THE RIDICULOUS BUT TRUE STORY OF "STAN BUNCHE" AND THE SKETCH-A-GRAPH SCAM

What does this vintage STRANGE TALES cover have to do with this post? Read on...

Set the Wayback Machine to the spring of 1998.

Of the many bits of mischief that the Marvel Bullpen of the 1990’s got up to my favorite has to be when Fleer, a company known primarily for putting out trading cards, started up a line of Marvel Comics-related cards called “Sketch-A-Graphs,” each pack containing the usual depictions of favorite heroes and villains, but also including a hand-drawn sketch card done by a famous Marvel artist such as John Romita Sr. or Bill Sienkiwicz. Not a bad deal, but for reasons that elude me the company turned to the Bullpen to crank out as many cards as possible as a rush freelance job, paying us a laughable pittance and expecting quality work in no time at all and for a rate that wouldn’t even buy a small order of Chicken McNuggets. Nonetheless the impoverished Bullpen leapt at the opportunity to make some extra scratch and the results were rather less than stellar. Some people, most notably Art corrections guru Darren Auck and freelancer John Czop, actually turned in some lovely pieces, even adding color, but for the most part the efforts were hastily-scrawled wastes of card stock that included such gems as a series of rudimentary tombstones commemorating the honored dead of the Marvel Universe — “R.I.P. Bucky” and suchlike — , oval-shaped Spider-Man heads haphazardly colored with a red Sharpie marker and an appalling collection of Howard the Duck portraits done by a guy who had never drawn a “funny animal” in his life, let alone a duck, and that lack of experience was painfully evident. In fact, the sheer volume of flagrantly awful cards resulted in Fleer flat-out rejecting a shitload of them.

For my part, I initially did color character portraits that took about ten-to-fifteen minutes each to complete, but it soon became apparent that if I were actually going to come up with a significant enough number of cards to pay off a long-standing credit card bill — the sole reason I took on the assignment — I would have to figure out a formula and crank out multiple runs of perhaps one or two notable characters. My first set of formula cards were of the Hulk, closeup portraits of him from the shoulders up with him exclaiming something like “Hulk like beans!” or “Hulk too sexy for his shirt!” and they all featured his green skin tone, rendered in about three shades of emerald to give the image some weight. That was fun for a while, but then Fleer provided us with more blank cards, bringing my personal commitment up to a solid thousand and the deadline loomed mere days away, so how to accomplish such a Herculean task? Keeping my need to eliminate the credit card balance that had hovered over me for nearly seven years in mind, I formulated a fool-proof strategy for project completion: get drunk off my ass and work virtually nonstop over the weekend with two longboxes full of comics and the complete runoff MARVEL UNIVERSE — the comprehensive encyclopedia of all things Marvel from 1939 up — at the ready for reference. So I loaded up the fridge with Budweiser forty-ouncers and a bottle of Jose Quervo and set to drawing.

Some of my full-color Sketch-A-Graphs, drawn during a beer-and-tequila-fueled haze.

Like Popeye mainlining spinach, I was filled with energy after imbibing a goodly quantity of the chosen fermented beverages and I cranked out card after card in bursts of twenty, all of which were in full color and a hell of a lot better realized than you might expect from a lush under a deadline. Stopping only for an occasional nap, snack or bathroom break, I was able to come up with 480 pieces before I knew there was no way I could keep up the pace and do every card in color, so I had to once more come up with a character that could easily be churned out swiftly and in mass quantities. I wracked my booze-soaked brain and consulted the pages of MARVEL UNIVERSE for that elusive salvation, and after an hour or so of thumbing back and forth through assorted volumes it hit me: A.I.M. agents.

A reference turnaround of a typical A.I.M. agent from MARVEL UNIVERSE.

A.I.M. — an acronym for Advanced Idea mechanics — was an organization of brilliant engineers and scientists who created advance weapons for terrorists, assorted super-villains and the like while getting their asses kicked by Nick Fury, the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Captain America, most notably coming up with the Cosmic Cube, the Super-Adaptoid and MODOK (“Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing”), and their uniforms consisted of a canary-yellow jumpsuit surmounted with a matching helmet that looked like an inverted bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken whose sole feature was a mesh eye-slit for visibility. Drawing a from-the-shoulders-up portrait of an faceless, nameless A.I.M. agent would be a piece of cake, and after a half-hour trial period in which I drilled myself on drawing one as swiftly as possible I was able to literally produce the image with my eyes closed, a trick I still sometimes do at parties when asked to prove the veracity of this story. Thus prepared, I launched into my project and cranked out 580 (yes, you read that right) A.I.M. heads within about three hours. When I showed up to work that Monday, laden with a thousand cards, I showed them to the assembled Bullpen and basked shamelessly in the blended derision and admiration heaped upon me for having the unmitigated gall to perpetrate such an act out outright fleecing. When I explained to then-art director Michael Golden how I pulled off the assignment he simply said, “Hey, man, you do what you gotta do to get it done and meet the deadline!”

