Buttered Pop Culture

The various incarnations of the Superfriends show get a little hard to track, but this appears to be from The New Superfriends which aired concurrently with Challenge of the Superfriends in 1978. In this episode Rokan, a pterodactyl-like creature that was thought to have been extinct for a million years on Krypton, finds it's way to Earth. Being from Krypton it develops the same powers as Superman. It was obviously influenced by Rodan, but to avoid being sued they made it look really goofy. I was thinking of it as a giant space turkey, so I had to chuckle when Aquaman called it a big turkey at one point. Rokan's wings can devastate a town, and it has developed super strength greater than Superman's along with the heat vision. Rokan goes around the world destroying cities and laying eggs. The Superfriends seem unable to find a way to beat it, until Superman remembers that he is vulnerable to Kryptonite. Speaking of Superman, he seems a bit powered down in this episode. He ca

Not every family has someone famous in it. It's very rare for a family to have tow members become famous independently. There is one family though that has three famous cousins. Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the pioneers of rock and roll, a man whose wild life was filled with controversy. His cousin Mickey Gilley achieved stardom in country music without all the scandal. But their other cousin outdid even Jerry Lee in the scandal department, when televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was caught with a prostitute. And then was caught again three years later. Jerry Lee was probably glad to let someone else be the black sheep of the family, but he's still the king of scandal having had his career ruined by marrying his teenage cousin, and years of drinking and domestic abuse and even allegations of having murdered one of his seven wives.

 Marvel Comics presents started in 1988 as a way to showcase characters and talent that the wider comics world weren't familiar with. The idea was to have an X-Men story that would get people to buy the book (this was during the height of the X-Men popularity boom) and then have other stories featuring characters that had either faded in popularity or had never gained it in the first place. The first story in issue #1 featured Wolverine, because putting Wolverine on your cover at the time was like printing money. We see Wolverine for the first time in Madripoor, a place that would become a big part of his lore. He is going to a bar to ask about someone named Tiger. The man he plans to talk to is getting a beat down by some local thugs. Wolverine makes quick work of them. The man he rescued shows little gratitude though, as he and the others in the bar pull guns as soon as Wolverine says who sent him there. Short but just enough to whet your appetite. I'll admit I wasn't par

Kung Fu was a popular t.v. series that ran from 1972 to 1975. It stars David Carradine as Caine, a Shaolin monk who wanders the Old West. The pilot shows how Caine became a monk, why he is wandering the West, and how he is terrible at keeping his principles. More about that later. We start with Caine in a group of boys waiting in front of a temple. The priest comes out and sends some home, telling the rest to stay. We see the boys waiting through rain. Then the priest comes out again and sends home a group that had gotten bored and started playing a game to pass the time. Caine and the other boys who weren't playing are invited in. They are given drinks, which all but Caine drink from. The others are sent home and Caine is told he can stay. When asked why he didn't drink, he said it was because the old man hadn't drunk first. This is when we learn that his parents and grandparents are all dead, and that his father was an American.  From here we see Caine in the West, with o

  The Superman radio show started in 1940. It ran for 11 years. This came from a record collection of episodes from the show released by Kellog's. It's the first episode on the record collection. The story involves a gang of evildoers trying to wreck a train.  Superman uses both is powers and his Clark Kent identity to thwart the plan, but n the process the gang becomes aware of Clark Kent.