Pop Culture Safari!

Avengers Emma Peel/Diana Rigg Gallery 2

"Avengers" star Diana Rigg.

Music new releases Jan. 17, 2012

New music releases of note. Click the links to order discounted items from Amazon:

Let's Go Eat the Factory by Guided By Voices

The Concert Sinatra / [Remastered & Expanded] by Frank Sinatra

DVD new releases Jan. 17, 2012: Merlin, Mad, Adam 12, more!

New DVD releases of note. Click the links to order discounted items from Amazon.

Merlin: The Complete Third Season

Adam 12: Season Six

Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Mad: Season 1 Pt. 2

Avengers TV show chess board intro: Steed and Peel

The Avengers' Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee honored at the 1964 Royal Variety Club awards

Other honorees at this ceremony included the Beatles and Sean Connery.

Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale on "The Avengers"

Avengers TV series intro with Honor Blackman, 1962

Titan Books announces Simon and Kirby sci-fi and horror collections

Titan Books continues its awesome series of hardcover books collecting the work of comic book pioneers Joe Simon and Jack Kirby with two new editions planned for this fall and early next year.

Details:

The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction will span more than 20 years, beginning with the first stories Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ever produced together (beginning in June 1940)—their ten-issue run of Blue Bolt adventures. Then the Cold War years will be represented by Race For the Moon, featuring pencils by Kirby and inked artwork by comic book legends Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson.

The introduction for the volume will be written by Dave Gibbons, the award-winning co-creator and illustrator of Watchmen.

“Joe was one of the industry’s greatest innovators—he commissioned stories from some of the greatest talents of the time,” series editor Steve Saffel noted. “Thanks to his efforts, we have exclusive access to more than 80 pages of original artwork from the 1950s. Stories by all four artists will appear in all of their stunning detail. This was a book Joe wanted the world to see.

“The first Blue Bolt story was especially important to Joe,” Saffel continued. “He did it entirely on his own—before he and Kirby began working together—yet it wasn’t included in any earlier reprints of the series. Our mission is to release their entire run, complete for the first time ever.”

Other rarities from both decades will be included, and as a bonus for readers, the volume will feature stories illustrated by Crandall, Torres, and Williamson—without Kirby.

In 2013, the fifth volume—The Simon and Kirby Library: Horror—will collect the duo’s terrifying stories from the acclaimed Black Magic title, made infamous when the series was singled-out on national television by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. The volume will also collect the stories they produced for the title Strange World of Your Dreams.

“It’s a thrill to be a New York Times bestseller for the first time in my life,” Joe Simon said shortly before his death. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity to breathe new energy into the work Jack and I did throughout our careers.”

“This is an honor for us, to be able to continue the ambitious publishing program we put together with Joe,” Titan Books Publisher Nick Landau said. “Relationships like that come once-in-a-lifetime, and we’ll make every effort to make certain these next two releases are books he would once again be proud of.”

The Simon and Kirby Library editions are restored by Harry Mendryk and produced by Titan Books under agreements with the Joe Simon and the Jack Kirby Estates. As such, they are the only restorations of these stories authorized by both. Previous editions have included The Best of Simon and Kirby, The Simon and Kirby Library: Crime and The Simon and Kirby Library: Superheroes.

UK Avengers TV show on DVD - complete list

Avengers on DVD complete list:

Complete Emma Peel Mega-Set
The Avengers '63, Set 1
The Avengers '63, Set 2
The Avengers '63 Set 3
The Avengers '63 Set 4
The Avengers '64, Set 1
The Avengers '64, Set 2
The Avengers '65 - Set 1, Vols. 1 & 2
The Avengers '65 - Set 2, Vols. 3 & 4
The Avengers '66 - Set 1, Vol. 1 & 2
The Avengers '66 - Set 2, Vols. 3 & 4
The Avengers '67 - Set 1, Vols. 1 & 2
The Avengers '67 - Set 2, Vols. 3 & 4
The Avengers '67 - Set 3, Vols. 5 & 6
The Avengers '67 - Set 4, Vols. 7 & 8
The Avengers '68 Set 1
The Avengers '68 Set 2
The Avengers '68, Set 3
The Avengers '68 Set 4 The Avengers '68 Set 5

New Avengers on DVD

New Avengers '76
New Avengers '77

Pop culture roundup: Ringo Starr, Jim Aparo, Stan Lee, James Bond, Simonson, Kaluta!

Hear Ringo Starr promotes his upcoming album, Ringo 2012, in a BBC Radio 2 interview.

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It's cowboys vs. aliens in a 1960s Charlton Comics story by Denny O'Neill and Jim Aparo. Check it out at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

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The president of the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain says the evil schemes of villains depicted in James Bond movies have spoiled the progress of nuclear energy and planted fears in the public's imagination.

"It is not at all surprising that the public at home and abroad are sceptical,"David Phillips told the BBC. But he said the society believed "nuclear power has to be part of the future national energy mix, in which it plays a major role, complemented by renewable sources. Fossil fuels have to be eradicated for people to live in a healthy environment."

"Let's say yes to nuclear and no to Dr No's nonsense," he added.

On the other hand:

"Although James Bond is fiction, the truth is that nuclear power is dangerous, dirty and unsafe," Penny Kemp, spokesperson for the Green party said. "It is improbable to think that people's perceptions have been influenced solely by The World is Not Enough, but this film came after the Chernobyl disaster so the film was merely picking up on a real fear people have of nuclear power. And rightly so."

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Stan Lee will narrate two "storybook apps" for young readers based on the Marvel Comics adventures of Spider-Man and the Avengers.

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The great Walt Simonson is set to pencil a six-issue arc of Marvel Comics' Avengers series starting in April.

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The Comic Book Catacombs presents a nice adventure featuring Joe Kubert's Tor, from 1954.

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Golden Age Comic Book Stories presents some lovely, creepy splash pages done for DC Comics horror titles by the wonderful Michael W. Kaluta. We need a good, color reprint collection of this stuff.