Space Ghost was a character created by Hanna-Barbera Productions and designed by Alex Toth. He started out as a superhero who, with his assistants Jan, Jace and Blip, fought villains in outer space. In more recent years, he has been retooled as a fictional talk show host on Cartoon Network and revamped in a DC Comics mini-series.

Alex Toth was an acclaimed professional cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth’s work began in the American comic book industry, but is best known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Birdman. Toth’s work has been resurrected in the late-night, adult-themed spinoffs on Cartoon Network: Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Toth’s contributions to the comic book medium are not widely known among casual fans. He did much of his work outside the current mainstream of superhero comics, concentrating instead on such subjects as hot rod racing, romance, horror, and action-adventure. His stint on Disney’s Zorro is highly regarded and has been reprinted in trade paperback form several times. Toth lamented what he saw as a lack of awareness on the part of younger artists of their predecessors, as well as a feeling that the innocent fun of comics’ past was being lost in the pursuit of pointless nihilism and “mature content.”

Both Mike Baron and Steve Rude (a full 6-foot-5 Wisconsinite nicknamed "The Dude") pay homage to Space Ghost in their work on Nexus, including use of the battle cry "This calls for hyperspeed!" Jan, Jayce, and Blip have several uncredited cameos in the background. Rude was later hired to create a Space Ghost comic for Comico with writer Mark Evanier. Steve Rude has cited a number of influences on his clean, distinctive style, including the Space Ghost character designs and other work by Alex Toth, and commercial illustrators of the 1940s and 1950s, particularly Andrew Loomis.

William Andrew Loomis (1892-1959) was an illustrator from the United States. He was born in New York, but spent most of his working life in Chicago. He is best remembered now for a series of art instruction books that continues to influence realist artists, though they are now all out of print. Steve Rude named one of the characters he drew in the Nexus comic book "General Loomis". When the General was executed by Nexus, his daughters, the Loomis Sisters, vowed revenge.

Nexus has long been a favorite among fans of great comics since 1982 when Mike Baron and Steve Rude created the character for the short-lived, yet visionary, Capital Comics. The Nexus series debuted as a three-issue black and white miniseries, followed by an eighty-issue ongoing full-color series. The black and white issues and the first six color issues were published by Capital Comics; after Capital's demise, First Comics took over publication. Dark Horse Comics, recognizing Nexus as the landmark series it is, wasted no time in snatching up the title and, because of Mike Richardson's creator-friendly attitude, returned ownership to Baron and Rude so they could continue to guide Nexus through his murky and prophetic dreams. Steve Rude announced plans on his message board January 2006 to self-publish a new Nexus comic series. The first issue of the new series, numbered Nexus #99 was published in July 2007.

The lead character, Horatio Valdemar Hellpop, received his powers as Nexus from an alien entity called the Merk. As payment, the Merk required Nexus to seek out and kill a certain quantity of human mass murderers per "cycle". When the Merk selected a target, Nexus would receive strong headaches and maddeningly anguished dreams of his target's victims until he did his duty. Horatio was reluctant to act as the Merk's tool, but continued seeking out mass murderers to maintain his power and his sanity so that he could defend his home world, a lunar refuge of Ylum (a shortening of the word "asylum," thus pronounced "eye-lum").

Nexus was introduced before the Punisher received his own series, so the idea of a bloodthirsty vigilante was at the time unique, novel, and too risky for the Big Two (Marvel and DC) to handle. Going even further, some of the mass murders Nexus is forced to kill had repented and gone on with their lives. As a matter of fact, the first murderer Nexus was sent after was his own father, who was responsible for millions of deaths before Horatio was born.

In the early 1980s, if you liked superheroes but wanted to see a different take on them, there was one place to go: independent comics. Sure, Frank Miller on Daredevil and Alan Moore on Swamp Thing were expanding the boundaries of what a mainstream book could be, but the most inventive development of the superhero was done with the smaller companies. It was in the independents where you would find characters such as Cerebus, Flaming Carrot, Mage, Grendel, Normalman, American Flagg and Badger. Each of these titles contained elements that you could find in DC and Marvel books, only with a unique and daring twist on them. One of the best examples of this phenomenon was Nexus.

You may also enjoy reading: Killer Lake!

Also, may I recommend for your enjoyment: Man Of Steel. Man in tights. Roaming the planet, looking for fights.

I am by no means ready to die! So, with that fact established, let's begin at the beginning: See links for all the Genesis posts to date: Genesis Through My Eyes

In my not too distant past, if I were to see a street person, a bum, sleeping in a door front or on a park bench, I would have kept my distance and perhaps shrugged my shoulders.: He had the "smarts" to ask someone where to go, I didn't

Waldo County, situated in mid-coast Maine along scenic Penobscot Bay, has genuine New England character evidenced by working port towns and quaint rural villages. Visitors are awed by the area's unspoiled beauty. From striking coastal views to sweeping mountain vistas, dramatic natural settings abound. In addition great care has been taken to preserve and refurbish numerous historic landmarks, homes and buildings. Consequently, the Maine of yesteryear is still found here.

Stumble It!

web blog: Time Less Images

web blog: Epicurean Health

web blog: Timeless Snippets