Momotombo’s Neighborhood

Back in the days when The New Mickey Mouse Club was consuming most of my life, I also had a mild passing interest in the Sunday night Crime-drama Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries, the show based on the best selling juvenile fiction novels and starring teenage heartthrobs Shaun Cassidy, Parker Stevenson and Pamela Sue Martin.

 

Pamela Sue Martin! Like most guys my age, most of the main reason to tune in to the show was to see the pretty sleuth go through the motions, and so when a friend of mine told me he’d picked up the Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries DVD Box Set of the first season, I couldn’t wait to borrow it and take a step back to those childhood crushes of yesteryear!

  The show itself was about as much as I’d remembered (the stories themselves were your basic TV mystery drama yarns like Quincy and Charlie’s Angels) and Pamela Sue was as charismatic and pretty as I’d remembered…but there was one person I hadn’t recalled at all, and that was the character of Nancy’s tomboy friend George Fayne.

 As all readers of the original Nancy Drew novels know, best friends George Fayne and Bess Marvin usually accompanied Nancy as she went about uncovering clues and solving mysteries, and though I don’t know what became of Bess, it was nice to see (along with “sort-of” boyfriend Ned) some of the other regular book characters making appearances in the show!

 The show was paired up with the Hardy Boys show, and so maybe the producers wanted to give Nancy a “partner” in the TV series, and they surely found one in George Fayne! As played by pretty actress Jean Rasey, I found myself loving every scene that George was in, and I think it’s safe to say that (at least at THIS time in my life) she really MADE the show for me!

 Jean Rasey! How in the world did I forget about her? This gal was so much fun, and I think she really brought the George character to life! I’d always thought having a girl named “George” was funny reading the books, but to see it attached to this beautiful, sunny girl just made it all the more ironic!

  And the thing I loved most about Jean Rasey’s portrayal of George is that she managed to capture the character’s tomboyishness while still managing to look cute as heck!  One of the great joys of re-watching the series after all these years is watching George’s stuttering “scaredy-cat” shtick that would give Shaggy a run for his money performed with such cute and spunky gusto!

 I was so intrigued by my discovery of Jean Rasey, that I went right to Wikipedia to find out more about this wonderful actress…only to find no page exists for her! Man, that is really sad. IMDB still had a bit about her, though it was disheartening to read that she’d only done a few more television show appearances (all between 1975-79) and nary a show since! Sigh. Oh Well, I'll always have my Nancy Drew reruns to satisfy me!

BTW...While searching for information, I came across a "Facebook" page featuring a pretty lady named "Jean Rasey"... is this the Jean Rasey?! :)

When I was first introduced to Ms. Marvel, I have to confess I didn’t find her very interesting, and as a matter of fact, thought that the Red and Blue Captain Marvel costume looked absolutely ridiculous cut into  a bad one-piece swimsuit. But I had a friend who absolutely loved her, (and I mean LOVED her!) and insisted on sharing,  so I was exposed to her comic whether I liked it or not! This actually worked out to my benefit as I was able to filter through the stuff I didn’t like and appreciate the stuff I did, and eventually I came around and started picking up some of those issues myself!

 

The biggest part of what turned me around from a non-believer to a general fan of the comic was, of course, THE NEW COSTUME! Now THIS was what I liked! Rendered by a master of sexy super-heroine costumes was the mighty DAVE COCKRUM, and YES, the new outfit looked EXACTLY like a variation of Jean Grey’s revamped PHOENIX costume, but HEY, when you’ve got a winning formula, you don’t mess with it…

 So, anyway, gone was the horrendous red and blue outfit, in was the sleek ‘n’ sexy blue outfit with the lightning bolt and golden sash , and just in time for a  return slugfest against super baddie Deathbird (who would go on to give Hawkeye a run for his money in AVENGERS #189) then onward to my favorite arcs of the series, where Carol dukes it out with a civilization of super Lizard Men! Ah, trust me, it’s cooler than it sounds.  And THEN…

 Then the Comic got cancelled. Yep. GEEZ! All that coaxing and convincing me to get onboard the Ms. Marvel Fan Ship, and then the voyage was abruptly ended! But the best was yet to come with the aforementioned AVENGERS stint, all lovingly rendered by John Byrne, who was TOTALLY in his PRIME at this time!

 At this time we started trying to buy all the back issues of old Avengers stories, and when we got our hands of the epic KREE-WARS stories, got to see exactly where Carol Danvers had come from in the first place! It was kind of nest to realize she actually had a bit of “history” within the pages of those old Silver Age Marvels!

 So yeah,  I was a fan there…but after that surrealistic ( and highly controversial) AVENGERS issue  (196?) where she gets pregnant in some convoluted cosmic drama, I kind of lost interest and drifted away again. Next time I checked, for some reason the character named “Ms Marvel”  was a big female version of  the Thing! I didn’t know if this was supposed to be Carol Danvers or some OTHER character, and I  DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW! (Okay, I found out later it was some OTHER gal, but still, the shock…!)

  In fact, it was only with the arrival of Frank Cho’s cool and sexy MS MARVEL revival did I breathe a sigh of RELIEF, for here once again was that awesome dynamic costume, proving it could stand the test of time! The Ms Marvel of Old was back! ( and MAN, let’s hope she STAYS that way!)

  A funny side-story that always makes me smile is remembering when my friend picked up a new issue of Ms Marvel and saw that Carol was dating some dude with a beard, he mock- angrily declared war against all bearded men, and set about cutting up every picture of a bearded man in the daily newspaper. I sat on the couch howling with laughter as he jokingly destroyed all the pictures, until he got into trouble when his father scolded him and said “What are you DOING to the Newspaper? I haven’t even READ it yet!”

Ahahahahahaha!!!

 

Ms. Marvel / Carol Danvers

First Appearance: Marevel Super-Heroes #13

By Roy Thomas and Gene Colan