new issue of The Walking Dead for sale and I grabbed it to get a feel for what’s going on in the book. Things had changed…dramatically.
Tony Moore’s art was nowhere to be seen and now a guy by the name of Charlie Adlard had taken over. This moody almost gruesome brooding style was PERFECT for the book. As I thumbed through the pages I was shocked by something that happened. Core characters had died!!? It was enough for me to jump back in. I began anew with issue 5 and I have never looked back! On to the story…As Rick and his family work with a small group of survivors as they struggle to stay alive by just trying to find the basics to support life and to just live till the next day. The group are faced with the dilemma of having to kill others to survive..including their friends. They see loved ones pass and turn into walkers and have to kill them all over again. Rick is faced with the horrible prospect of killing his best friend. His wife is murdered with their unborn child. His son is hideously disfigured. Rick himself is dismembered when he loses a hand. That is JUST the Grimes family. Every character in the book is faced with an impossible disturbing task of being driven to murder to stay alive. It’s the central tragedy of this series and Kirkman masterfully weaves his characters through this awful depraved journey. What would YOU do to survive? If you look for one sentence to describe the Walking Dead is…NO ONE IS SAFE. No other book in its genre is known for killing off its core cast like The Walking Dead. You do not have to look very far to know that you best not get invested in any characters because each one comes with an unofficial expiry date! This is the central theme of the book. Well we find out that the answer to that question is that when faced with death good people become VERY bad people in a damn hurry as is the case with our subject here for The Super-Blog Team Up…Negan. But first before the Hardcore Bat swinging madman there was…this man..
The Walking Dead has had its share of villains. Stand outs like The Governor are a classic example of what this new world can do to a good human. Issue 27 of TWD we are introduced to Brian Blake, the Governor of the Town Of Woodbury. Woodbury is a town that survives and lives on like an almost normal community in the middle of a collapsing civilization. Blake is their charismatic leader whose ruthlessness and brutality are the cornerstones of Woodbury’s very existence. He leads with an iron fist and outsiders are NOT welcome unless there is something to gain by their association. The Governor was the bench mark villain for the majority of the series with his greatest hits include cutting Ricks hand off, mutilating Michonne, Killing Ricks wife and undead baby not excluding the outright brutal murder of many core characters. Central to Kirkman’s writing he always gives us this human element to even his bad guys. Later we see that despite the Governors ruthless commanding presence and heinous acts we see a real father who lost his daughter to the horrors of this new world of whom he is unwilling to let go. He keeps the “walkerized” version of his daughter Penney tied up in his apartment and feeds her body parts of his victims to her to eat. Eventually The Gov is taken down we and it is here we experience the true tragedy of this book. While the Governor is considered one of comicdom’s most ruthless villains he is but the learner when it comes to the crown prince of barbarianism himself..the Leader of The saviours…Negan! Just as Rick and The group of survivors have seemingly over come the evils of their new world and have settled into a peaceful existence in a new town and trying to rebuild some semblance of a normal life for everyone…then we meet The Walking Dead’s real super bad. His name is Negan and the world of The Walking Dead would be beaten into brutal submission by this new psychopath on the scene.
So Negan’s tragic pre-outbreak story goes as such, he was a high school coach who had a reputation for intimidating and bullying his players. Negan (No last name given) lived a seemingly normal life with a job and a wife named Lucille (This name will become very crucial to our story a little later.) Negan was not a morally sound individual early on in his life and despite his outward happy marriage he was having an extramarital affair on the side. His whole world would fall apart prior to the outbreak as Negan discovers his wife has cancer when she collapses in front of him as they argued over this affair revelation. Negan rushes his wife to the hospital just as the outbreak begins, but he is too late. As his wife is placed on life support Negan desperately try’s to hang on to her and calls off his affair but it is too late. Lucille passes away when the power goes down and her life support system shuts down. As with all deaths in the Walking Dead universe our loved ones are reanimated as a “zombie” (Or Walker as we will call them moving forward). Negan has to make the decision to have his wife killed but he cannot bear to do it himself. Negan makes a deal with a child to do the honors for him, a trait we will see over and over when he becomes a leader. Out of the gate I love this origin. Every bad guy is at their best when it comes to their motivation. Negan’s guilt for his infidelity and the passing of his beloved wife scars him and drives him to become the monster we will soon see emerge.
Leaders rise…followers Follow.