The finished stacks of hand-drawn Sketch-A-Graphs, separated by character, with six piles of A.I.M. heads seen at the rear and another to their immediate right. Grand total: one thousand cards.

Upon turning in the cards and them making their way back to Fleer I received feedback from the fuckstick in charge of the project and he bitched me out for drawing some of the Hulk pictures with art outside of the bleed lines — I had to explain to the moron how it’s okay to draw outside of the bleed provided that the art that will be cropped is just superfluous runoff, and I didn't give a flying fuck if my signature got sliced off, for obvious reasons — and for having the nerve to give him over five-hundred A.I.M. heads, after which he announced that he wasn’t going to pay me what I was due. I rained unbridled fury down upon him over the phone and informed him that I was going to bring my grievance to the guy at Marvel who’d brought us the project in the first place; I did just that and not long afterward I’m pleased to say that I received a check for all the money I was due and paid off my credit card balance (I have it on good authority that the asshole at Fleer was told that I was a very pissed-off, 250-pound scary negro with a huge Afro, so he relented for fear that I would put on my grass skirt and caper about his house while uttering “ooga-booga” incantations in preamble to using him to indulge in my natural-born taste for cannibalism).

We now skip ahead by a couple of years to when the Sketch-A-Graph cards are collector’s items that regularly turn up on eBay. I’ve been told more than once by friends who follow such things, and the ones who are still active doing original sketch cards for freelance bucks, that my A.I.M. heads are occasionally found for sale at insanely inflated prices that make me laugh my ass off. I once even received an email from a collector who found my name online and upon reading my comics biz resume he wondered if I were the A.I.M. heads guy. I answered in the affirmative and he responded with “Yeah, your cards are kind of…notorious, but why is your name on them signed ‘Stan?’” I had no idea what he was talking about, but it soon became apparent that my signature was not only scrawled swiftly but also drunkenly, so there’s a faction of collectors out there who know of me as the illustrious “Stan Bunche.” Who’da thunk it?

An actual A.I.M. head card by "Stan Bunche." From the collection of Jared Osborn.

And with the rise in popularity of beautifully-sculpted "mini-busts" of comics characters both well-known and somewhat obscure came this handsome 2-pack of A.I.M. agents crafted in resin, perhaps a belated bit of fallout from the efforts of "Stan Bunche?"

Again, who'da thunk it? I'd love a set, but I can think of many other ways I'd rather spend seventy-five bucks.

OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE: THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN...THE MUSICAL???

Greaseball Johnny took a break from his, er..."research" into all matters pornographic to alert me to the latest iodiocy taking place on Broadway. Just when you thought that the Great White Way was completely and totally creatively bankrupt and that there could be no more worthless an adaptation source than the 1980 celluloid uber-bomb XANADU, the minds behind the musicals have topped themselves by announcing the greenlighting of a musical version of the 1966 bad movie anti-classic THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. Yes, you read that right, so go here for the skinny.

STERANKO MAKES ME HAPPY

Undeniably one of the greatest talents to emerge from the Marvel Comics renaissance of the 1960's was Jim Steranko, a gifted designer/illustrator whose comics biz immortality was ensured by his legendary and rather psychedelic run on NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (Note to Marvel newbies: this was back in the days before THE ULTIMATES and the IRON MAN movie, when Fury was a white guy.) A few examples of the eye/imagination candy in question:

Imagine reading this while dosed out of your mind on some choice LSD when this one hit the newsstands. (I read it in college during the Spring of 1986 while on mushrooms and, hoo-boy, was it a mind-bender!)

A classic portrait of Fury's colleague and squeeze, the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

The first half of an audacious four-page (!!!) spread that required the purchase of two copies of the issue in order to see the whole image at once.

The cover to issue #4 of NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D., a cover that has been repeatedly imitated and parodied, even up to the current day (see below).

Steranko channeling his inner WEIRD SCIENCE-era Wally Wood, resulting in what gets my vote as one of the top ten comics covers of all time.

