Pussycat Tails!

Thanks to my new-best-online-friend today Russ, I learned of Pussycat Tales, a reprint of Marvel's vintage Pussycat magazine reprint. I ordered it posthaste and it has arrived. It's a nifty package (ahem) and despite the somewhat smaller dimensions is still a bargain for anyone with a hankering for wacky misadventures of a well-drawn dame. Wally Wood leads the way, but it's the artwork of Jim Mooney and especially that of Bill Ward which makes this one a dazzler. I never get tired of looking at Ward's distinctive interpretations of modern women, women who are hyper sexual and almost always extremely powerful in their way.

In addition to the eleven little stories in this tome we also get some pin-ups. First a gallery dedicated to Lily St. Cyr, the real life inspiration for Pussycat according this tome. Also there is art by Wood, Mooney and especially Ward. They don't make comics like this anymore in these "woke" days but part of my caveman mentality wishes they did, especially as well crafted as these.

Check out this link for more details. It looks like there are a few versions.

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Girls On Film - Caroline!

Caroline Munro might be my favorite of the all the myriad beauties who have graced the screen. Unlike so many others, she has dark luxurious hair and a penetrating stare. Her eyes are stunning and I despite her well-known reputation as a proper lady, I cannot remember a more hypnotizing come hither look.

Ms. Munro was in some of my favorite flicks too (because she's in them I reckon) such as The Golden  Voyage of Sinbad with its late era Harryhausen magic, and even then all eyes are on Carol. There was Captain Kronos, the Vampire Killer and a few other Hammer flicks even one in which she falls prey to Christiopher Lee's Dracula himself.

Most recently I fell in love all again with Munro in her starring role as Stella Starr in the Star Wars wannabe movie Star Crash. It's a crazy movie with a thousand moving parts, but most eyes most of the time are on Munro again.

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Girls On Film - Yvette!

Yvette Vickers is one of the most vivacious women ever to grace the big screen and alas also one of the most tragic. Whenever Yvette is in a movie she steals all the attention. It's really not fair to other actors to have to hang around in a scene while the tempting Vickers slithers across the screen, alluring and radiating danger. You know she's trouble and you don't care.

Sadly the end was tragic. Yvette Vickers was a woman who was isolated and alone in her final days, so much so that when she passed away in her home it was months before her body was discovered. This staggering to me that such a thing could happen, but then I think of folks I've lived next to who didn't have a network of people to care for them, or even expressed much interest. It's hard to believe that Yvette Vickers was one of those but evidence suggest it was so.

But I'll never forget her. I bet I'm not alone.

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Girls On Film - Raquel!

She's the Queen! Of course the glorious Ms. Welch would make any listing of vivacious dames from science fiction and fantasy films. Welch's most famous image is her in the fur bikini from 1,000,000 B.C. in the role of Luana. She is a knockout pure and simple and awesome.

Raquel was also in Fantastic Voyage, a movie in which she was "required" to wear a delightfully indiscreet scuba outfit. The most amazing thing about Welch is that despite her mind-boggling glamour, she seems in her deportment to be unaware of it. That makes it all the more effective.

She dazzles me to this day. Long live the Queen!

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Girls On Film - Jenny!

What a babe Jenny Agutter was in Logan's Run as one of the youth-loving denizens of the world which had solved population control in the most draconian of ways. She and Michael York flee their domed life and venture into the wilds of the Earth, a territory unknown.  Later we got a another glimpse of Jenny's attributes in An American Werewolf in London as the nurse who tends to the wounds of the boy cursed to murder and murder again as a loathsome beast prowling the Underground and elsewhere in London.

Agutter has been one of the actresses who was able to cast off the nubile idea as the inevitably as she aged and played roles of all sorts of women -- which has proven good for her career.

Me, I'll never forget her in her little nothing of a shift in the gleaming polished world of the Sandmen.

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Girls On Film - Allison!

As long as man has watched movies he has beheld lovely women fill the screen with not only stunning beauty but often with grit and savvy and brains. Science fiction and fantasy movies in particular seem to favor the chicks to make fans of the genres (which admittedly have traditionally been targeted at boys) sit up and take special notice. Where would a mighty monster be without a proper damsel to distress? This week the Dojo takes a long adoring look at some of the finest dames that have lifted the spirits of sci-fi and fantasy film fans for many a moon.

Today we begin with the gorgeous Allison Hayes. She is best and always remembered as the captivating Fifty-foot Woman. Hayes appeared in a bushel of movies such as The Unearthly, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Crawling Hand. Hayes sadly passed away much much too young at forty-six after several years of fragile health thought to be lead poisoning. She campaigned against the uses of lead before her untimely death.

There are many who are dubbed with the title, but few deserved it as much as Allison Hayes -- she was a true and proper bombshell.

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Pussycat Please!

I've been seeing lots and lots of fairly handsome facsimile comics on the stands from Marvel and others. Dynamite recently published a facsimile of the first Vampirella magazine from Warren. Well, if we are doing facsimiles, why not a reproduction of one of Marvel's most offbeat magazines -- Pussycat.

This one was developed by Wally Wood and later produced by Bill Ward for some of men's magazines that Marvel's parent also produced. That sounds like stuff too good to remain hidden and this is one comic with its Bill Everett cover that needs a larger modern audience. Despite today being filled with "woke" folk, I''m all for a bit of this old-fashioned misogynistic Dadaistic entertainment!

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