Space Heroine Stories BARBARELLA 4.2 aka Conclusion!

 When Last We Left Our Heroine...

After surviving the Excessive Machine, Barbarella ends up in the bedroom of the Queen of Sogo.
The pair manage to escape and free the blind angel, Pygar.
However, unskilled in piloting the alien craft they are traveling in, Barbarella crashes the ship, and in the ensuing confusion, the Queen escapes...

This multi-part comic strip was turned into a graphic album, and then adapted into a feature film starring Jane Fonda in the title role.

Japanese poster

Barbarella wouldn't have a new adventure until 1974, when Wrath Of The Minute Eater was published in France.
Two more graphic novels, False Moon aka Moon Child (1977) and Storm Mirror (1982), have appeared since.
Dynamite Comics has been running new comics (not by Jean Claude Forrest), both several solo mini-series and a crossover with another space heroine, Dejah Thoris: Princess of Mars!
Nelvana Animation, proposed doing an animated series during the 1990s, but no network was willing to finance it.

Proposal art by Jean-Claude Forrest

Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids, and Machete franchises) had a movie remake in development, but it died in 2009, and, to date, no one else seems interested...

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Friday Fun MARVIN MOUSE "Not-So-'Honest John' "

The creator of Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett, was an amazing writer/artist...

 ...who could do almost anything he was asked to do.

Unfortunately, funny animals, weren't exactly his "cup of tea"!

This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvin the Mouse #1 (1957) was scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated by the aforementioned Bill Everett.

I believe Everett was instructed to make the characters as different as possible from other cartoon mice such as Mickey and Mighty, which resulted in rodents who looked more like rats than mice!

Bill had shown a knack for humor as shown HERE and HERE, but this was a major disappointment!

A caption at the end of the book read "And remember, every issue Marvin Mouse magazine brings you the best in laughs, adventure, and fun ... don't miss a single issue!"

No problem!

The book ended up a one-shot and the already-completed stories intended for #2 became filler in the backs of other humor titles.

(Editor Stan Lee was very frugal and didn't let anything go to waste!)

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Sincerest Form of Parody

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Monday Madness RADIO BOY by Chuck Dixon & Jim Engel

In the 1980s, manga finally gained a foothold in the US...

...and American creators began doing their own manga-style material.

Some, like this never-reprinted one-shot title from Eclipse Comics (the first major American company to publish translated manga), were parodies.

This particular spoof was loosely-based on Osamo Tesuka's Astro Boy, which had achieved success in as a translated anime in the early 1960s and opened the door for a flood of Japanese cartoons on American TV that continues to this day.

Note: Though Astro Boy is best-known in the US as a tv cartoon series, it began as a wildly-successful manga in 1954.

The premise of Radio Boy is that the creator himself did the translations for this edition, resulting in a mish-mash of syntax and tenses as well as some literal translations of Japanese phrases.

As a collector of foreign videos (including Japanese and Chinese DVDs and BluRays), I can attest that the English subtitles on them often do read like the captions and copy in this spoof.

BTW, if you don't have a multi-region DVD/BluRay player, get one.

Much of the Asian material released by Dimension (especially their Jackie Chan catalog), Buena Vista, and other mass-market companies is butchered beyond belief, and seeing the originals (even with bad sub-titling) is eye-opening!

I suspect writers Chuck Dixon (yes, that Chuck Dixon) and Jim Engel had also seen some mis-translated films/videos, and wanted to re-create the experience on the printed page.

You'll have the chance to judge for yourself...HERE and HERE!

Next Week

Yep!
They're Back!

Space Heroine Saturdays BARBARELLA 4.1

It's been a couple of months since we checked up on Barbarella...

...so let's begin the final chapter of her 1960s adventures!

Next Month:

The Fantastic Finale!

Plus some fun facts!

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Reading Room DO YOU BELIEVE IN NIGHTMARES? "Man Who Crashed into Another Era"

Here's a short story featuring dinosaurs, illustrated by Steve Ditko...

...just before his stint on Charlton's Gorgo!

Ok, so it was the old "It's only a dream" scenario.

You got to admit, it's well-done!

From St John's Do You Believe in Nightmares? #1 (1957), a short-lived anthology produced just before St John went out of business.

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

Space Heroine Saturdays BARBARELLA 3.2

When Last We Left Our Heroine...

Barbarella met a number of inhabitants of the labyrinth surrounding Lythion's capital city, Sogo, including Pygar the blind angel, and Earth scientist Durand.
With their help, Barbarella defeated the LeatherMen and is now en-route to the city itself.

While many elements were adapted into the feature film with minimal alteration, there's one startling difference...Durand, the main villain of the movie, is a good guy in the original comic strip!

More Barbarella soon.

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Space Heroine Saturdays BARBARELLA 3.1

It's been a while since we last looked in on Barbarella...

...and you're about to encounter more plot elements and characters you saw in the 1960s movie, but in somewhat different form...

More adventures of Barbarella and Pygar soon...

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Barbarella

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