As the story goes, Negan is on the run during the outbreak but happens upon a group of survivors led by a Walking Dead core cast member, Dwight. As we find out Dwight is no natural-born leader but a scrappy survivalist who manages to keep himself and his followers alive during the devastation. As Negan is welcomed into the fold it is clear the leadership foundation is weak with Dwight at the helm. It is only a matter of time as Negan uses his natural charm and hard-nosed foundation that Negan becomes their groups obvious emerging natural leader. Once in position of power Negan renames his group the Saviors, a group of which overtime grow into the hundreds. The band discovers ways to defend themselves against the walker hordes and creates a large communal compound and series of outpost satellite locations to maintain their way of life against the horrors of the walkers. Before long as the outside world collapses and resources become scarce, everyone is chasing food and supplies. Negan being a creative entrepeneur uses his sheer brute force, charm and intimidation to bully other groups the Saviors encounter to give up large shares of their supplies, weapons and food in exchange for their “Protection”. The tactic worked numerous times over and over as Negan and his Saviors began to stockpile weapons and supplies while other groups in the wild starved and struggled under their foot. That is until Negan and group ran into Rick Grimes and his posse.
Rick and his group had found their way into a place called Hilltop, a society that was seemingly surviving and self-sustained despite the horrors of the Outbreak. They had developed a government of sorts ran by the dubious Gregory They lived a basic but sustainable lifestyle. Farming and weapons making were trademarks of Hilltop and Negan saw great opportunity to offer his “Protection” to the Hilltop natives and in turn take their food and weapons. Gregory being a weak leader was living under fear of Negan and his group and had a bad habit of caving and conformity like a coward every time when Negan and the saviors came knocking. It didn’t take long before new Hilltop inhabitant Rick Grimes observed what was happening to the citizens who were sustaining a real living to have to hand it over to these bullies with not so much as a harsh word said in retaliation or compromise. Rick had seen enough and mobilized a strike force of the usual suspects.
We get a closer look to what Rick and his group are dealing with as we peel back the layers of their newest foe. We see that this once well-adjusted High School coach has transformed into a deadly brutal sadistic cult leader. Negan’s own people were also living in fear of his shadow. His own people are not spared mercy either as Negan hoardes the saviors women for his own sexual pleasure, taking whomever he wants at any time. Anyone who does not conform with his desires are dealt with….very harshly. Public beatings of his own people are common to set the example. Many of his people whom he dubs “disloyal” are literally horrifically branded facially and horribly disfigured to bear the living reminded of what happens when you show disobedience to Negan. Even former leader Dwight is the living embodiment of what happens when you cross the boss as he wears the branding scar on the side of his face and still stands by Negan in his war against Rick and the outsiders .
No Turning Back..
While Rick and the team are attempting to extinguish Negan’s handle on Hilltop they hit one of the Saviors main security outposts by surprise and kill several of Negan’s henchmen seemingly gaining the upper hand in the first real shot in what would be a War for the ages. This would lead to the most famous and irredeemable act of Negans reign of terror in The Walking Dead saga. When Rick and his group are surrounded by The Saviors and forced to their knees in a line up and it is here that Rick and Company are introduced to the King Of Swing himself..Negan. The leather jacket clad villain debuts with a barbwire baseball bat lovingly named after his dead wife Lucille. Ricks group is threatened with death as they endure a lethal game of Eeneee Meaneee Mineee Mo” to decide who will die to pay for the death of his men. When Negan finally painfully and slowly decides to flat-out murder core Walking Dead fan favorite Glen!
The act is one of the most heinous deaths in the history of comics! Glen is not only murdered in front of his friends but his pregnant wife Maggie is forced to endure his brutal demise as Glen calls out to her during the ordeal. Glens graphic death is Negan’s first stamp on the world of the Walking Dead and it sets the tone for what the character will stand for. It is interesting to compare the previous super bad The Governor with his contemporary Negan. While the Governor was a vile human being capable of horrific acts, Negans level of violence goes beyond anything the governor has dealt.
The Seduction of the Innocent.