Steranko's masterful and completely fucking excellent NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. poster from 1973. Just plain balls-out awesome.

The guy redefined what a comic book page could look like with his innovative designs and later went on to do concept art for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, but what brought him back into my sights was a memory sparked by my ever-burning passion for jungle-girl characters and my recent devouring of some old school SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE reprints. While reading those lurid examples of T&A-driven four-color entertainment I was reminded of a jungle chick piece Steranko did during the mid-1970's and I was dismayed at not knowing its title, thus precluding a precise Google search. Fortunately the Vault is a vast repository of geekish treasures and I recalled that the very piece I was looking for could be found in the pages of an old issue of Steranko's MEDIASCENE magazine, issue #33 to be precise. I dug through my shelves (that are near the point of collapse from the weight of assorted books and comics) and found the issue, a treasury edition-sized "all-art poster special" featuring work by Rudy Nebres, Jeff Jones, Frazetta, and Barry Windsor-Smith among other notables, and thumbed through until I found the piece I'd been thinking of. It's entitled "Queen of a Thousand Kings," and while not Sheena per se, it totally reeks of her archetypal, leopard-clad glory and captures the feel of the genre she spearheaded (sorry, I couldn't resist).

"Queen of a Thousand Kings" (1978)

I had it scanned this morning and added a slight sepia tone to give it a slightly-aged feel, then I wondered why it wasn't clearly stated to be a Sheena illustration. To answer that burning question I called up Mark Chiarello, design/illustration badass, world-class comics geek and a Sterankophile of the highest order, and as near as he could figure it was clearly intended as a Sheena piece but not identified as such most likely to skirt the pain in the ass of obtaining the rights to the character. As the whole jungle-girl thing had long ago passed into the pop culture visual lexicon and the badassed white chick in a skin was accepted as conceptual shorthand, why the hell not?

Man, do I wish this would be issued as a poster!

THE HOT BABES OF HORROR: UXIA CAMBARRO, HIGH PRIESTESS OF DAGON

Picture, if you will, a vast undersea expanse, all sound muted by the water that envelops you as shafts of light from the distant surface provide scant illumination. You swim through this seemingly endless dreamlike environment, your movements slow and clumsy, body leaden with the weight of your scuba gear and aided by the beam of a flashlight. Suddenly, through the murky darkness you encounter an opening in the ocean’s floor that is clearly the skillfully crafted work of hands unknown, a wide portal that is at once ocular, oral and vaginal in its aspect. You swim into its yawning maw and curiously explore this tunnel leading to…where or what you cannot begin to fathom. Your hands explore the eerily striated walls of the portal, and as your fascinated gaze scans what lays before you, the pallid face of a beautiful, raven-tressed mermaid smiles up at you. She swims into clear view and you marvel at her strange beauty as her thick hair swirls about her, borne by invisible currents and exposing her lovely, buoyant breasts. This nubile vision swims over, unafraid, and removes your facemask and rebreather’s mouthpiece. Your senses reel as she kisses you, deeply and passionately, and you don’t even notice you no longer require your heavy equipment to breathe, so caught up are you in the deep-sea maiden’s unexpected ardor.

Then, with a ravenous shriek, she bares a dental array that would give a piranha pause and you awaken with a start.

It was only a dream, but you have just awakened from a harbinger of an infinitely worse, living nightmare from which there is no hope of escape for you or the companions who accompanied you on what was meant to be a relaxing getaway on a chartered yacht off the coast of Spain. You have just entered the world of the fish-god Dagon, and you’re about to learn some dark and ancient truths that will affect you in ways you would never have expected.

That’s the basic setup for Stuart (RE-ANIMATOR) Gordon’s masterful H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, DAGON (2001), and among its many malignant wonders is Macarena Gomez as Uxia Cambarro, the beautiful large-eyed mermaid from the opening dream sequence.

In the dream she was the mermaid fantasy brought to alluring life, but in the incredibly creepy reality of the remote fishing village of Imboca she’s the wheelchair-bound high priestess of the evil oceanic god who has mated with mortal women, thus spawning a race of human/sea monster hybrids.

Uxia’s clearly one of those creatures, but even though she boasts a pair of floppy, sucker-laden tentacles in place of a scaly fish tail, to say nothing of the enormous, gasping gills on her ribcage, she’s got that wild-eyed-and-crazy look that I find irresistible.

