Fred the...

From "Fred the motorcycle courier",

From one of the many Aussie Fred Gasset pages:

"The adventures of Fred Gassit (written by Simon O'Leary) have been printed in ustralian Motorcycle News (AMCN) every fortnight for the last 15-20 years. Recently he has been syndicated in the UK's Superbike magazine.

Fred is the ultimate multiple personality; everchanging, everdifferent, he is ALL motorcyclists and yet, curiously, no specific one. In him we see aspects of every known category of biker, even some you didn't know, and most of them none too favourable. He has appeared as everything from 'Fred -Russian Ice Racing Star' to 'Fred - Customs Officer', the list is, so far, endless. He is the perfect biking antithero; he is as non-bikers see us and how some of us see ourselves. Have you ever seen those ghastly, hideous, 'centerfolds' from Easyriders Magazine; where all the handsome, muscley, righteous Bro's roar across the Desert with their massive-breasted Ol' Ladies strapped to the back, like some vision of latter day cowboys (sounds of Bon Jovi swelling up in the background) ? Well, thats the Disease..............and Fred is the cure"

....to "Fred the bastard"

Comics: Captain America.

Footage from the 1979 T.V movie.

The Marvel comics directory claims "Captain America rides a Harley-Davidson custom special motorcycle, custom built for him by young motorcycle mechanic Jonathan Coulson of Queens, New York. Coulson modified the bike for the Captain in repayment for the Avenger's help in reconciling the youth with his father. Captain America then took it to S.H.I.E.L.D., where it was further modified. While living in Brooklyn Heights, Captain America stored the motorcycle in a service garage operated by Richard Dumbrowski. Captain America now keeps his motorcycle in his van and takes it wherever he travels."

Panel from Captain America #318 "war on wheels"

Via: Cyberpunk Review

"Akira Club is an art book featuring cover art, sketches and outtakes from the paperback Akira collections. It’s a little pricey at thirty bucks when most the artwork is in black and white, and another set back is the format, which doesn’t match the Akira books. Though mostly presented in black and white, Otomo Katsuhiro’s artwork will blow your socks off. The artwork in Akira Club is incredibly detailed and the author’s commentaries and sketches really show you how much work has been put into the product. While penned many years ago, it doesn’t look a bit outdated. Akira is an epic piece of work at over 2000 pages and has won awards and prestige around the world. The animated movie based on the manga re-introduced the west to Japanese animation in the nineties. The quality of animation mirrors that of the manga and although large parts of the manga were cut from the movie, it still gets the story through to the viewer pretty well.

Background: The world of Akira is set after world war three and the destruction and rebuilding of Tokyo. Themes include transhumanism, corruption, low life and high tech and Akira comes across as incredibly cyberpunk, mostly focusing on the life of those on the ground in a super industrialized and militaristic Neo Tokyo. The artwork in Akira Club pretty much represents these themes in great detail. There’s a contrast between the giant, symmetrical skyscrapers which dominate the Neo Tokyo skyline and the life on the ground where there are a lot of organic and seemingly random shapes. There’s also a recurring theme of order put in chaos, like the front cover image; smooth motorcycle parts are jumbled together in a giant mess creating disarray where there once was a finely tuned machine, everything put together neatly.

A lot of the magazine covers show a destroyed Neo Tokyo behind mostly young people. The city being destroyed by a secret weapon created by the government, this gives a pretty strong image of the world being handed over to future generations ruined by our predecessors’ lust for more power through technological advances.


Section One: The first section collects several full colour paintings of magazine and book covers, T shirt designs and promotional posters, supplemented with preliminary sketches and short comments from the author; Otomo Katsuhiro.

Section Two: The second section is the biggest and focuses on the covers used for each chapter when Akira was serialized in Young Magazine. These weren’t included in the paperback collections because they’d break up the natural flow of the story, so having them collected here is kinda nice as the artwork is generally stunning. These do not include comments on the artwork but little musings on life by the author, which I personally found incredibly uninteresting.

It's all about the bike...