One of Negan’s most heinous acts was not in fact the list of people he has murdered, had killed or desecrated but rather his obsession with the son of Rick Grimes. Carl Grimes a battle weary hostile teen by this point in our story has seen enough blood shed and death. He has grown tires of bowing to a homicidal maniac and takes matters into his own hand and goes to take out Negan on his own killing six of Negans men in the process before getting captured and faced with his own execution. Negan stops any attempt on Carl’s life and gains an admiration for Carl’s guts in coming after him. Instead of killing the headstrong teen he takes him under his wing and shows him all the riches he has gained as leader of The Saviors. Carl sees another side of this vicious killer and even begins to warm up to the man who murdered his friends. Negan in a moment where we see he is still a human under his hostile hard-assed exterior demands Carl remove his bandage from his head which covers an awful disfiguring scar that the young Grimes has kept under wraps since an horrific incident where he was accidentally shot in the head while fleeing a Walker outbreak. Negan humiliates Carl by exposing his wound and demands to even touch the inside the hole of the wound on his head where an eye once was now leaving only a deep hole.
Carl finally breaks down from the overwhelming pressure of Negans imprisonment and just the horror of the world he lives in. Seeing Carl break something happens to Negan..he finally shows sympathy for the first time and apologizes to Carl! This is a point in the character we had not seen up to that point. After this incident the Carl and Negan relationship is changed. Negan is protective of Carl and almost sees him in a Father/ Son dynamic. Negan and Carl have many interactions later through out the series but it is this odd overtone to his character that shows there may still be a human under that brash murderous character after all.
One of the main storyline’s in the chronology of The Walking Dead is the Epic All Out War story that documents the final end to the war between Rick and his Survivors against Negan and his Saviors. One of the cornerstones to The Walking Dead book in general is the theme of “No One Is Safe”. This is very apparent in this particular story and the body count on both sides escalates to epic proportions. The war finally ends with the main event of Negan facing his nemesis Rick Grimes. Rick and various bands of communities and splinter survivor groups come together to finally topple the Saviors regime.
The final battle between the leaders has not yet finished but when the bloodshed stops and its left with Rick face to face with Negan himself. Both sides have endured grave loss and it looks like the two warriors have had enough. Negan and Rick look like they have put their weapons down and agree to a truce…that is until Rick Grimes savagely cuts Negan’s throat leaving him for dead on the battlefield to end the bloodshed.
The Confinement
After all out war we are served with a time jump seemingly years into the future.Negan we learn has survived but has been imprisoned ever since the war. We see a haggard Negan who has basically given up on life and lives the rest of his natural life behind bars. For Negan this is a worse affliction than death. He has become almost unrecognizable in appearance and gone is the hulking womanizer and we now see a frail bearded long hair recluse. Of course he cleans up well and after Negan has been torn down and humiliated and that is exactly what Rick Grimes has planned he restores himself to his old look as he begins to plot his escape. All the evil this man has perpetrated to humankind his penance is to rot in a jail cell isolated eternally from civilized man….at least that was the plan.
Redeeming The Irredeemable.
Isolation has its merits. It allows a person to reflect on their life and their mistakes. I would like to say this character served his time, completely rehabed his image and spent the rest of his days making the world a better place ..right? Well in Negans own special way I guess!
Negan decides to adopt the “If you can’t beat em join em” philosophy..Negan using his persuasive powers uses a weak-minded pawn who visits his jail cell who also shares has a deep-seated hatred for Rick Grimes. With the help of his new Grimes hating minion Negan convinces the man to free him!!. The world has changed so much since Negan has been exposed to the outside world and the latest threat to safety and humanity are a group known as The Whisperers. Lead by the emotionless monster Alpha, a bald-headed female leader who along with Beta, collectively runs a group of survivors who conceal their human forms with Walker flesh and to camouflage themselves to be able to walk freely amongst the Walkers. THe Whisperers are very much still a threat despite many societal and technological advancement humanity has progressed since the original outbreak. The man named Brandon Rose the man responsible for freeing Negan tells him of this group and plans to bring him into Whisperer territory to possibly join them. Negan smelling another group takeover goes along with his rescuer ..but before he enters Whisperland, Negan murders Brandon in cold blood and goes to face them himself. Of course with Negan being the personality that he is he is almost instantly detained and imprisoned again. This time however Negan who is used to manipulating people from confinement gains the trust of their leader Alpha and eventually begins to build trust from the Whispers. Negan and Alpha begin to show moments of affection and Alpha after years of being a straight nosed emotionless leader of savage survivalists she unknowingly lets her guard down emotionally and lets Negan and his charms in. Negan shows his affection back the only way he knows how..