Crazed, incestuous, sacrificial dagger-wielding evil half-breed or not, I’d love a taste of her saltwater charms. Plus, unlike a traditional mermaid, with Uxia you’ve got a pretty good idea of where the pussy is. Always a plus.

No bullshit, if you haven't seen DAGON, run out and rent it immediately. It's fairly low on gore and violence but it's got an appropriately high creep factor that translates the crawly feel of Lovecraft's tales of cross-species interbreeding to the screen, and getting across the flavor of his works had never been successful in the movies until this one. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

HALLOWEENS OF YORE

While contemplating some of the possibilities and adventures that await me during this year's seasonal costumed revelry, I was digging through a shoebox full of old photos and came across some shots capturing the Halloween magic of years gone by.

This one dates back to the Fall of 1988 and a party thrown by my younger brethren in SUNY at Purchase's "Beer Police." I was notified of the impromptu bash at the last minute, so I threw together whatever I had lying around and came up with a DOLEMITE-budgeted interpretation of a villain who might have appeared on a blaxploitation version of the Adam West BATMAN show, namely the Bad Hatter. I think the Julie Newmar as Catwoman shirt adds a certain level of post-punk squalor to the whole ensemble.

From 1991 comes "the Dark Spore," a Ditko-esque antropomorphic psilocybin mushroom. I made the cap from a piece of bedding foam and coated the top with psychedelic colors atop a black-painted layer of latex that had a terrific texture.

I made sure to get as stoned out of mind as possible to lend the character the appropriate trippy vibe, and if you look close you can see that the mushroom cap is littered with plastic figurines of assorted wizards and monsters, representing hallucinations made manifest. Too bad I didn't invest in a less-smudgy blue pigment.

Here's the 1996 Robot Monster outfit that I'll be reviving this year, only with a bit more attention to authentic detail. Kids loved it when I walked the streets of Manhattan in broad daylight with this ludicrous getuo on, and I can't wait to see the reactions twelve years later.

Here's me and Greaseball Johnny at a 1996 Brooklyn shindig. Johnny's "the World's Sexiest Witch" and I was George Clinton; this shot was taken after I removed my bizarre-assed wig and cape and you can't see my silver/turquoise ultra-high top Chuck Taylors thanks to the angle of the camera, so you're forgiven if I don't register as the Funkadelic/Parliament living legend. Man, I miss the days of my fluffy 'Frohawk...

And if any of you have any particularly memorable Halloween costume photos you'd like to share, please send them in! That applies most especially to hot wimmerns ins sexy/skimpy outfits and anyone wearing something utterly ludicrous. Speaking of which: Jared, do you have a shot of "Bat-Pope?" If so, I must run it!

ATTENTION ALL TRI-STATE AREA HORROR FREAKS: CHILLER RETURNS TO CHANNEL 11

The claymation hands that caused the wee ones' undies to fudge across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for just over a decade.

Yes, you read that right: Channel 11's beloved horror movie showcase CHILLER ( the version with the creepy hand running from 1971-1982) returns on Saturday, October 25th for one night only (why tantalize us with a mere one-night stand?) with a showing of 1955's classic atomic mutant bug flick TARANTULA, hosted by none other than the dean of horror-hosts, Zacherley himself, the show's original host in the early 1960's.

Old school "cool ghoul" Zacherley, now ninety years mold.

It's an old school horror movie buff's wet dream, a return to the simpler times of childhood and adolescence, and a chance for your kids to finally see the infamous CHILLER hand in all its cheesily creepy claymation glory (yes, they're using the old bumpers).

I dunno about you, but I'll be there with bells on and a huge vat of freshly-made hot buttered popcorn! Oh, joy... (And don't worry, Jewish Warrior Princess, I'm taping it so you can see it with me when you're next in the country!)

BY WAY OF PROOF

Every now and then I'm asked by friends, relatives, co-workers and the occasional total stranger what I would look like if I ever deigned to dress up all nice 'n' purty for a formal occasion. It's an understandable question as I spend most of my time attired in an assortment of black t-shirts or shirts adorned with various punk rock and metal band art and logos, paired with blacks jeans, black shoes (sometimes Japanese tabi) and a (surprise!) black karate gi, but when I do have to dress up I do so in style. I'm very far from being the picture of sartorial elegance by anyone's estimation of such things so the existing photographic proof of me rockin' an outfit that would not have outraged the late and esteemed Mister Blackwell is rather limited, but here's a shot of me and my buddy Hughes at our pal Eddie's wedding a few years back.

