We've been showing aliens who dare to land on Earth "who's the boss" for centuries...
...but this is one time that may not have been the best approach!
Adapted from a short story by Keith Laumer, this tale from Marvel's Worlds Unknown #2 (1973) has a kool "Twilight Zone" twist ending, but couldn't have been adapted for the show due to the crudeness of tv special effects work at the time.
OTOH, writer Gerry Conway, penciler Gil Kane, and inker Tom Sutton had no such constraints, and they do EC Comics' writers and artists proud with a tale that would have fit right in with Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, or the merged Weird Science-Fantasy books!
Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize'sMonster of Frankenstein #31 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by the legendary Jack (King) Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's illustrator as Marvin Stein, who worked primarily for the Simon & Kirby studio, so this most likely was an S&K "inventory" story laid-out by Kirby and meant for insertion wherever editorial page count came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown...
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...they were engaged in combat with a giant automaton hand whose fingers, like Combatra itself, can separate and battle independently, turning the whole area into a mecha demolition derby...
Mecha vs Mecha and the Military vs Everyone!
Plus: Who are the Men in Black?
(And no, they're not the ones in the later graphic novel and movie series!)
In 1968, the creator of I Dream of Jeannie predicted what may yet occur in 2026...
...with a tv-movie that aired on network only once, yet had an enormous impact on those who saw it!
The year: 1968! Race Relations were cratering! The economy was doing well, but individuals thought, because they weren't personally doing well, the whole economy was collapsing!
The current President (a Democrat) was not on the ballot for the Presidental election!
A Republican who promised "law and order" and to "protect America from potential invaders" won the White House!
Sidney Sheldon, creator/producer of lightweight escapist entertainment like I Dream of Jeannie and The Patty Duke Show, looked at what was going on around him and took a chance.
Screen Gemsgave him carte blanche, probably expecting something in a similar vein to his previous projects.
He greenlighted a story by Nedrick Young, scripter of controversial movies like The Defiant Ones (1958) and the adaptation of the novel Inherit the Wind (1960).
Sheldon selected an experenced, versatile director, Richard C Sarafian, with credits ranging from Dr Kildare to Batman!
The cast used both established pros like John Forsythe (against type as the villainous General Bruce, the Leader's trusted military commander) and Jackie Cooper (as the heroic, but doomed, Lt Col Davis), as well as up-and-comers like Gene Hackman and Carol Lynley in supporting roles.
(Trivia Note: one of the supporting characters, Lt Allen, is played by Jonathan Lippe/Jonathan Goldsmith, known recently as "The Most Interesting Man in the World" in Dos Equis beer commercials!)
The protaganist, rebel leader Major McCloud, was played by Marc Strange in his only leading role.
The tv-movie, using concepts from both Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here and George Orwell's 1984, portrayed a near-future America where the President declared a national emergency and imposed martial law...but the undefined "emergency" never ended, and martial law quickly mutated into fascist repression!
But the Society of Man, an organized resistance group with people placed within the government, fights back as best it can against the overwheming military might and technological superiority of the fascists.
Left open-ended, the movie practically begs to be continued as a mini-series, if not an ongoing series!
Airing on ABC during the Christmas season (December 4, 1968), it failed to garner decent ratings, and the potential series died quietly!
(Trivia: Kenneth Johnson proposed a similar concept called Storm Warnings to NBC in the early 1980s.
They turned it down, and Johnson, following in the steps of Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, revamped the concept with science fiction elements, making the fascists into reptilian aliens, and sold the concept as V, which ran as two mini-series and a brief ongoing series in the 80s and a two-season reboot in 2009-10.)
Never available on VHS, DVD or BluRay, the only way, currently, to see Shadow on the Land is right HERE.
We reccomend you download it as well, since the flick is deleted wherever it appears!
I'd say "enjoy, but, it's really more disturbing and frightening than enjoyable...
When we first met him, Fero battled scientific menaces on present-day (1940s) Earth.
As of his next appearance, without explanation, he's set in the far future!
This tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #6 (1940) was written and illustrated by Al Bryant under the pen-name "Allison Brant".
The change in venue from present to future without any in-story explanation (not even a caption like "returing from the past to the 21st Century..." or some-such) seems odd considering the same writer/artist did this follow-up tale.