He beheads her…as a matter of fact he beheads her with a small knife in savage Negan fashion and in a weird way, but maybe not so weird for a character like Negan, THIS would be his redemption.
Making Peace
Often as humans if we have a disagreement, a fight or an all out estrangement with a friend, or family member we for the most part, attempt to make things right. We want to make amends. After the dust settles we hope to just move on with things..we extend an Olive branch. Negans proverbial “Olive Branch” was bringing the very HEAD of the enemies leader directly to his nemesis and drop it on the ground in front of him as an apology. Rick Grimes the leader and mortal enemy of Negan, who had watched his friends murdered, also who watched his own son be manipulated by this madman, and who attempted to murder him personally several times could only stand in shock. This man who was so evil, so vile, so irredeemable yet he had just ended the war between Rick’s group and the Whisperers. The man he had imprisoned for years out of public fear and outcry was suddenly loose and killing again for RICKS team!!? Negan at one point even saves Rick from certain death from a walker attack. He try’s to convince everyone his time in prison has rehabilitated him. Rick finally concedes to Negan and agrees to no longer jail him. The deal however is that Negan CANNOT live in their community..he will be for all intents and purposes EXILED! Negans past history could not be replaced but somehow he gained the trust and maybe a shade of respect from a man he cost so much. Negan however finds peace with the only person he was truly at war with..Himself.
Both men…and hundreds of other survivors faced horrible odds and did things that no human should ever have to face. Taking lives and seeing horrific tragedy that would break a normally strong person. These people have endured unquestionable horror and to survive committed unspeakable acts. While some are considered great leaders, others are seen as cold-blooded murderers and in the world of the Walking Dead we discover that the line that separates a Rick Grimes from a Negan is very thin. Indeed the truth about The Walking Dead is that “We Are All The Walking Dead…”
Well that is it Satellite Subscribers!! But the fun does not end as Superhero Satellite this year we are debuting the monthly Superhero Satellite podcast this summer! Stay tuned for that!
If you liked what you read…(or even if you didn’t) please feel free to leave a comment as we read and respond to them all! If you want to catch up with us on social media follow us on Twitter @Charlton_Hero or read our archives right here on the site! Till next time Heroes!!
End Transmission..
Thanks so much for reading and for sticking with us despite our year-long absence I have truly missed my readers. The good news is that there is SO much more to enjoy with the rest of our rag-tag group of Mighty Marching Blogging Brigade as Super-Blog Team Up Continues RIGHT NOW! Visit the rest of our team below!
Sitting in the dining hall of the Satellite we have access to retrieving artifacts from the 80s. Seeing that this Satellite has decided to stall in the 80s I figured just for fun I would sent one of our crew on the hunt for a childhood favorite treat of mine…Lowneys ChocoLoto Bars! Lock in coordinates to 1982 computer…Initiate!
Begin Transmission: 05/18/2016
In 1982, not to sound like an old curmudgeon, but money went a long way on trips to the corner store. If you were fortunate enough to land 2 bucks you were a champ! On visits to my Grandmothers in a desolate rural town called Harcourt that may as well have been my childhood Tatooine, I managed to get the best visits to the corner stores. The town was about a 40 minute drive from the thriving metropolis that I lived in. To be clear any town you lived in, if you didn’t travel much, was always the biggest cause it was the center of your universe as was Clarenville to me..but I digress.
During numerous sleep overs at my Grandparents house I was always spoiled in the sense that I would always be given money almost any time I needed then jump on my bike and drive a very short ways to Holloway’s Grocery which was literally two doors away. I was always treated well by the lady who worked there (Shout Out to Audrey!!) and they always called you by name, which I appreciated as a kid! Being a little bit off the beaten track this store seemed to have older treasures still on the shelves in 1982 but that was a great thing for me as you would always find that one treat in there that you didn’t expect to find that in hindsight may have been sitting on their shelves from opening day. It was here I gained a great coloring book collection as dictated in a previous article. I loved that store though as I always came away with something great like a Buck Rogers coloring book or the item in question in this article..the Chocoloto Bar!
For those of you who do not remember it was a Bar with a bright green wrapper which featured a mint bar inside that one would liken in today’s world to a Laura Secord Mint Chocolate Bar but its key feature was that inside the wrapper if you peeled it carefully without destroying it you could win prizes! Inside the wrapper you could be alerted to a free giveaway like a T-Shirt..One of the very rare images of that T-Shirts thankfully still exists as per below..
