Merry Christmas!

Pop Culture Safari returns in 2015! Happy holidays to all my readers and fellow pop bloggers!




Video find: George Harrison performs "Ding Dong, Ding Dong"


Merry Christmas from the Marvel Comics Group





New comics Dec. 24, 2014: Showcase Presents Legion of Superheroes 5; Len Wein Tales of Batman; Corto Maltese; X-Men Epic Collection; Warlock Masterworks

Click the links to order discounted items from Amazon.


Showcase Presents: The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 5
This latest Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes title collects adventures of the 30th century team originally published in the 1970s. These stories reestablished the Legion's popularity and introduced new heroes including Timber Wolf, Karate Kid and Wildfire. Includes artwork by The Uncanny X-Men co-creator Dave Cockrum and Warlord creator Mike Grell.

Collects SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #193, 195, 197-220 and KARATE KID #1.

These tales from the 1970s are written by Len Wein, co-creator of Swamp Thing and Wolverine and writer of BEFORE WATCHMEN: OZYMANDIAS. In this new hardcover, Batman battles the villainy of The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, Ra's al Ghul and many others. 

Collects Detective Comics #408, #444-448, #466, #478-479, #500,
#514, Batman #307-310, #312-319, #321-324, #326-327,  World's Finest Comics #207, DC Retroactive Batman - The 70s, Untold Legends of the Batman #1-3, Batman Black and White #5.

This book, the first of twelve volumes, launches the definitive English-language edition of Hugo Pratt's masterpiece, presented in the original oversized B&W format and with new translations made from Pratt's original Italian scripts. Frank Miller calls Pratt "one of the true masters of comic art." Long before the term "graphic novel" entered the popular lexicon - ten years before Will Eisner's A Contract with God - Hugo Pratt pioneered the long-form "drawn literature" story. Corto Maltese set the standard for all adult adventure comics in Europe. By the mid-1970s, Corto was the continent's most popular series and Hugo Pratt the world's leading graphic novelist. Hugo Pratt's peripatetic sailor was featured in a series of twenty-nine stories. The adventures of this modern Ulysses are set during the first thirty years of the 20th Century in such exotic locales as Pratt's native Venice, the steppes of Manchuria, the Caribbean islands, the Danakil deserts, the Amazon forests, and the waves of the Pacific. EuroComics is working closely with Patrizia Zanotti, Pratt's long-time collaborator, to present the complete Corto Maltese in a series of twelve quality trade paperbacks in Pratt's original oversized B&W format. Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn collects the first six inter-connected short stories Pratt created in France in the early 1970s: "The Secret of Tristan Bantam," "Rendez-vous in Bahia," "Sureshot Samba," "The Brazilian Eagle," "So Much for Gentlemen of Fortune," and "The Seagull's Fault."


X-Men Epic Collection: Children of the Atom Billed as "The Strangest Super-Heroes of All!", the ever-uncanny X-Men blasted onto the comic book scene in 1963. Now, in this massive Epic Collection, you can feast your eyes as Stan, Jack and co. lay down the building blocks of comics' most famous franchise! You'll experience the beginning of Professor X's teen team and their mission for peace and brotherhood between man and mutant; their first battle with arch-foe Magneto; the dynamic debuts of Juggernaut, the Sentinels, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. COLLECTING: X-Men (1963) 1-23 (X-Men Epic Collection Vol . 1)



Marvel Masterworks: Warlock Volume 1 In 1972, Marvel Comics marched into a new era, an era where super heroes increasingly reflected the world's turmoil and social unrest. And the hero for that era was the newly christened Adam Warlock! Mixing action and allegory, Roy Thomas and Gil Kane armed the character Stan and Jack called "Him" with the soul gem and launched him on a wild ride across the cosmos to Counter-Earth. COLLECTING: Marvel Premiere (1972) 1-2, Warlock (1972) 1-8, Incredible Hulk (1968) 176-178