CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON #160 FRIGGIN' RULES AND ALWAYS HAS

Summer 1973. Captain America just accidentally got himself some super-strength after a fight with the Viper, and Cap's partner, the Falcon, the coolest guy in comics, ever, even cooler than Luke Cage, did not. But that doesn't mean that Falcon is to be trifled with. Especially when it comes to the lllllllaye-ed-ayz.

Leila Taylor is the mod, hep mama he has his eye on. She has a huge afro and dresses like she beat up Pam Grier and stole her drawers. I love her SO. MUCH.

But Leila no likey that Falcon is hardly ever around, what with him protecting humanity from all the super-threats posed to it. So she flits around other guys, like Rafe Michel, a low-level thug and street hustler, whose Afro is not as big as Leila's, but whose facial hair and sunglasses suggest a thinking man's Dick Roundtree.

So Falcon is all like, I'm sick of being alone, and so he swoops down into the streets of Harlem and takes back his woman. And this is BEFORE he had wings with which to swoop. He used to get around town with a very cool hawk-y grappling-hook-rope thingie, way before Batman stole and adapated it for his 90s Animated Series.

I still have this comic at home in Newark. That scene is burned into my brain, and for years I actually thought that this was how real men conducted themselves in regards to women. Maybe they did, once. Sure makes for a cooler scene this way. No one would want to see Falcon and Rafe engaging in passive-aggressive verbal digs and agreeing to disagree and then Rafe buys Falcon a Lazy Susan.

It all comes to a head in the next issue, which has, hands down, THE best fight scene ever in a comic, ever, because Sal Buscema is a friggin' demigod and his art, then and now, pops and radiates with energy and clarity. Sal is a WAY underappreciated force in modern comics storytelling, but his influence is everywhere.

THREE STOOGES REDUX

I don't know whether I should be thrilled or terrified or maybe a little of both. All three of these guys scare me a little. But then, the Stooges scared me too.

NYQUIL DREAMS

I dreamt that I was a small, unidentified Polenysianish child carried across the ramshackle remains of an old bridge over a fresh lava flow on the back of Burgess Meredith as he used a handily felled and stripped bamboo tree as a tightrope walker's pole as Paul Newman and my unidentified Polenysianish brother looked on in concern.

Ends up it wasn't a fever dream, but the equally deadly, When Time Ran Out.

MAKE MINE MA-HOOOOLLLY CRAP!!!

In 1978, Gerald Ford was walking into walls, "Fly Robin Fly" was still the only song on AM radio, and CBS made a couple of "Captain America" TV-movies in the hopes of turning into a series.

That's Reb Brown ("Yor, Hunter From The Future" to jog your memories. What? You don't remember "Yor"? I got nuthin' else) under the helmet. His dacron-blend costume was played by a young Heather Menzies, and that's Herve Villechaize bewteen his legs, ringing a bell.

WHO REALLY KILLED THE STOCK MARKET

YOU MAY HAVE SEEN SOME "YAZ" COMMERCIALS THAT WERE UNCLEAR!

Hey, get off my ass. This hot chick said you MAY have. Dimplomatic immunity!

YAZ is a little pill that basically promises its ingestor superpowers.

In truth, it's a birth control pill. You'd never know that from the initial commercial, where this cutie-patootie Sex And The City-ish girl does lots of happy kicks at what looks like an empty bar in Georgetown. I guess she's so happy and kicky because with YAZ "you MAY experience shorter, lighter periods." No promises. You also may spontaneously combust. Who the fuck knows? I'm not a scientist.

I guess that ad was unclear, though, because when Saucy "Nipples" McTavish here comes back in another ad to ACTUALLY SAY THAT THE PREVIOUS COMMERCIAL MAAAY HAVE BEEN UNCLEAR, there must already be a class-action lawsuit ("All Women Ever Vs. Yaz") gurgling and festering throughout the Western Hemisphere that makes Big Tobacco crap their Depends with relief and girlish laughter.

Actual potential side effects of reading this blog entry (and of YAZ, from their site) include: upper respiratory infection, headache, breast pain, vaginal moniliasis, leukorrhea, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, vaginitis, abdominal pain, flu syndrome, dysmenorrhea, moniliasis, allergic reaction, urinary tract infection, accidental injury, cystitis, tooth disorder, sore throat, infection, fever, surgery, sinusitis, back pain, emotional lability, migraine, suspicious Papanicolaou smear, dyspepsia, rhinitis, acne, gastroenteritis, bronchitis, pharyngitis, skin disorder, intermenstrual bleeding, decreased libido, weight gain, pain, depression, increased cough, dizziness, menstrual disorder, pain in extremity, pelvic pain, and asthenia.

I don't ever want to know what "vaginal monilasis" is.

This blog entry may have been unclear. Or maybe it opened your Third Eye Chakra and you are free to leave the Third Dimension at will. Like I said, I am not a fucking scientist.

I SAW THIS TODAY AT EARTH-2 COMICS IN SHERMAN OAKS AND WAS AFRAID TO LOOK AT IT BUT I DID IT ANYWAY

Yesh it's for real. From Earth One!

Apparently "Superman" co-creator Joe Schuster moonlighted for years as an erotic/fetish artist, and many of his scenarios involved a woman who looks EXACTLY like Lois Lane and a man who lookee just likee Superman/Clark.

How motherfucking cool is that? I love knowing this even more than the pictures themselves. I flipped through the book and yes I saw boobies but no va-jay-jays and no I did not look long and hard enough to see if there were any weiners in there.

Best of all, the book's intro is written by Stan The Man Lee. I did not read it but I can guess:

"Hail, effendis! Welcome to the groin'-throbbinest, hard-nipplest, most spank-tastic naughty artwork in the history of the medium! It hearkens humble moi back to 1940, when I first created the Marvel Universe on a box of ribbon candy and tucked it away 'til its day had come. Although I merely co-created the real universe, and Joe Schuster, and figs, and also stem cells, I give my heroic guarantee that the following pages overflow with zazztastic drawingramas stuffed to the gills with hootie-patootie-sakabootie and Make Mine Marvel and in the time it took to write this I self-created a pocket universe that I will now vacation in. Excelsior!!!!!"