The other prize was MONEY!! Well money wasnt simply placed in the bar wrapper but it was printed on the inside of the wrapper in coins. If I recall you could win 5, 10, and 25 Cents within these wrappers. This was pretty sweet as the bar its self was usually only 30 cents to purchase! You could save them up as well depending on how many bars you would buy you could come off with a good amount of money from these things depending on that appetite..I had little will power and always cashed in my money for candy and other confectionary goodness! One tragedy was he fact that I never won one of the shirts. I do remember loving the taste…the mint chocolate wasnt the norm back. In that time things like Laura Secord was something that the high rollers who lived in the big city would have but for this kid in small town Harcourt NL it was perfection.
Stop by and say hi to Audrey and the gang at Holloways Grocery one of my favorite stores ever as a kid!
Playing outside on my bike with a few kids from the area with your Drink, foil bag Hostess Potato Chips and me with my Chocoloto Bar life was all I needed it to be! So if you ever visit Harcourt and you head to Holloway’s Grocery, ask for a Chocoloto Bar..they wont have any but maybe they will remember old Hero here cleaning them out with my Grandparents coins!! Life is short gang…remember to smell the roses and hold on to the good memories!
Greetings Super-Blog Team Up fans..the band is back with another tale to weave into the fabric of the blogosphere. This round we tackle “Versus”. If you are reading this years from now some context is needed. In this year of 2016 Super Hero films are still big bucks at the box office and both Marvel and DC are hanging their hats on two films where their main “Good Guy”characters square off one on one. Dc’s Batman V Superman debuted to mixed reviews but a very large draw and is still making big money as we speak. On may 6th Marvel takes their shot in the war with Captain America: Civil War which trumpets the big battle between Marvels head honcho Captain America and Iron Man! Both films promise a full-scale battle of Hero vs Hero.
Fortunately comic book history is filled to the brim with tale after tale of Earths mightiest heroes battling each other, even villains vs villains, not to mention Super Team vs Super Team! So many examples of epic battles with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Some battles have loved ones in danger and others where heroes secret identities hang in the balance. It brings us great pleasure here at The Superhero Satellite to bring you none of that! In fact this may be the shortest battle of Hero vs Hero in the history of comics. Without further adieu I present to you the moment when the Dark Knight, The Caped Crusader, The Bat, Batman took on the galaxies greatest protector, The GREEN LANTERN!! Okay…its Guy Gardner but he is a Lantern darn it! Anyways..on with the show..strap in and let’s get going to 1986..
Begin Transmission : May 4th 2016
DC had finished their massive crossover Crisis On Infinite Earths as detailed gloriously in past Super-Blog Team Ups and was looking to clean up many loose ends that resulted in its conclusion! Believe us there were a ton of them! The company decided after successful reboots of their core characters that they would pull all loose ends together into a bright red bow and make sense of all the individual titles by reforming their Super Team….The Justice League Of America! John Ostrander and Len Wein were the scribes in charge of reuniting DC’s heavy hitters under one banner. The story would be called Legends and it would take place over the course of 6 issues and multiple crossovers . It would be a jump on point for new readers and launched several new titles such as Flash, Suicide Squad and the brand new Justice League. In the story Darkseid wages a bet with Phantom Stranger that he will turn the world against earths Superheroes and uses a human political pawn as his catalyst. The end result sees DC’s finest come together to seemingly reform the Justice League and thwart Darkseid’s somewhat silly plot. Legends #6 boasts an all-star line up for the Justice League boasting Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Shazam, Black Canary, Guy Gardner, Dr. Fate , Changeling, Martian Manhunter and Blue Beetle! The band was back together and DC fans were excited for this league to continue on and protect this new DC Universe, Post Crisis. All was right with the world again…or was it?
Sadly this League would dissolve quicker than it came together. Superman declined the invite, Wonder Woman walked away quietly, Changeling went back to his gig with the Titans and Flash sped away disinterested in being bound to a team. It seemed the rug had been pulled out from fans who had suffered through some bad times in Justice League history with the ill-fated Justice League Detroit (which actually kicks some major ass and is a very fun read!) and With many JLA heavy hitters seemingly out of the mix for the next round of this new league, The new groups prospects of commercial success seemed significantly less. How can we have a JLA without the Trinity? (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) Well Writer/ Artist Keith Giffen along with J.M. Dematteis and Kevin Maguire would roll out the LEAST likely band of misfits the Justice League banner had ever seen.
