Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it...

He was not the original leader on Mission: Impossible!

With Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in 1966.

But once Peter Graves took over as Jim Phelps, no one even remembered the original (Steven Hill as Dan Briggs)

With Greg Morris, Leonard Nimoy (replaced Martin Landau), and Peter Lupus in 1970.

After Mission's seven-year run ended, Graves did extensive voice-over work including A&E's Biography (and parodying it in Men in Black II) and moved into comedy in Airplane and Airplane II.
He also appeared in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, as Major Noah Cooper, in "Return of the Fighting 69th", replacing Buster Crabbe who was unable to reprise his role as Brigadier Gordon.
Personally, I remember him in numerous 1950s genre films like It Conquered the World, Begining of the End, Red Planet Mars, and the over-the-top, but fun, Killers from Space!

Peter Graves (Peter Aurness)
March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010
Younger brother (by three years) of actor James Arness (James Aurness)

Fantastic Femmes--Liza Lapria

Note: this page has been updated with NEW info  
HERE!

Welcome to our second blog...Femmes Fantastique!

One of our blog's most popular features has been the ongoing Fantastic Femmes series featuring beautiful women of science fiction and fantasy movies and tv.
It's been so popular that we've decided to do a spin-off blog...Femmes Fantastique!
We'll be posting at Femmes Fantastique at least twice weekly, both with follow-ups to previous entries from this site (like our premiere FF entry, Jessica Alba) with updated credits and links, and new entries we'll cross-post on both blogs, like tomorrow's entry on Liza Lapira.
So bookmark the Femmes Fantastique rss feed, or come visit every week.
There'll aways be something new!


Above is the header pic for the blog, featuring the women of all three Austin Powers films!

Design of the Week--Green Hornet Vs. Death!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!

With the release of the first new Green Hornet comic in almost 20 years, and the upcoming big budget movie we're proud to present our own contribution to the growing buzz over the revival of the classic character...a kool symbolic cover from 1946's Green Hornet Comics #29 featuring The Green Hornet and some wild skull-like Deaths-Heads!

Available on t-shirts, messenger bags, mugs, and other kool kollectibles, this particular cover isn't on our main product line of Classic Green Hornet collectibles, so pick it up now, before it goes back into the nest!

Kooba Cola: the Drink That NEVER Was...

In 1940, Victor Fox, publisher of WonderWorld Comics, Mystery Men Comics, Weird Comics, and other titles featuring The Blue Beetle, Samson, The Flame, among others, conceived an audacious marketing scheme.
Inspired by the success of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, he decided to promote Kooba Cola, "The World's Newest and Best-Tasting Soft Drink!" in ads in his entire line of comic books.
It was also "Delightfully Refreshing and Contained 35 USP units of Vitamin B-1 for the Sake of Health and Nutrition!"
When Fox's The Blue Beetle starred in a short-lived radio show that summer, he was sponsored by Kooba Cola!

Wait a second...
What's that?
You've never even heard of Kooba Cola?

That's because it didn't exist, except as a couple of mocked-up bottles used as props in ads and as art reference for illustrators.
(You'll note they couldn't even figure out what the color scheme for the label was!
It changed from ad to ad!)
Fox thought he could create a demand for Kooba, then license the name to one of the big soft drink companies, let them do the work of actually creating, bottling, and shipping the stuff, then he'd rake in royalties on the name!
It didn't work.
The "buzz" never developed.
The soda pop was never actually produced.
Even Kooba's "sponsorship" of The Blue Beetle radio show was just part of the show's script, not paid ads! (One of the reasons the show only lasted four months!)

But, such visionary hucksterness should not be forgotten!
(Besides, the ads were rather kool.)
So we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ decided to re-present the Soda That Would Not Die on collectibles ranging from Beachwear to mugs, messenger bags (and the irony of doing bags with "Kooba" on them hasn't escaped us!) and hoodies at KoobaCola 1 and KoobaCola 2!

So celebrate what could have been one of the bubbliest success stories of soft drink entepreneurship, but instead fizzled out and fell flat!
(You just knew we were gonna do a pun like that, didn't you?)  ;-)