The Johnny Bacardi Show

At left is the first cover for a recently-announced project that I'm excited about: AGENTS OF ATLAS, a six-issue limited series that assembles a handful of pre-Marvel heroes, such as Marvel Boy, the Gorilla Man, The Human Robot...and someone you may have heard me go on and on about before: VENUS!

Once more, the Comic Book Goddess of Love will strut her seductive stuff as a member of the Agents, and that makes me very happy. At right is an uncolored page in which she does her supernatural thing on the Yellow Claw's soldiers, by Leonard Kirk. Oh, all right, I'll talk about some of the other members- I'm pleased to see Jimmy Woo make a comeback; I always thought he was a very interesting character back in the long-gone Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. days. Of course, you couldn't have the Claw without Woo! I remember reading a couple of old Bill Everett Marvel Boy reprints in Marvel Tales or one of those reprint comics that they put out in the 60's, and they were excellent. Don't know much of anything about the other two, other than when they appeared in the excrucuatingly convoluted Avengers Forever (in which Carlos Pacheco gave us the second-best rendition of Miss V. Nutley Starr ever), and honestly I don't remember much about them. Their names pretty much are self-explanatory, I guess. If anybody can make them interesting, I think it's Mr. Parker, who's been doing solid work at the House that Jack Built for a good while now. And Kirk, last seen getting underwhelming notices here at the Show due to his bland stint on JSA, which I stopped buying not long after he left, appears to have been practicing- this page and the others in the Newsarama article look a hundred times more vibrant than anything he did before. Well, anything I've seen, anyway.

Anyways, back to the Goddess. Here are some of the other posts I've done involving her. At left is the cover of the comic that I touched upon briefly in one of them- #16, which featured that incredibly strange story about the 13th floor of a skyscraper and the weird-ass alien creatures that were making life miserable for everyone that had the misfortune to be stuck there, including our heroine. Even though Everett's rocket-propelled gargoyles are a bit too cartoony to be really frightening, I think it was just the idea of people being trapped on a building's floor that doesn't exist and being tormented that stayed with me...plus the attraction of Everett's art, of course, and his ability to make it more troubling that it probably should have been. I've only read one or two other Venus stories, would love to read more, even the earlier, romance/fantasy ones. A collection would sure be nice, but I won't stand on one leg waiting. It's no coincidence that she reminds me a lot of actress Priscilla Lane, another longtime obsession favorite of mine- even though I'd think that they had someone more glamorous than Pat when they created her. Still, Venus' adventures were published in the late 40's-early 50's, a period of time which has become very attractive (despite the WWII shadow throughout the decade) via films on Turner Classic, and I'm sure that's another reason why I like the character so much.

A couple of other links:

AoA artist Leonard Kirk's blog;

Venus' Wikipedia entry;

Again, the Venus page from the Atlas Tales website; and

a Marvel Universe-style site that has this Venus entry, featuring a chronology of her appearances, and is accompanied by two really poor non-Everett illustrations of the character.

I'm no Mike Sterling, that's for sure...but I hope you enjoy these.