So was born the Justice League International or the Bwah Ha Ha League as it is fondly recalled by the comics faithful. Giffen and DeMatteis would bring a very lighthearted comedic tone to proceedings.
The famous Justice League #1 from May 1987 sported one of the most copied covers in comics history with a family picture sort of cover sporting this new team with some very suspect looking participants. While the team boasted classic JLA heavyweights such as Batman, Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary it also assembled a far more unique crew than the JLA had ever seen. Many of which were imports from DC’s recent acquisitions from Charlton Comics, Fawcett, and the Kirby verse. The Blue Beetle, Mister Miracle, Oberon , Shazam and a brand new Version of Dr. Light rounded out this roster. One member however stole the cover with the now famous “Wanna make somethin of it??” Guy Gardner, a relatively lesser known member of the illustrious and complicated Green Lantern Corp filled out the roster. It was apparent that Gardner was bringing the “Attitude” to its ranks. One look at Batman’s face knows this team is already in trouble.
For those not familiar with the Justice Leagues newest Green Lantern would quickly grow to love the renegade Lantern. He originally debut in Green Lantern Vol. 2 Issue 59and from the get go we know that this Green Lantern didn’t play by the rules. In this issue The Guardians give Green Lantern Hal Jordan a lesson in humility by showing him what would have been if Guy Gardner had been selected by Abin Sur to wear the famous Green Power Ring rather than him. We can all be thankful it turned out the way it did. During his travels Gardner would be passed over many times to lead the Lanterns in favor of Hal Jordan and John Stewart but always held to his guns that HE was the one destined to lead the team…alas at the time this did not come to pass however it would be a core reason why he was tormented by being subservient to another leader.
Guy went headlong into battles with DCs greatest rogues gallery would find himself in a bad situation in DC’s fabled Phantom Zone where he would be beaten into oblivion and permanently injured. A victim of brain damage, Guy as a result was a moody , self indulged prick who commanded the leadership of the JLI. Gardner however was not taken seriously by his new team mates. This certainly wasnt the Green Lantern Corp. anymore!! Joining a new group would be a little “problematic” for Guy as we will see..
We all know the story of the Batman. Avenging his parents death, Bruce Wayne goes on a mission to rid the world of evil doers. Along the way he gains multiple sidekicks with Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Superman and many others. For all intents and purposes..Bruce Wayne was never good with relationships and no matter if it was with a partner, a love interest, or a Super Team, Batman’s relationships always turned out badly. Batman would be part of The Batman Family, The Justice League Of America and even The Outsiders…all of which were dysfunctional relationships to say the least.
Batman as well was never one for playing second fiddle to anyone and usually assumed the leadership role as would be the case with the latest incarnation of the Justice league International. After the downfall of Justice League Detroit former Leader, Martian Manhunter was reluctant to put the lives of another team in his hands as he felt squarely responsible for their demise. Batman took the reins while the group was in their bonding period. However…unlike anyone he ever teamed with, Guy Gardner was NOT a team player and it was up to Batman to put him in line. It was the battle of wills..The mysterious Batman VERSUS an ultra powerful ring wielder who has the power of the universe at his hands…only one would prevail in a Game of Thrones.
From the opening page of Justice League #1 Vol. 2 1988, Gardner was already front and center and plotting to do a grand take over of the leadership position of the mighty newly reformed Justice League. Tensions would fly at their first ever meeting as a group..and Gardner and Batman would get their first taste of each other..it was NOT love at first sight!
In fact Gardner’s overtures towards the leadership position would not only be rejected but it would lead to an all out breakdown of the team only in their first organized group meeting. Batman could see right away that despite his reluctance to once again lead a super team…this boat needed a captain..and FAST!
With Gardner upstaged in front of the team, it would not only intensify the fire between Bats and Guy. It was just the start in a series of confrontations..as Batman attempted to instill a sense of protocol to proceedings Guy would be there to challenge his every word..
Guys temper would make for some tense moments in the team’s business. Gardner had no respect for Manhunter’s word despite Jonzz being a longstanding leader of the original Justice League Of America. Guy also would have none of The Big Red Chesse’s (Shazam) words either, but when it came to Batman, Gardner would dare not step any further.
