Comic Legends: Was Punisher Initially Going to Die in His First Series?

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My buddies, John Beatty and Mike Zeck are at the center of CBR.com’s Comic Legends: Was Punisher Initially Going to Die in His First Series?

That was an exciting time for comics.  The Punisher, up to that point, had been a secondary, guest-starring character who had real potential.  Steven Grant had the right take on Frank Castle and of course, Mike Zeck and John Beatty were the team to bring the project to life.

Sadly, Grant, Zeck and Beatty didn’t get to complete the series. Although as the piece says, “John Beatty’s finishes made it all look as consistent as possible.”  Thankfully, Grant, Zeck and Beatty did re-team on the Punisher graphic novel Return to Big Nothing.

Neal Adams’ Classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow Splash Pages!

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Diversions of the Groovy Kind has posted a gallery of Neal Adams splash pages from his run with Denny O’Neil on Green Lantern/Green Arrow.  Those were classic issues that plunged comics into modern day issues.  O’Neil and Adams run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow was as controversial as it was groundbreaking.  It was a joy to see all of the splash pages again.  You can too, and at a much larger size if you click over.

 

9 Tough as Leather Facts About “Rawhide”

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Me-TV presents 9 Tough as Leather Facts About Rawhide. Here are three of my favorites…

EASTWOOD WORE HIS ‘RAWHIDE’ BOOTS IN ‘UNFORGIVEN.’
No need for a wardrobe department when it comes to Clint. To bookend his career as a cowboy, Eastwood wore his same Rowdy Yates boots in his Oscar-winning 1992 masterpiece Unforgiven.

LOADS OF SOON-TO-BE-FAMOUS FACES APPEARED ON THE SHOW.
That’s Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery taking aim in “Incident at El Crucero,” in a guest role that would foreshadow her gig as Mrs. Sundance. Star Trek crew members Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley appeared on the Western, too. Sitcom legends Buddy Ebsen, Barbara Eden, Alan Hale, Jr., June Lockhart, Gavin MacLeod, Marion Ross and William Schallert also pop up — just to name a few. Then there’s Martin Landau, Frankie Avalon, Anne Francis, Peter Lorre…

TWO EPISODES WERE SLAPPED TOGETHER TO FORM A MOVIE, UNTIL EASTWOOD PREVENTED ITS RELEASE.
Rawhide finished its run in the first week of 1966. By that year, Eastwood was a star of small and big screen. The classic Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) revolutionized the genre. To further capitalize on Eastwood’s fame, Jolly Film, the studio behind A Fistful of Dollars, pieced together a couple old episodes of Rawhide, primarily “The Backshooter” with Louis Hayward and Slim Pickens, and labeled the flick The Magnificent Stranger, the original shooting title for A Fistful of Dollars. However, Eastwood sued and had the 1967 film withdrawn.

21 Things We Learned from Rob Reiner’s “Misery” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 21 Things We Learned from Rob Reiner’s Misery Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

2.  James Caan was not his first choice for the film, and he instead was turned down by Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, William Hurt (twice), Richard Dreyfuss, and others. “But at the end of the day you can’t imagine anybody else playing the part.”

13.  Bates was stage-trained and preferred excessive rehearsals while Caan is more “instinctive and naturalistic,” so they had to balance the rehearsal time to make it less than she wanted and more than he wanted.

18.  The novel has Annie chop off Paul’s feet and cauterize the stumps, but they opted to simply hobble him instead by having her break his feet with a sledgehammer. Their thinking was that they wanted him to be victorious in the end, and losing his feet would be too high of a price. “It was pretty darn painful to look at, so I don’t think we compromised it too much.”

 

 

“Cold War” by Chris Sebela and Hayden Sherman

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That’s the cover to Cold War #1 above.  Cold War is a new series by writer Chris Sebela and artist Hayden Sherman.  The premise is pretty interesting..

Panacea Cryonics offered its customers life after death by keeping their heads frozen until the day technology could rebuild them, free of disease and death. However, as these everyday people from the past are revived, they’re not handed the keys to a new life, but a gun, body armor and an ultimatum. They must fight in a war against unknown opponents for unknown reasons, to secure their place in a brave new world that doesn’t want them around.

If this sounds like something you’d like, you can find it at comic shops in February.  If you’d like to see more of a preview, then check out AfterShock Announces COLD WAR by Sebela & Sherman at Comicoscity.

Ric Flair Faces the Music with Regret but No Excuses

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Odds are, pro wrestling fan or not, you know that the photo above is of the “styling-and-profiling, limousine-riding, jet-flying, Rolex-wearing, champagne-drinking, kiss-stealing, wheeling-‘n-dealing, dirtiest player in the game,” Ric Flair.

Yahoo Sports!, Dan Wetzel has written an excellent profile – Ric Flair Faces the Music with Regret but No Excuses – and it is well worth a read.