Two smoove mofos: Hughes and Yer Bunche, 4/3/2004

 

Admittedly I once again overdid it with the black — hey, dark colors are a fat bastard's best friend! — and the tie was rendered completely invisible against a matching shirt, but the white suit jacket lent a nice touch and allowed me to pretend I was Sean Connery just after blowing up that heroin refinery and slipping out of his wetsuit at the beginning of GOLDFINGER. So, yes, I do clean up nice.

PORNO-ROCITOR: "ART" IMITATES LIFE

NOTE: special thanks to my porn researcher, Greaseball Johnny, for alerting me to this item. Sir, you are a true patriot of the highest order, and your country thanks you for your tireless efforts in the field of closeup pink and facial glazing.

The porn industry, gods bless it, is always there to latch onto whatever happens to be going on in society and make a quick buck on it. Take an event, TV show, popular figure, what have you, come up with a (supposedly) clever title, get some talent who look appealing while covered with DNA and having rigid Johnsons pistoning in and out of their various orifices, shoot a DVD for about $3000, release it and let the shekels roll in. It's that simple, and as what could be the single most important presidential election in this nation's history looms at a mere two weeks away, those enterprising tenderloin merchants have jumped onto the political bandwagon.

Say what you want about how apparently tits-out insane Sarah Palin is (and I've said a lot out in the world beyond the Internet), just about everybody can agree on the fact that the loony lady is a total M.I.L.F. whose allure is notched up by her wild-eyed madness and "naughty librarian/hot for teacher" look, so it was only a matter of time before somebody put out a Palin-based stroke DVD, and, considering the parent magazine's long tradition of scurrilous political humor, it comes as no surprise that such an effort would issue from the gigantic anus of HUSTLER's video division.

Yes, it's WHO'S NAILIN' PAYLIN? and I can't wait to check it out. I'm not up on current porn — my tastes are firmly rooted in the days before implants and mandatorily-bare pussies — so I have zero clue as to who the star, one Lisa Ann, is, but she gets across the likeness of who she's lampooning ("lam-poon-ing?") well enough to sell the gag, and from preliminary reports I hear that she gets it on with a Condaleeza Rice lookalike and a Hilary Clinton stand-in, so what's not to love? And the icing (or another glaze that springs to mind) on the cake is "Serra Paylin" taking on a couple of Russian soldiers who for some reason remind me of SCTV's McKenzie Brothers on the cheapjack set of their show, "The Great White North." Maybe it's the couch.

(photo cribbed from Fleshbot.com )

When this video was announced there was a minor bit of flack over it existing solely as a crass piece of exploitation (which it definitely is) and anti-feminist/anti-woman mockery that showed a marked lack of respect for a powerful female candidate, but despite Palin's tightly-wound public lunacy and annoyingly-affected little girl voice that screams "Ain't I just the cutest little dickens?", both aspects that fairly demand a piss-take, such alleged intent as an anti-feminist/anti-woman seems a bit beyond HUSTLER's over three decades of being the sleaziest and most unabashed of the mainstream porno mags with nothing on its febrile mind other than a desire to achieve crystal-clear, up close focus on the female reproductive bits in all their pink glory. I'm willing to bet that the dead-in-the-water controversy was fanned by rabid Palin supporters, so I just can't take their accusations seriously in the first place. Porn is porn, it's just that simple, and while many famous women have been impersonated and sent up in X-rated material, most likely since the dawn of film as a medium, this is the only time I can recall such a spoof as being declared a personal attack. This has nothing to do with politics, folks. It has everything to do with horny stick-vid fans wanting to see the admittedly hot Sarah Palin willingly engaged in all manner of fuckee-suckee and the video company seeking to capitalize on that perceived market need, and since it's highly unlikely that she's going to ditch her office any time soon for a shot at winning at the AVN Awards we'll just have to make do with the next best thing, namely a hot doppelganger. Whatever the case, I assure you I'll give this one a look when it hits Toys 'R Us.

And even though it's arriving a tad late, let's give it up for the best political-porno title ever:

"THE IOWA COCK-ASS." Both (kinda) clever and incredibly juvenile at the same time, therefore an artistic triumph even if the DVD's content is the same old dull dirtbox rodgering as always.