Batman would literally become Guys babysitter. At every outburst or irrational thought, Bats was there to shut Guys outbursts down and amazingly there was zero retaliation..
Despite Guys reluctance to fight Batman, he would antagonize The Dark Knight at every opportunity. Both parties were now in the advanced stage of their passionate dislike for each other. Gardner took every shot he could whether on the battle field or in front of their peers. Serious group debriefings were fertile ground for Guys barbs….as Batman continued to make mental note of his detractors poor attempts to get under his skin.
Batman continued to hold the Lantern at bay, but when the League had their back against the wall, Gardner challenged Batman’s leadership for the last time. The defiance, the outbursts, the smart remarks and the tantrums would come to a head. Gardner would build up the courage to put the money where his mouth was as once and for all, Guy Gardner challenged Batman for the coveted Leadership position of DC’s high-profile flagship super group.
All the pent-up frustration..all the years of being held back by his peers in the Green Lantern Corps and now again in the Justice League. Gardner even removed his power ring and with no more fear in his heart, Guy Gardner BIT!!
Guy Gardner handed his ring to Blue Beetle and rushed furiously towards Batman and FINALLY these two rivals would square off one on one, head to head in a battle to end all battles this war was finally settled…
With ONE Punch…
What? Were you expecting something different? A bigger battle? A drawn out brawl over the course of six issues? Nope not here…sometimes less is more. Masterpieces are not created in one stroke of the brush…this rivalry was the exception. Batman would go on to leave the League a short time afterwards but Guy would still not achieve the top spot. Batman would go on to lead again and even Guy many years later, would finally get his respect as a Leader in the Green Lantern Corps...but that my friends is another story for another day. If you are hungry for a fight the battles continue with our group of Fellow Super Bloggers…read more below!!
Today I have gathered the Satellite crew in the main cabin for what I like to call..reading time. Yes, a foreign concept in this technical world of cell phones and computers. Gather round the virtual library and marvel at some classics that may have passed by a whole generation of kids..Yes today is Scholastic Day at The Satellite!!
Begin Transmission: April 1 2016
I was a fan of school..although the younger me would dispute this many mornings struggling to get up out of bed. Overall if I look back I would not trade one day of the public school system. In our home town there were none of today’s craziness with guns and drugs and bullying..we came to school…hung out with our friends and at time at the most an odd fight would break out but would be settled in the court of the playground. Yes my fellow school goers were generally a civilized bunch and it was always good times. One very memorable thing that I looked forward to every month was a little 4-6 page pamphlet that teachers would hand out so you could order books and have them delivered to your school. The Scholastic Book Orderwas the Sears Wish Book of Public School!
Scholastic was an American based publishing company that offered discounted literature to school districts all over Canada and The United States.They distributed order forms to schools for kids and parents to browse and order books through their services. Scholastic did a great job marketing their titles to kids as they had access to all the latest trends, movies or show publications and would feature them prominently in their pages of their flyer. The flyers were usually 4-6 pages in length and each page would feature plenty of books and items for order. The front Splash page usually featured the most current popular books and deals while the inside of the flyers would offer a variety of offerings from various authors. Of course Scholastic was careful to have multiple circulars for all different age groups so that offerings to elementary school children would not be the same as the offerings to Teens in Jr. High.There were literally hundreds of books from time to time and the prices were never at gouging level..and they also had great savings on bundle packages where you could get a full series of books for one low price.
I ALWAYS looked forward to these book orders. Once you made up your mind on what books you wanted or could afford, you filled out a long rectangular order slip in the last page of the flyer and noted the items you wanted. You then bugged your parents to fork over the cash and depending on what they donated to the cause decided your literary fate for that month. I feel I always fared decently well..Now where to start??
I fondly remember some of my classic hauls. Early on in our elementary days I loved kids magazines such as Dynamite and Bananas. Both were variety magazines which usually had celebrities from the favorite TV shows of the day and an interesting interview or story about them on the inside.
Dynamite was the better of the two as it had a more serious approach and featured the things I loved as a kid like Star Wars, Different Strokes, The A-Team and Knight Rider to name a few. It also featured plenty of puzzles, quizzes and cartoons to keep you reading!
Before the internet I got my movie and TV news through Dynamite!! Bananas was a comedic almost Mad Magazine style of publication which looked and felt a lot like Dynamite in terms of content and layout but went more for laughs than telling news stories or interviews.Both were great launching points into reading.
