Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charlton. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charlton. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, April 1, 2016

Charlton Fools Day in the Reading Room UNLIKELY TALES "Time Machine"

When two Steves, a long-established pro and eager young up-and-comer, collaborate...
...you get this time-travel tale with a twist, set only 21 years from now!
It's amazing what the comics creators of 1967 thought 70 years later would look like.
Considering that we Baby Boomers thought by 2000 we'd have bases on the Moon and flying cars, it's not unreasonable...
Written by up-and-comer Steve Skeates and illustrated by Spider-Man and Dr Strange co-creator Steve Ditko, this never-reprinted story from the Unlikely Tales anthology collection in Charlton Premiere #4 (1968) offers a surprise twist on the usual "time-traveler from the future may change history" concept.
Two notes:
Skeates wrote all the stories in this issue, a rarity for someone just starting out in the industry.
All the stories were both penciled and inked by their respective artists, also a rarity in a business where, in order to meet deadlines, creators usually either penciled or inked, but not both.
And the list of creators in this issue included Ditko, as well as Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, and Charlton mainstay Rocke Mastroserio.

This post is part of an informal blogathon entitled
Charlton Fools Day
conceived and organized by Kracalactaka to bring attention to Charlton Comics, often considered the "runt" of the comic book litter.
Visit his blog HERE and see a list of other participants as well as his own contributions
Also check out
ComicBook+
 a website featuring thousands (and I do mean thousands) of free, downloadable, public domain Golden Age and Silver Age comics with a HUGE Charlton Comics section!

Friday, February 21, 2025

Friday Fun / Baker Reading Room CANTEEN KATE vs The Comics Code Authority!

Besides Romance Comics and Scantily-Clad Heroines like Phantom Lady & Rulah... 

...pioneering Black comic book artist Matt Baker also did a military humor strip featuring (what else) a scantly-clad, beautiful WAC (Womens' Army Corps) officer assigned to run a canteen at a US military base not far from the front lines in Korea!
(She actually encountered North Koreans in a couple of tales)
The following, "Foxhole Floozie", appeared in St John's Fightin' Marines #7 (1952), where Kate's strip appeared in almost every issue from #2 to #12...while she also had her own comic book!
Straightforward, fun story with a little harmless cheesecake thrown in, illustrated by a master of the craft!
However...
When Charlton Comics bought out St John Publishing's inventory and began reprinting it, the brand-new Comics Code Authority literally got its' panties in a bunch, insisting on some ridiculous changes in the retelling of this tale in Charlton's Fightin' Marines #17 (1956)
Start with putting a bra/bathing suit top on Kate, and putting a boulder over her shapely legs in the opening panel and removing the story's title "Foxhole Floozie"!
Plus, throughout the tale, her tasteful shorts are replaced with mid-calf length Capri pants, and there's an olive-drab t-shirt under her uniform shirt, covering her cleavage!
One additional point...
Usually, when Charlton, Avon, and other publishers modified previously-published art to conform to the Comic Code's demands, they usually did it only to the black plate art, but, to save money, not to the existing cyan, magenta, and yellow plates!
Here, the reprint is totally-recolored!
Plus the retouching is so clean that it looks like the original artist, Matt Baker did it himself!
Did Charlton have the original art along with photostats and photo negatives, and asked Baker (who was doing freelance work for Charlton) do the reworking himself?
In truth, it's the sort of thing I'd expect editor Dick Giordano to do!
But, sadly, we'll never know the answer, since all involved parties are no longer on this mortal coil!
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Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...
...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!
It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!
The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.
Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.
Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.
Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.
You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.
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Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Reading Room: SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

I was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...
...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!
It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!
The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.
Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.
Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.
Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.
You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder / CoronaVirus Comics SPACE ADVENTURES "U.F.O.: Secret of the Saucer"

 ...now he's encountered an apparent alien who saved him (and the town) from a biological weapon stolen by a Communist spy.
Mann is taken into a flying saucer where he's about to (as we said in the 60s) "blow his mind"...
The finale of this book-length tale from Charlton's Space Adventures #60 (1967) was deliberately left open-ended.
A sequel, also using the artist "round-robin" concept, and also written by Denny O'Neil using his "Sergius O'Shaughnessy" pseudonym, appeared almost a year later.
Luckily for you, it'll be here...
Next Wednesday!
The art for this chapter was by up-and-comer Jim Aparo, who started at Charlton and went to DC when editor Dick Giordano moved there and offered him, Pat Boyette, Steve Ditko, and writers Denny O'Neil and Steve Skeates work after Charlton cancelled all their super hero and adventure/sci-fi titles in 1968!
Aparo became DC's primary Batman artist during the 70s and 80s as well as handling other series like Aquaman and Phantom Stranger.
One last note, this art from the reprint in Charlton's Ghost Manor #77 (1984) left out the "Chapter 3" header seen here...
...because the reprint left out the entire first chapter, though the events in it were referenced in the remaining two parts!
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(which shares a number of plot elements with this story)

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Holiday Reading Room YOUNG DOCTORS "Dr Tom Brent: Christmas Comes in August!"

You have no idea how few medical-themed Yuletide comic stories there are...

...until you try to find one...and end up with a tale that's the victim of terrible printing!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Young Doctors #6 (1963) unfortunately shows off the terrible printing Charlton Comics was famous for!
The publisher didn't utilize the printing companies literally every other comics publisher used.
Instead, to save money, they printed on old, second-hand printing presses.
But those presses had been constructed to handle cardboard and plastic packaging, not the much-thinner newsprint paper used for comics!
As a result, their comics had an amazing amount of smearing and off-register color, as you can see from the first page.
It's a shame, because the art by penciler Joe Sinnott and inker Vince Colletta deserves a better presentation!
BTW, Young Doctors was an anthology title featuring tales of all the MDs who had their own Charlton books at the time, including, of course, Dr Tom Brent, Young Intern!
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