RO-MAN RIDES AGAIN! (or WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR HALLOWEEN COSTUME BUDGET GOES DOWN THE CRAPPER)

As you may recall, I had planned to go out on Halloween as the 1958 version of The Fly, a goal I had intended to realize some two years ago and even going to length of drawing up a quickie concept sketch for when I finally assembled the bloody thing. I would have required a gold rubber bouncy ball to be cut in half for the eyes, a huge block of black foam be crafted into the basic head, a smaller piece of foam to turn into the mutated left arm/claw, a white lab coat, a pair of those ultra-square 1950's dress slacks, a jar of liquid latex to form a textured over-skin, some paint and patches of hair to make the effect complete and maybe a small plastic fly onto which I would model a clay to-miniature-scale likeness of my head and arm. To properly execute this outfit and make it work I would have required about two weeks before the big day to allow time in my schedule to craft it and allow the paint and latex sufficient time to dry and cure, and the budget would have run to about $100 or so to do it justice, but as often happens in the life of Yer Bunche I once more neglected the barbarian beauty Tara's advice to her lover ( and later total idiot of a husband), Travis Morgan (aka The Warlord), that one should "always expect the unexpected."

Tara the barbarian imparts one of comics' greatest nuggets of wisdom. (from 1st ISSUE SPECIAL #8, November 1975)

You see, a couple of weeks ago as I left my building for work, the frames for my glasses quite literally fell apart and took a dive off of my face. I'd recycled those frames for years because, as anyone who wears glasses can tell you, the motherfuckers ain't cheap, and these particular graduated lenses required a frame of a certain size and shape to accommodate them so new frames were a must. Luckily I was only two doors away from my building, so I ran upstairs and threw on my old emergency pair of specs and decided to get another set of frames for the more current frames when I could afford them. That plan worked well enough since my emergency pair were more or less the same prescription as the ones that disintegrated, but as the weeks went by it became more and more apparent that I needed the ophthamological nuances of the more recent lenses, so this past Friday I shelled out $250 for a new pair of frames. That expenditure left me enough on which to be comfortable until the next payday, which happens to be Halloween itself, but wouldn't allow me enough to do the Fly after paying this month's inevitable batch of bills (phone, gas, electricity, etc.).

But all is not a total loss. While at my mom's house in Connecticut for the memorial service the weekend before last, I was cleaning out the closet in my long-vacant bedroom and stumbled across a huge shopping bag containing the helmet and hairy gorilla bodysuit for my Ro-Man costume, an item having last been worn for an infamous and rather disastrous Halloween party some thirteen years ago.

For those not in the know, Ro-Man is the ludicrously-designed star of the 1953 classic of bad cinema ROBOT MONSTER, and goofy as hell or not, his image has joined the pantheon of iconic b&w sci-fi critters.

The timelessly ludicrous majesty that is Ro-Man.

If what I've read of this silly-looking mamma-jamma's origins are true, the filmmakers couldn't scrape up the cash for an actual robot getup, but director Tucker had his pal George Burrows solve that problem by playing the title character in a gorilla suit he had lying around and the finishing touch of adding a tatty space helmet was provided by Tucker.

Ro-Man on the wheels of steel.

The image of an already bogus gorilla suit crowned with an equally shoddy antennaed space helmet is admittedly idiotic, but there's also the germ of a great visual in there somewhere and people have responded to Ro-Man's bargain basement charm since the moment he slouched across the screen over fifty years ago, and in 3-D no less. I mean, what's not to love about some fat load in a costume that wouldn't even pass muster on a public access cable television show? Decidedly ridiculous and completely un-scary in every way, the ROBOT MONSTER costume delights fans of bad movies and elicits peals of "what the fuck?" laughter from damned near everybody else, so I can't wait to once more don the skin and gallivant around the West Village.

My first shot at doing this outfit over ten years ago was the result of having to hastily throw something together at the last minute, so it amounted to nothing more than a gorilla suit (minus the plastic ape titties but with hands included), a plain white plastic space helmet with the face plate removed, a plastic raygun and a pair of black hightop Chuck Taylors.

Yer Bunche, rockin' the Ro-Man look, Halloween 1996.

It worked as such and people recognized what it was supposed to be, but this time around I actually bothered to paint the helmet silver and punch a pair of TV set rabbit ears through the top, finally providing it with the extra-cheesy antennae it so desperately needed. So get ready, kiddies. Ro-Man rides again, and he's on the hunt for some foxy Earth-wimmerns!

Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind: Ro-Man caught red-handed in the act of perpetrating a time-honored tradition among alien invaders, specifically abducting some fine Earth-pussy.

"DOLEMITE, YOU'D BE A DEAD MUTHAFUKKA": R.I.P. RUDY RAY MOORE (1927-2008)

Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemite.