As my interests changed so did my literary intake. Fun puzzle books and gimmicks were always a staple in the order forms.We didnt have the large selection of media offerings with CDs and video games like kids of today..nope..we had to write our own fun with great stuff like Mad Libs!
As a long-standing comics fan Scholastic offered higher brow reads so instantly I was drawn to my version of high education..Garfield!!The classic strip bound in a soft cover format were always a favorite of mine and one of my first ever grabs as a kid!! Yep I was introduced to everyone’s favorite Lasagna eating, ideological Cat on the ground level with this classic!! This was MY kind of literature!! Others in my class had advanced deep into The Hardy Boys , Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twinsbooks so this Hero was being left behind at the bottom of the literary food chain..that had to change..I couldn’t be ordering kids stuff when the rest of the class was ordering the equivalent to Shakespeare.
I traded in kids magazines and comic strip books like Garfield, andMad Libs for novels.I will admit some of my need to dip into the adult side of the pool was because of my love of cover art. I fondly remember buying the Lloyd Alexander Collection. The artwork was very fantasy like and it drew me in like a tractor beam. I will admit to merely skimming the adventures of young Taran but I had to have that art.If not for the fine folks at Scholastic I would never have dared take a chance on such an author!
So I would quickly realize that literary classics like a Wrinkle In Time and Oliver Twistwould not be for me..nope..I loved movie adaptations! So while others read higher brow selections I grabbed such classic as The Karate Kid!! It was perfect for me..it was short, easy to read and had a color photo section from the movie!!
Of course Science Fiction was always my “go to drug” so when I gazed upon Star Trek 3 The Search For Spock in the book order, I knew I couldnt wait! I could finally find out what happened to Spock after Wrath Of Khan! Our town didn’t yet have a movie theater so this book was one of the few ways of knowing the “Spoilers” that would happen in the movie!! Yes it was still the era of the VHS tape and I would have to wait sometimes over a year before our video stores would have this movie so I put the “X” in the box next to that novel on my book order and loved it when it came! It had a foil embossed logo and all! Nerd Heaven when it wasnt cool!!
As cool as Star Trek was my first passion was always Star Wars and Scholastic super served our kind with their variety of Star Wars fun!! I grabbed my Return Of The Jedinovel with awesome hand and light saber cover!! Guess what..didnt read a page! I devoured the 8 pages of color photos inside scrutinizing every last detail! As with Star Trek it would be a long time before I watched the film on VHS!
There was the holy trinity of Star Wars books :The Jedi Masters Quiz Book! Not for the casual fan. This book was written by a kid named Rusty Miller and was insanely detailed and the 425 questions would challenge George Lucas himself!! I fact I am certain that old George would not correctly answer some of these questions!!
I opted not to read much of the Return Of The Jedi Novelbecause truth be told, Scholastic had THIS Bad boy…The Return Of The Jedi Storybook!!The fully illustrated photo story book with a ton of photos from the film and plenty of narrative that made you feel like you were getting the whole story!! Years later I would get this same book in a hole in the wall book store in Buffalo New York with a hard cover!!
Occasionally if you order a promotional set of titles or spent a certain dollar amount Scholastic would reward that lucky kid with an awesome free poster!!They usually had some pretty cool giveaways. Luckily it was not always a cute cat poster..from time to time you would get awesome posters like this!! Always an incentive to spend more!!
Over the years I amassed a very large book collection but there was one book that always stuck with me that may be my favorite book of all the selections I ever ordered…yes the Coup De Gras is THE GREAT SUPERMAN MOVIE BOOK!! This book was visually striking and loaded with pics and info all about one of my favorite superheroes of the day!! It had a giant Superman poster inside, and talked all about the Superman films and behind the scenes of them. This was the Internet before the Internet was the Internet..Just go to Amazon and get this one..tell em Hero sent ya. Anyone out there have this one? Share your thoughts below!!
So to the fine folks at Scholastic, a big thank you from this adult who grew up reading because you offered it! Tons of great Scholastic memories still stay with me! The anticipation of order day arriving and getting that wonderful stack of books is just a great visual etched in my brain. So as we close the Satellite Virtual Library we want to hear from YOU our valued readers! What did you get in your Scholastic Orders? We want to know.
Till Next time heroes…Class time is over. Now back to your stations!!
The SuperHero Satellite 