Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

  In the early seventies Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams revitalized Batman by taking away the "camp" elements that it became synonymous with. They then moved on to the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic to update them and make it socially relevant. Issue 85 from 1971 had a famous cover of Green Arrow finding that his ward, Speedy, is a junkie. I decided to adapt it for the Golden Age versions of the characters.

  I had planned on doing a blog with the Fantastic Four movie from 1994 that was never released. I had a Film Threat magazine about the "upcoming" movie with lots of good photos. I had a VHS with a trailer for it, "coming soon". The poster shown above was seen in cinemas. Finally.....nothing. A friend of mine saw a bootleg of it. This seemed a perfect topic for my blog. I started to design the DVD cover. I curated pictures, did some research and found that a LOT of people have already designed DVD cases for it making mine redundant. However, I also found there is a documentary about the film called  Doomed!: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four. It has interviews with cast and crew plus some footage. I recommend anyone curious about the movie to check out the documentary.

  Last blog I mentioned turning ELO's Secret Messages into two albums so here is the other one. Kelly Groucutt does not appear on any of the tracks. I wanted to use the songs that had backmasking such as Stranger and Time After Time to fit in with secret messages theme. I used the title song, Loser Gone Wild, Stranger, Danger Ahead and Time After Time from the original CD, After All was a bonus track on the 2001 release, Buildings Have Eyes, Mandalay and Hello My Old Friend were all on Afterglow and the 2018 double album. In fact, the last four songs of this album are coincidently side four of the double album. The front cover was prereleased promo art for the album and the back is the Jodrell Bank radio telescope seen in the Secret Messages video. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajFpqxBFjpMG4BZYC2hywhh5&si=zg5UeZZo21Ene3BS

  E.L.O.'s 1983 album Secret Messages was the last to feature Kelly Groucutt before he was let go. In fact he doesn't appear on all of the songs. Also in 1983 his album Kelly was released in the U.S. It was recorded over a couple of years and included Bev Bevan on drums, Richard Tandy on keyboards and strings arranged and conducted by Louis Clark. Secret Messages was originally planned to be a double album so I made it two albums. The first is this one. What if Lynne allowed songs written by Groucutt on the album? I included the songs Groucutt performed on and tried to make it more of a "rocker". "Bluebird", "Take Me On and On", "Four Little Diamonds", "Train of Gold" and "Rock 'n' Roll Is King" are from the original Secret Messages album. "No Way Out" and "Endless Lies" are bonus tracks on the 2001 CD release of Secret Messages. "The Bouncer" was the B-side to "Four Little Di...

  Jake Speed was an action-comedy from the people that gave us Valley Girl and Night of the Comet. The idea is that Jake is a paperback hero except that he actually exists so he and his partner live the adventure and then write it. Since they want it to be exciting they don't do it the most practical or easy way, they go about the adventure so it would make good reading. Since it spoofed the types of books I read, I enjoyed some of the references to Doc Savage, et al. There was a joke I laughed at that you had to be a reader of Remo Williams: the Destroyer to get. There is a lot I can say about the movie but I will focus on the "books". Supposedly a tie in novelization was put out but I have been collecting stuff since the movie came out and I have never seen it. Steve Bartel designed four "in universe" books of Jake Speed. I would love to own a screen used prop of any of them but until then we will all have to settle for my recreation of the last novel shown in...