One of America’s greatest cult figures has joined the Choir Invisible, yet I’m not saddened in the least by that news because his well-crafted alter ego virtually erased the mortal man behind what amounted to a gleefully obscene cartoon character. Yes, Rudy Ray Moore is dead at eighty-one, felled by complications from diabetes, and if you said his name aloud the average civilian would ask the simple question “Who the fuck is Rudy Ray Moore?” One simple word answers that query: Dolemite.

Original theatrical release poster for the epochal DOLEMITE (1975). Gotta love the positioning of his rifle.

Yes, friends, Dolemite, the rhyming standup comedian, inexhaustible sex machine, peacock-wardrobed money-makin’ pimp and martial arts master who out-blacked even the most Negrotudinous of the blaxploitation-era he-men and described himself thusly:

Dolemite is my name, and fuckin’-up muthafukkas is my game! I’ve got an all-girl army that knows what to do. They foxy as hell and practice kung-fu! I put my finger in the ground and turn the whole world around! Yes, I’m Dolemite. I’m the one that killed Monday, whupped Tuesday and put Wednesday in the hospital! Called up Thursday to tell Friday not to bury Saturday on Sunday! I’m the one that had the elephants roostin’ in trees and all the ants wearin’ BVD’s! From the first to the last, I give ‘em the blast so fast that their life has passed before they even hit the grass! See me uptown, downtown, crowned and renowned! Delayed, relayed, mislaid and parlayed! Hatched, matched, snatched and scratched! Whacked, jacked, smacked, cracked, boot-blacked, blackjack, racetrack, and flapjack, and still comin’ back! I used an earthquake to mix my milkshake! I eat an avalanche when I want ice cream! I punched a hurricane and made it a breeze! I swallowed an iceberg and didn’t freeze! I chained down thunder and handcuffed lightning! I’m so damn strong, it’s sometimes frightening! I grabbed a star traveling a million miles a minute and slowed it down to the state speed limit! I may not be sleek, but women shriek when they see my physique! I got a dong as big as King Kong! (Speech culled from the trailers to DOLEMITE and THE HUMAN TORNADO)

After hearing all that, doesn’t “faster than a speeding bullet” seem a tad feeble by comparison?

Sure he got his start as an R&B singer and “blue” standup comedian, later dubbing himself “the Godfather of rap” for his legendary ability to pull rhymes out of his ass, but Rudy Ray Moore’s immortality was sealed by his two Dolemite movies, DOLEMITE (1975) and THE HUMAN TORNADO (1976), as well as PETEY WHEATSTRAW: THE DEVIL’S SON-IN-LAW (1977) and DISCO GODFATHER (1979) are monuments to the art of wretched filmmaking, the crap cinema equivalents to the pyramids at Giza, yet each one is a treasure to bad movie mavens around the globe. I've seen 'em all and the one that remains dearest to my heart is THE HUMAN TORNADO, also known as DOLEMITE II and in every way a vast improvement over the unmitigated amateur hour that was its predecessor.

Original theatrical release poster for THE HUMAN TORNADO (1976). Yes, Dolemite actually wears that suit in the movie!

Director Cliff Roquemore, who helmed PETEY WHEATSTRAW: THE DEVIL'S SON-IN-LAW with equal verve, injects life (and good pacing) into Dolemite's world for this sequel and renders it as a raunchy live-action cartoon. Everything that was already outrageous in DOLEMITE is here turned up to eleven, creating an avalanche of potty humor, immeasurably-foul dialogue, ridiculous sex scenes, insane musical numbers that just happen from out of nowhere ("Angels of the World," featuring "Mister Motion" Jimmy Lynch in a red over-the-shoulder one-strap bell-bottomed jumpsuit, one huge sparkly cuff and no shirt must be seen to be believed), the worst martial arts sequences in recorded history, a gay character of unprecedented stereotypical magnitude (who utters what may be the funniest line in the entire movie), gratuitous nudity and violence, and even a Mafia torture dungeon presided over by an over-the-top cackling loony who looks like Witchie-Poo's criminally insane sister. I know both films are unmitigated pieces of shit, but how anyone could pick DOLEMITE over THE HUMAN TORNADO for sheer entertainment is completely behind my powers of comprehension. Seriously, I love THE HUMAN TORNADO so much that it's one of three genuinely terrible movies that would survive the culling if I had to rid my collection of all but ten films (for the record, the other two favorite turds are SORCERESS and DEATH WISH 3 ), so if you must see only one Rudy Ray Moore movie that's the one I would recommend.