Section Three: The third section collects all sorts of odd artwork used in advertising and merchandise, there’s a lot of great art, but all in all it’s not as interesting as the last section of the book. Also included here are notes on the translation of Akira.

Section Four: The fourth section is probably the coolest out of the whole book, although I wish it were longer. Titled, “Unpublished Works,” it shows panels and scenes that were never included in the finalized Akira comic books, some pages include parts that were included in the serialized version of the comic, but were cut from the paperback collections.

The Bottom Line: Having “read” through the book, I feel a little let down; it’s like there’s something missing. The artwork, though awe-inspiring, is as noted mostly in black and white, and I feel there could have been more colour illustrations put in to compensate for the large number of cover illustrations from Young Magazine. The last part of the book could also have been a little longer. At two thousand pages, I’m sure there is more unpublished material than on display here. I’d like to see the parts excluded from the paperback collections in better detail, preferably in entirety, as I’m sure others are as well. I’ve only had access to the translated collections and would like to know what I’ve been missing out on."

The motorcycle in cinema-The Venus Wars.

Wiki:

"The Venus Wars (ヴイナス戦記 Vinasu Senki?) is a 1989 science fiction anime film. It is directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, co-written by Yuichi Sasamoto and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and stars Gorô Naya and Anna Alba. Loosely based on the manga by Yasuhiko (translated into English by Dark Horse Comics in the early 90s), The Venus Wars gained recognition in the United States when it aired in heavy rotation on the Sci-Fi Channel "Saturday Anime" movie block in the late 1990s. Makoto Kobayashi provided the mechanical design of the films "Monobikes"

Everybody loves a monobike

Story:
In the year 2003, a collision with the giant comet has transformed the surface of the planet Venus. In the year 2089, Venus has been colonized and divided into two continents, Ishtar and Aphrodia. Susan Sommers, a bubbly reporter from Earth, travels to Venus hoping to get a scoop on the military tensions that have arisen between the two nations. She arrives in the Aphrodian capital of Io shortly before the city is invaded by the forces of Ishtar, led by General Donner.



Meanwhile, a brutal, Rollerball-esque racing game is being held in a local stadium. One team, the Killer Commandos, is led by hotshot Hiro Seno. The game is disrupted by the invasion and the team quickly evacuates. Hiro's teammate Will picks up Sue on the way and takes her to the garage where the rest of the team is lying low. The invasion of Io is completed in one day, and the politicians, police, and press submit to Ishtar's authority. The city is put under martial law and a curfew imposed. Many of Io's citizens, including Hiro's girlfriend Maggy, try to pretend that nothing has changed since the invasion, but Donner's iron grip on the city is too tight to ignore.


Hiro visits his teammate Jack, who's staying in his uncle's high rise apartment. However, the police see them as trespassers and lead an unprovoked assault against Hiro. He makes a daring escape from their custody, but not unscathed; his leg is pierced by a bullet and he barely makes it to Maggy's home before he collapses. She tends to his wounds, and Hiro shares a few secrets about his past. A photograph of Maggy's father's spurs memories of the farm where he was raised; Hiro reveals that many of the terra-forming farms funded by the Aphrodian government were frauds simply meant to secure land away from Ishtar. That their crops continually kept failing since the plants couldn't endure the constantly changing weather conditions of the planet (despite convincing claims from so-called government sources)! He bitterly notes on how only the politicians made any money out of this situation, that all governments are corrupt, and expresses his frustration and anger at the state of the world. His words trouble Maggy; so much so, that she bursts into tears and collapses into his arms in a crying fit! Hiro comforts her, leading to both sharing an embrace and a passionate kiss. The moment is ruined when her father returns from work; Hiro is ushered into a back room and overhears the ensuing conversation. Maggy's father is a bureaucrat, and he's pulling strings to have the two of them evacuated out of Io as he did with her brother and mother. Maggy is horrified at the thought of abandoning her friends and defiantly stands up for them against her livid father (who views them as just self-centred adrenaline junkies), before he furiously shouts her into silence as Hiro secretly storms out.
Meanwhile, Miranda of the Killer Commandos discovers that their manager, Gary, has been secretly smuggling arms into the city. Raiding his cache, she reveals her plan to demolish the Ishtar tanks that are parked in the old stadium. Gary says that the Commandos would be fools to try such a suicidal mission, but Hiro likes the idea and inspires his teammates. The Killer Commandos lead an assault against the tanks, but underestimate the strength of Ishtar's military. Jack and Gary are killed in the melee, and Hiro nearly shares their fate. At the last minute, however, the team is saved by the Aphrodian Freedom Force, which had also been planning to attack the stadium that night.



