Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

  In 1975 Doc Savage: the Man of Bronze  produced by George Pal was released in the theaters. He had high hopes for it. He had purchased the rights to all 181 original stories of the pulp hero and even teased at the end of the movie "Watch for Doc Savage's next thrilling adventure The Arch Enemy of Evil". They already had that script and another one by famed science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer waiting to be filmed. Unfortunately, the film failed to do well at the box office so future sequels were scrapped. It didn't do much for the actors' careers either. Only two had much of a career afterwards. William Lucking, who played Renny, worked steadily in movie and television. Even if you don't recognize the name his face will be familiar to most people. Paul Gleason, who played Long Tom, also worked pretty regularly but is most known as Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club.

  Since I was in the woods for the last week I thought I would do a quick while I was away (to paraphrase The Who).   The song "I'm the Greatest" was the closest we ever got to a Beatles reunion in the 1970s. It was on Ringo's eponymous 1973 album. Ringo sang and played drums, John Lennon wrote the song, did backing vocals and played drums, George Harrison played guitar and to top it, famous "fifth Beatle", Billy Preston, from the Get Back sessions, played organ. The idea for a sleeve for the 45 of the song has been in my head for quite a while. So here is the front and back of a proposed "Beatles" single. I almost didn't do it because when I was thinking about possible Beatles album from the 70s I noticed there were already a variety of sites with their versions. Here is an example of one such site that is a lot of fun:  What If - Misc: The Beatles - Out The Blue 1973

 I'll be away from the drawing board for a little bit so there will be no new post on Saturday but will update it when I get back.

 The first Spice Girls album came out in 1996 and was HUGE! Their next album was the soundtrack to a movie centered around them with an amazing assortment of cameos of actors and musicians. Then Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) left the band to do a solo album. The four remaining put out another Spice Girls album in 2000 and that seemed like the end. They all continued doing music individually and reunited for tours in 2007 and 2019. For this re-imagining I used both sides of a single by Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice), "This Groove" and "Let Your Head Go", from Melanie Brown (Scary Spice) I chose "If I Had My Life Again" and "In Too Deep" from L. A. State of Mind , Emma Bunton's (Baby Spice) album Life in Mono  contributed "Perfect Strangers" and "I Wasn't Looking (When I Found Love)", two songs from Geri Halliwell's album Passion are "Feel the Fear" and "Let Me Love You More" and from Melanie C...

 Matinee  is a 1993 film directed by Joe Dante. It was about a boy growing up in Florida in the early '60s. He loves Famous Monsters magazine and the B movies of Lawrence Woolsey, played by John Goodman. The boy gets to meet Woolsey when he comes to promote his new movie, Mant! The film within a film is a pastiche of the types of movies Dante enjoyed as a child such as Them , Tarantula  and The Fly . https://youtu.be/EVEjdGQSzc8?si=40mqezzpvBwCJfed

 When I heard there was to be a new Electric Light Orchestra album in 2001 I was excited. It had been decades since the last. Despite how good it was I was disappointed that the only other member of the band besides Jeff Lynne was keyboardist Richard Tandy and he only appeared on one song. In 2001 The Orchestra released No Rewind with members including Kelly Groucutt, Mik Kaminski and Louis Clark. It was quite a good album and I would have included songs "Jewel and Johnny" and "Over London Skies" but the vocals were by Eric Troyer who wasn't in the E.L.O. so I used "Before We Go" sung by Kelly Groucutt who did vocals on the some of the classic E.L.O. songs. However I wanted to include Bev Bevan since he had been on all the E.L.O. albums until then. I went back to 1995 for A Matter of Trust by Electric Light Orchestra Part II with Bevan, Groucutt, Kaminski and Clark. I chose "Blue Violin" written by Groucutt and Kaminski as well as Interlude...

  The Watchmen comics were originally supposed to be about Charlton Comic characters that DC had just acquired with the story being who killed the Peacemaker. I wondered what comic history would be like if the characters that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created were existing already. Since the Hollis Mason Nite Owl is based on the golden Age Blue Beetle I redrew one of his comic covers. As a bonus, the back cover is for a product that didn't exist. It  was actually advertised in Fox comics in the early '40s.It was the brainchild of Victor Fox, the owner of Fox Comics. Despite having coupons for the soda and ads showing great prizes you could get for collecting Kooba bottle caps the drink was never produced.