So rest well, Mister Moore. You were one funny muthafukka, and I ain't lyin'!

From Monday's LOS ANGELES TIMES:

Rudy Ray Moore dies at 81; comedian and filmmaker influenced rap and hip-hop

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart 4:21 PM PDT, October 20, 2008

Rudy Ray Moore, the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Rap" who influenced generations of rappers and comedians with his rhyming style, braggadocio and profanity-laced routines, has died. He was 81. Moore, whose low-budget films were panned by critics in the 1970s but became cult classics decades later, died Sunday night in Toledo, Ohio, of complications from diabetes, his brother Gerald Moore told the Associated Press.

Though he was little known to mainstream audiences, Rudy Ray Moore had a significant effect on comedians and hip-hop artists. "People think of black comedy and think of Eddie Murphy," rap artist Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew told the Miami Herald in 1997. "They don't realize [Moore] was the first, the biggest underground comedian of them all. I listened to him and patterned myself after him." And in the liner notes to the 2006 release of the soundtrack to Moore's 1975 motion picture "Dolemite," hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg said: "Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that's for real."

When it came to his own sense of his accomplishments, Moore was never burdened by immodesty. "These guys Steve Harvey and Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac claim they're the Kings of Comedy," Moore told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2003. "They may be funny, but they ain't no kings. That title is reserved for Rudy Ray Moore and Redd Foxx." The heyday of his fame was in the 1970s, with the release of "Dolemite" followed by "The Human Tornado," "Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law" and "Monkey Hustle."

The way Moore told it, his introduction to Dolemite came from an old wino named Rico, who frequented a record shop Moore managed in Los Angeles. Rico told foul-mouthed stories about Dolemite, a tough-talking, super-bad brother, whose exploits had customers at the record shop falling down with laughter. One day Moore recorded Rico telling his stories. Later Moore assumed the role of Dolemite, a character who became the cornerstone of his decades-long career as a raunchy comedian, filmmaker and blues singer. "What you call dirty words," he often said, "I call ghetto expression."

But long before "Dolemite" debuted on theater screens, Moore had found fame -- and fans -- through stand-up routines and a series of sexually explicit comedy albums. Not only were the album contents raunchy, the album covers featured women and Moore nude and were too racy for display. So store clerks kept the albums under the counter. Without airplay or big-studio promotion, the so-called "party records" were underground hits. "I put records in my car and traveled and walked across the U.S. I walked to the ghetto communities and told people to take the record home and let their friends hear it. And before I left the city, my record would be a hit. This is how it started for me," he told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 2001. Although his contemporaries, such as comedians Foxx and Richard Pryor, managed to find success with a broader audience, Moore's stardom was bounded by the geography of race and class: He was a hit largely in economically disadvantaged, African American communities.

According to his website, Moore was born in Fort Smith, Ark., on March 17, 1927. In his youth Moore worked as a dancer and a a fortune teller and he entertained while serving in the U.S. Army. But his big break came with the recording of his Dolemite routine: Dolemite is my name/And rappin and tappin/ that's my game/I'm young and free/ And just as bad as I wanna be. By the time Dolemite appeared on film, he was the ultimate ghetto hero: a bad dude, profane, skilled at kung-fu, dressed to kill and hell-bent on protecting the community from evil menaces. He was a pimp with a kung-fu-fighting clique of prostitutes and he was known for his sexual prowess.

For all the stereotypical images, Moore bristled at the term blaxploitation. "When I was a boy and went to the movies, I watched Roy Rogers and Tim Holt and those singing cowboys killing Indians, but they never called those movies 'Indian exploitation' -- and I never heard The Godfather called 'I-talian exploitation,' " he told a reporter for the Cleveland Scene in 2002.

Late in life, Moore saw his work win fans far beyond his African American audience. There is a "Dolemite" website and chat room that boasts a cross-cultural collection of young fans. Such interest won him mainstream work in an advertisement for Altoid Mints and a commercial for Levis jeans.

Though Moore built a career on talking dirty, he was very religious. He took pride in taking his mother to the National Baptist Convention each year, and often spoke in church at various functions. He rationalized his role as a performer. "I wasn't saying dirty words just to say them," he told the Miami Herald in 1997. "It was a form of art, sketches in which I developed ghetto characters who cursed. I don't want to be referred to as a dirty old man, rather a ghetto expressionist."

Stewart is a former Times staff writer.

"I got a dong as big as King Kong!!!"