Sue and the Killer Commandos are forcibly recruited by Lt. Kurtz, who thinks that their skills as monobikers would be useful in his Bloodhound Squadron. Tensions run high among the Killer Commandos and the team is divided; Will and Sue think that it's important to fight for Aphrodia's freedom, but Hiro and Miranda want nothing to do with war. Will is called out on a mission and Sue begs him to take her along. He instead convinces her to wire her camera to his monobike so he can film their attack. But to Sue's horror, Will disappears in battle. Sue steals a buggy to search for him on the battlefield, only to stumble upon the terrible truth of his death.
Upset over Will's fate, Hiro and the Commandos demand to be freed from the Freedom Force's custody. Lt. Kurtz and Hiro quickly strike up an animosity, and Kurtz challenges Hiro to a race across a ravine in their monobikes. Despite having a ten second head start, Hiro is taken out by Kurtz. Nevertheless, Kurtz is impressed by Hiro's raw talent, and makes him a deal: he will release the Killer Commandos on the condition that Hiro joins the Bloodhound Squadron. Hiro grudgingly accepts his offer, and says goodbye to Miranda and his friends.

Back in Io, General Donner is visited by Sue, who requests an interview with him for the Independent Press on Earth. Once alone with him, Sue pulls a gun and threatens to kill him in order to avenge Will and all the other innocent people who have died in the war. She fails to release the safety however, and is quickly disarmed and arrested. Displaying his sadism Gerhard accosts Sue, snatches away her firearm, then discharges her pistol inches from the side of her head, before putting it to her skull and pulling the trigger, cruelly revealing he's used up all the bullets.


Kurtz leads the Bloodhound Squadron in a surprise and intense strike on Io. Kurtz is disabled, but Hiro manages, through sheer luck and skill, to corner Donner's tank and destroy it by getting Gerhard to fire on him (raging that he shall not be beaten by children), with his shots missing Hiro and striking a runway that collapses ontop of (a screeching with frustration) Gerhard in his tank. With their leader dead, the Ishtar forces are quickly disbanded and Aphrodia is freed from their control. Kurtz and Hiro end their animosity and Kurtz gives Hiro his monobike as a sign of goodwill. While driving through the streets, Hiro encounters the recently released Sue, who's being evacuated to Earth. She thanks him for all of his help, and he tells her to come back and visit Venus again.

Following Sue's tip, Hiro makes the long trek to a refugee camp; there, he and Maggy are happily reunited (thanks to her siamese cat Andrew). Back on Earth, Sue has given a world exclusive on the Venus Wars. She plans to spend her vacation on Venus so she can rejoin her friends."

The Fenir-Close up.

A few weeks (months?) ago we did a post on the PS2 game hero Cloud's bike the Fenir from the Final Fantasy series and movie. Now we have more detailed pictures of the incredible Keita Amemiya designed bike created by computer artist Wen-JR and featured on moto.caradisiac. Enjoy!

Here's a rendering showing the bikes open "doors"-allowing access to our hero's rather large swords.

"Werner is a fictional character, appearing in a number of German comic books and animated films. He was created by Brösel (Rötger Feldmann). Werner is the most successful German comic character of all time with over 10 million books sold and over 13 million film admissions.

The Werner books are known for their anarchic humour, often based on Northern German dialect and puns.

