Saturday, July 11, 2026

Space Hero Saturdays LOST WORLDS "Man Who Didn't Know Venus"

Nedor/Better/Standard Comics produced several sci-fi anthologies...
...none of which lasted more than three issues.
But it certainly wasn't due to lack of quality.
With a contributor list that included Alex Toth, Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Nick Cardy, and Jack Katz, you're talking some of the great and soon-to-be-great storytellers of comics history!
But, there was one other sci-fi creator who did a story for Lost Worlds, one of only four tales he did for comic books.
Jerome Bixby, novelist and short-story writer, as well as screenwriter whose credits include...
IT! the Terror from Beyond Space!
Fantastic Voyage
Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror"*, "By Any Other Name", "Requiem for Methuselah" and "Day of the Dove"
and the short story "It's a Good Life" which was adapted on both the original Twilight Zone tv series (by Rod Serling) and the 1983 feature film (by Richard Matheson).
BTW, around the time he wrote this, Bixby had just left his position as editor of the Planet Stories pulp magazine at Fiction House, where he also contributed a couple of text pieces to Planet Comics and Indians (his only non-genre text story)!
*The Mirror Universe created by Bixby in "Mirror, Mirror" has proven to be so popular that it has reappeared in almost all the spin-off series spanning almost all of Federation and StarFleet history!
And let's not get into the numerous (sometimes contradictory) novels and comics about the concept...
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Masters of Science Fiction Volume 2
Jerome Bixby
"One Way Street" and Other Tales

Note: "One Way Street's" concept of being transferred to another universe was the thematic basis for "Mirror, Mirror"!
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Friday, July 10, 2026

Friday Fun HENRY BREWSTER "Movie Madness"

"Teen Humor" Used to Be a Lot More Than Just Archie Comics...

...as this never-reprinted tale from  MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966) attests!
Golden/Silver Age icon Bob Powell was going for a far different look in this, his final ongoing comic book series, than we were used to seeing...
...while at the same time, deliberately avoiding the Dan DeCarlo Archie Comics "house style" almost everybody else was using for their "teen humor" books!
Sadly, the Henry Brewster series only lasted seven, never-reprinted, issues, which were entirely packaged (scripts and art) by Bob Powell and his studio!
This particular tale is from MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966).
Note: After MF Comics folded, Powell became Art Director at Prize's Sick magazine until he passed away in 1967.

Thursday, July 9, 2026

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "What Went Wrong?"

You think you've prepared for every contingency...but is that truly possible?
Can anyone always account for the "human" factor?
Illustrated by Bob Forgione, whose credits at Timely/Atlas included a number of sci-fi stories including an issue of Speed Carter: SpaceMan, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #1 (1956) is one of those "average guy inadvertently saves the world" tales that writers (in this case, unidentified) love to tell.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder GRAPHIC SHOWCASE "Eyes of Mars" Part 1

 In the pre-Internet days...

...comic creator wanna-bes had to print samples of their work in "fanzines", then sell them at comic conventions and through mailing lists.
Here's the very first published efforts of a wanna-be who made good...
The Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired creator of this story from CCCS's Graphic Showcase #1 (1967) is none other than Mike (The Shadow) Kaluta!
The strip was probably intended as weekly installments in a high-school/college paper, but was repurposed for use in the fanzine.
Graphic Showcase ran three issues, with "Eyes of Mars" appearing in all three.
You'll see them over the next two weeks...
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Volume 1
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Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "City That Escaped From Tomorrow"

In the 1950s, the popularity of sci-fi in tv and in movies carried over to comics...
...with a plethora of sci-fi anthology titles from almost every publisher, most of which ran material equal to the bulk of pulp and paperback science fiction of the era.
This never-reprinted tale from Standard's Lost Worlds #5 (1952) was penciled by Ross Andru and inked by Mike Esposito and Jim Mooney.
The writer is unknown.
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