Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Ow! Stop Poking My Shoulder! Quit It! Wednesday!

Whilst you probably couldn't care less about the process of keeping this blog going day after day after day after DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY AND GOOD LORD WHEN WILL IT END?

Sorry, I went on a little tangent there.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes you just know there's going to be great fodder for the blog in something, and it just lets you down. I give you:


Other than the unfortunate 1960's slang and the fact that Mike Nesmith speaks in photos on the front cover, the inside was dreadful. It wasn't funny, even in a bad way. And it's not like I'm a hard sell, because I actually sat through Head.

So, I threw the comic over my shoulder in disgust (after sticking it in a polymer bag with a backing board, natch... I mean, it was still a comic book), I went to the fertile ground of The Six Million Dollar Man:


No, not that Six Million Dollar Man, although I would pay top dollar for a Richard "Groove" Holmes comic book (and thanks to LP Cover Lover for the scan). No, my lovelies, I mean this one:


The covers to this series were actually pretty bitchin', drawn by industry regulars like Joe Staton and, as seen here, the always-awesome Neal Adams. But then things take an unfortunate turn:


And by "unfortunate," I mean "awesome!"

Check out this sequence:


The dialog, punctuated by the way the victim just says "ow" when he's on the receiving end of a fatal gunshot, rocks my world.


A hallucination of a huge dog? How is that we haven't seen this series re-released in hardcover? I'm pretty sure I'd buy two copies if they did.

I don't know if I was distracted by the awesomeness of the giant dog, if I'm just getting old, or if it was that forgettable, but I just read the comic and I can't tell you why the bad guy wanted a voodoo doll of Steve Austin. I do recall that he spent eight million dollars on it, which seemed like poor money management. It seems like he could have just spent six and a half million, bought Steve Austin from the government, and still had 1.5 million left over. It never hurts to be thrifty, kids!


Thanks for saving my life. May I reward you with sexual favors? Ah, the seventies.

And here's a word from our sponsor:


Because of the story that preceded it, it seems like there is at least the implication that you are buying a doll that would force the real Steve Austin to do your bidding, but I'm not at all sure that was the case.

See you tomorrow!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was that Neal Adams or John Romita jr? The eyes on the red head look like JR jr in the last couple of panals. Or did NA just do the cover?

Just curious, they're both good artists. *sigh*. I miss the good old days when they just drew stuff and inked it. I picked up a comic on the weekend and it was all glossy probably-not-even-drawn-by-a-human stuff.

LadyBlack

Britt Reid said...

Neal Adams did the cover (and also some of the Power Records covers for Six Million Dollar Man.
Joe Staton did the interiors.

One has to question the wisdom of wearing a patch on your tracksuit that says "Six Million Dollar Man" if you're trying to be an undercover operative.

"...it seems like there is at least the implication that you are buying a doll that would force the real Steve Austin to do your bidding..."

Now a doll that would've made Jaime Sommers do your bidding...well, THAT would've been worth $8,000,000!
And then you get the Wonder Woman doll from Mego (and maybe the Nubia one, too) and make them all do...your...bidding...sorry...hard...to..type...one-handed...

Robert Gillis said...

... a backpack radio. because before cell-phones, radios were the size of small volvos.

D.B. Echo said...

The Six Million Dollar Man action figure ROCKED. Though the "bionic vision" feature - where you peered into a hole in the back of his head to see a distorted view through his eye - left something to be desired.

I can't imagine Steve Austin ever sayong "Oh, no!"

Aaron said...

The Monkees probably needed more robots.

MarvelX42 said...

If you had a doll that could effect Steve Rogers like that, why the hell would you just break his bionic arm? Why wouldn't you rip his head off or stab him through the heart or something?

Anonymous said...

The scary thing about the advertisement is that I had the Steve Austin doll and the little fold out operating table, and the....you get the point.

Brinks

Unknown said...

I had that Steve Austin dol-- _action_ _figure_. And the operating room/rocket ship. Oh, yes. That repair station you see in the ad? Fold it all up and it turned into a rocket ship. Sure it was a one-man deal, and Steve had to stand for the entire flight. But, dude. A rocket ship that turned into an operating room? How cool is that? Later on, they released a sort of jet car-jet cycle-airplane thing that I was also fortunate enough to get one year, and it was also awesome.

The only bad part of the figures and the stuff were the size. The were pretty big, which is cool by itself, but too big to play with my standard go-to figures: GI Joe (with Kung-Fu Grip, of course!) Decisions...decisions...

I love this blog.