Seems like a pretty clever fella-Werner

The character of Werner is based on Brösel's own experiences. Werner is an unemployed biker who likes to modify his motorcycle — which constantly gets him into trouble with the police and the TÜV. Werner also likes to consume large amounts of beer (known as Bölkstoff in the comics). In his younger years, Werner was apprentice to plumber Meister Röhrich - the situations and characters in these stories are based on Brösel's brother Andi's apprenticeship years."

The softheaded little twit is so popular he even has his own music video...

"The bike was drawn in a biker comic (see above), but the artists brother was so enamoured with it - that he brought it in to existance!

The cylinder came out of an old tractor, as did the wheels, the tires were once made for a Ford Model A and had spent several decades in storage somewhere, the seat is an actual shovel and the fork is made from forged iron and ash (wood). Although it runs on petrol, this looks more steam-ish than most steam motorcycles- it goes ka-tchunk, ka-tchunk like real machinery schould.."

...to reality

(The bike has a) "Custom made engine block, internals, cylinder head. DOHCs operating four valves via rocker arms. Generator from a Japanese compact car. Silencers (yes, they are there) came from dirttrack bikes, one in each pipe.

1440 cc displacement, the original aim had been for 1000. Actual Vintage Ford Model A tires, found virginly wrapped in paper in a Danish tire store. Modified Harley brakes and a Harley transmission. Fork made from well-aged ash, and forged iron. Due to a lack of space, the petrol tank is part of the handle-bar arrangement. The old look of most of the parts was achieved by means of heat and applying fiendish concoctions of various brown-ish metals.

The engine is, obviously, a stressed member, and due to a lack of foresight by the designers, the four bolts holding the cylinder and head assembly to the block are the only thing that keeps the bike together (note how the steering is bolted right to the cylinder head, as are the frame tubes). it delivers about 60 something hp or thereabouts, makes a noise like a steam-engine breathing angry spanners and is, of course, utterly and totally illegal in any conceivable way."

this looks like a job for...

Our hero Tetsuya Tsurugi -his giant robot Mazinger lurks in the background-but its the jet-bike we are here for.

Wiki. Book and anime television series by manga artist Go Nagai, made as a direct continuation of the successful Mazinger Z series. It was aired on Japan in 1974, immediately following the end of the first Mazinger series. It lasted for 56 episodes."

The art of Graham Corcoran.

Ah, blogger comes through again, this time a a nice piece of art from Graham Corcoran-a freelance illustrator, be sure to check out the rest of his drawings at modern whimsy.

The Ingsoc motorcycle club gets its own patch.

These patches were inspired by the novel Nine-Teen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell and designed for the comic book adaptation currently in progress at 1984comic The badge may be sewn on your coat, hand bag, pack sack or outer party uniform. US $10.00 (+ US $1.00 shipping)

Patches can also be had via: The Lionhearted

Cloud Strife and his bikes.

The original concept drawing of Cloud on his bike by the brilliant Yoshitaka Amano

Cloud Strife (クラウド・ストライフ Kuraudo Sutoraifu?) is the protagonist of Square's (now known as Square Enix) role-playing game Final Fantasy VII and several of its sequels and spin-offs. His appearance is marked by spiky blonde hair, vivid greenish-blue eyes. His first bike of a desperate choice was the "Hardy Daytona". (The Daytona was displayed at Shinra building and Cloud stole it to escape The Shinra Electric Power Company....

Must be helmet hair-Cloud with Hardy Daytona

In the CGI movie Final Fanatsy Advent Children, Cloud after countless conflicts retires and established the Strife Delivery Service, with the aid of friend Tifa Lockhart-and a new bike (Designed byTakayuki Takeya) called Fenrir.

In with the new: The Fenur

The DVD release of Advent Children sold over 420,000 copies in Japan (or by people who imported from Japan) in its first week, which was 93% of all published copies at the time.

This looks like a job for...

"Suddenly, a nerve-shattering crash tears into the deadly silence, and through the very wall of the room itself! Making his entrance as only the SHIELD ramrod can...The indestructible Nick Fury appears like a Human Cyclone!" Via: Chris Invincible super-blog -Art by Jim Steranko.