Never make a redhead angry.
Above, a cover for Les aventures de Zodiaque #46, by Gaston Martin for Éditions de Neuilly, 1953, with cool art of a lethal redhead painted by Aldé. In French “manque” means “lack,” but we don't know “pot.” The phrase “mon pot” means something like mate or friend, but we have a feeling “manque de pot” could mean something unusual. Anyway, you can see more Les aventures de Zodiaque and learn a bit about its history by clicking the keywords below. Update: Jo to the rescue again:
«Manque de pot» means «lack of luck» Pot is a slang word for luck. No relation with a pot or a jar.
Thanks, Jo.
Let me put it to you the only way men seem capable of understanding.
Cool Aldé cover art for Les aventures de Zodiaque #33 — Drôle de musique, published by Éditions de Neuilly in 1952. We talked a bit about Aldé and Zodiaque several years ago, so if you're curious just follow this link. We also have a cover collection you can peruse here.
Twelve signs of the Zodiac. Not long ago we showed you the cover from one installment of a French pulp series called Les aventures de Zodiaque. That was a lovely piece of art, but the series had modest beginnings. Above and below are one dozen fronts from the series’ early days, when it was being published in Montreal by Éditions PTE under agreement from the French parent publisher Éditions de Neuilly. These are all from the early 1950s.
Edit: Writing six years later, we realize now that these are not random women on these covers. They're celebrities. Or at least, we assume so, because we recognize Belgian actress Dominique Wilms on the fifth cover below, the light brown one. If we identify others we'll update this little addendum, but don't count on it, because if, like Wilms, the other women are French or Belgian, well, we're not as good on those actresses as we'd like. But we'll sure try.
The Zodiac is watching your every movement. Les aventures de Zodiaque was one of France’s most poplar pulp-style serials. Published by Editions de Neuilly throughout the 1950s, this one is entitled Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un zéro and appeared in 1957, making it the 183rd entry in the series. The man who worked overtime to churn these out was Gaston Martineau, aka Gaston Martin, and the stories involved the exploits of Zodiac and his sidekicks Elayne, Dede and a reporter named Gaston Martin (subtle, no?). The cover was painted by Aldé, who we gather was Martin in disguise. You have to be impressed. You’ve probably noticed the black “Europe n° 1” on the cover. That isn’t part of the title. Martin had been interviewed on the recently launched radio network Europe n° 1 by Pierre Maintigneux, and the cover was publicizing that fact. There’s a photo of Martin and Maintigneux on the rear of the book from the interview. We’ll get back to this series pretty soon, but for now you can see more covers at Muller-Fokker’s excellent webpage here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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