The Power of Love.

Gosh, it's been a week since I posted anything. I have some stuff in the works, pinky swear. In the meantime, here's a pinup of Venus (source unknown, tho I think it's from Marvel Spotlight #2) by the great Bill Everett (the headshot looks touched up by persons unknown), subject of an excellent Blake Bell book that I reviewed over at Popdose this week. You all know how much I loves me some Venus.

"Go on back to your overstuffed desk chair...and read your comic books!"

At various points over the last seven years, I'm sure you all remember how I've rambled on and on about Bill Everett's Venus, and how much I love the few stories I've read in reprint format over the years- most notably in a few issues of the mid-70's Weird Wonder Tales comic, as well as my first exposure to her original exploits, in Marvel Spotlight #2, at about the same time this picture was taken (as a matter of fact), in October of 1971..."Where Gargoyles Dwell" from Venus #16, all Everett, features some of the best art I've ever seen from him, and a wonderfully preposterous but still highly imaginative story which not only fulfills the monster requirement with the gargoyles (flying ones no less), but works in some good old fashioned Triskaidekaphobia and the urban legends about mysterious thirteenth floors of buildings, and lack of same. Plus, it has some great dialogue, right out of a 1940's Warner Bros. fast-talking career-gal flick- I can easily imagine a Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, or my personal fave Priscilla Lane delivering these lines:

Quite the contrast from Jeff Parker's more passive, reserved goddess/siren/whatever she is, currently appearing in Agents of Atlas...here, Everett casts the Goddess of Love as more of a brassy gal reporter or grownup Nancy Drew type, showing real spunk and flash. Nothing against Jeff's version, and maybe it's just the Turner Classic Movies fan in me, but I think I like this oh-so-1948 version a lot better. Anyway, someone recently posted scans of this longtime favorite story of mine, at scans_daily I think but I forget, and I couldn't help but want to repost it here for posterity. The original scans were very dark and dirty; the source comic looked like it was very yellowed with age and had been through quite a lot. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, especially since these comics are so scarce in the first place; but I couldn't help wanting to clean them up a bit in Photoshop, so I tried. It's not perfect, I couldn't get rid of a lot of the darkness in word balloons and stuff, but I hope I made it look a bit more readable anyway. Hopefully (especially if Agents of Atlas takes off) someday Marvel will see fit to reprint all of these in a nice, cleaned up edition, but I won't hold my breath. OK- here's the story. Click on the thumbs to embiggen.

It's a VENUS kind of day, it seems...Pappy has posted a particularly manic story of Bill Everett's Olympian Dame with the Fantabulous Frame from the last issue of her title, cover dated April of 1952. Well, actually, it's scanned from a mid-70's issue of Weird Wonder Tales, but you get my drift. He also points us here, to a blog called Hairy Green Eyeball, for two more. You all know I can't get enough of Bill Everett's Venus.

FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!




Yes, it's the proud and long-overdue return to the JBS of FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS! Bahlactus sets 'em up for the Blogosphere on Friday nights, and it's up to us to knock 'em out of the ring. My scanner hasn't been up for quite some time now, so I haven't been participating. I couldn't stay out of the fray any longer, though, so I stole some pages from the most excellent Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blog, hope he doesn't mind.

Tonight's fracas involves my late Forties/early Fifties mythological inamorata, Venus, as she mixes it up with a few refugees from what would appear to be Walt Disney's abandoned version of Day of the Triffids. Believe me, the story's weirder than this looks, so why not go here and read it?

Art by the great Bill Everett, and story too probably.

BAHLACTUS SAID KNOCK YOU OUT.

Sometimes you never know what you're going to run across whilst surfing the Intarweb- over at the scans_daily LJ community, someone has posted a Venus story, from something called Marvel Valentine Special #1- which I've never seen before, and it sports art by none other than Dan DeCarlo of Archie Comics fame!

The story itself is no great shakes- it's got some of the worst dialogue I've read in ages (and I say as much in the comments) but it does have a nicely done happy ending, especially if you're familiar with the character's history.

So go read it already!