Saturday, December 31, 2011

Annual Comicraft Font Sale!

You can own the fonts the pros at DC, Marvel, Image, even Atomic Kommie Comics, use...
Begins at midnight December 31st and ends midnight January 1st wherever you are in the world, so technically New Year's at Comicraft is a 36 hour day!
Maybe longer, I didn't look it up or anything...

Friday, December 30, 2011

Calendars REDUCED from $19.99 to $14.99 on New Year's Eve & Day!

From 12:01 AM Saturday, December 31st to 12:01 AM Monday, January 2nd...
All 12-Month Pop Culture Calendars on THIS PAGE
REDUCED from $19.99 to $14.99
(25% OFF!)
And, as you may have noticed, we implemented the page format change a couple of days early...

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Reading Room: JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "My Cosmic Hero"

With 2012 right around the corner...
...let's look at a typical evening at the drive-in, supposedly set in 2012...as presented in 1952!
(I'm still waiting for my flying car!)
If the art style looks familiar, it's the work of Dan DeCarlo, who helped establish the iconic "look" of Archie Comics!
Dan actually started at Atlas Comics (the 1940s-50s predecessor to Marvel Comics) doing a variety of humor strips before beginning a long-term run on various Archie titles in 1951.
Even then, he continued to work for a number of other publishers, including Standard Comics, who asked him to create, write, and illustrate a teen-humor series.
(Every publisher had at least one of them!)
Exactly whose idea it was to set it in the "far future" of the 21st Century is unknown, but the resultant strip, though extremely derivative of Archie, was unique in the teen-humor genre for it's Jetsons-style setting and "futuristic" slang.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Fantagraphics Year-End Sale

Fantagraphics, one of the premiere comics and comix publishers is having a year-end sale on a lot of their trade paperbacks and hardcovers.
Of particular interest to fans of this blog are..
Originally meant to be part of the LifeDeath plotline in Uncanny X-Men, Barry Windsor-Smith's already-penciled pages were adapted into a new story with Ororo/Storm being reworked into Adastra.
Ten years in the making, this exhaustively researched tome is a giant biography and career retrospective of one of the most important cartoonists in the history of comics. Following his life from early childhood to his acclaimed run at EC Comics, B. Krigstein traces the development of an artist who, despite having left only a relative handful of works behind him when he finally abandoned the comics field for the world of fine art, nonetheless served as an influence on many of the most acclaimed of the cartoonists to follow in his footsteps. This book also reproduces a generous sampling of art and illustration, plus six complete stories (including the famed "Master Race"), many of them newly-recolored by noted EC artist Marie Severin from Krigstein's own specifications!
"It's the part of the chicken soup that is bad for you, yet gives the soup its delicious flavor," Will Elder once explained. Chicken Fat is a collection of flavors by a master comedic chef as he works out his recipes. Elder's stable of characters is duly represented, with Goodman Beaver, Little Annie Fanny, the Mole and the more obscure Anthony Adverse, together with caricatures of celebrities and politicians, studies of classic comics characters (including the iconic Wedding of Popeye and Olive Oyl), movie posters, assorted gag panels, anatomical and fine art studies, and pages upon pages of ingeniously realized doodles.
Jack Cole has been justly celebrated as the creator of Plastic Man and an innovative comic book artist of the 1940s. After finishing his 14-year run on Plastic Man, he found himself looking for something new. According to Cole, his savior was the Humorama line of down-market digest magazines. This girls and gags magazine circuit proved to be the perfect training ground to regain his footing and develop his craft at single panel “gag” cartoons. His ability to render the female form was already without peer. Though he signed his cartoons “Jake,” Cole’s exquisite line drawings and masterful use of ink-wash — a skill he carried over to Playboy — betrayed his pseudonym.
Out of print for over 30 years, The Great Comic Book Heroes is widely acknowledged to be the first book to analyze the juvenile medium of superhero comics in a critical manner, but without denying the iconic hold such works have over readers of all ages. Feiffer discusses the role that the patriotic superhero played during World War II in shaping the public spirit of civilians and soldiers, as well as the escapist power these stories held over the zeitgeist of America. New cover by R. Sikoryak.
One note: this volume does not include the complete comic stories included in the 1960s and 1970 editions.

There's lots more if you go HERE.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Beware The Black Beetle!

It's kool to see a friend do well...
Francesco Francavilla, noted artist on everything from Black Panther to Green Hornet has added another colorful character to his resume, this time one of his own creations...Black Beetle!
The film noir/pulp-influenced Internet sensation will see print in a three-parter at Dark Horse Comics' anthology title Dark Horse Presents!
Congratulations, Francesco!

Monday, December 26, 2011

"I'm Quitting, before the Easter Bunny shows up with a CANNON!"

Ah, the Silver Age of Comics!
When situations like the one portrayed above were the norm, rather than the exception.
From Hot Wheels #6 (1970), the last issue of the first comic based on a TV series based on a toy line.
Ironically, it was the Christmas issue...

Long before He-Man, Micronauts, GI Joe and Transformers presented toys as animated action heroes, Hanna-Barbera's Hot Wheels animated series (based on the highly-successful Mattel toys) featured a politically-correct team of teens battling evil while engaging in auto races in nifty cars (with their seat belts firmly buckled, of course)!
Yes, it sounds like Scooby Doo without the annoying talking dog...
To see this never-reprinted story, click HERE.
And, keep an eye on Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™, where the entire six-issue run of How Wheels will be re-presented after January 1st.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Star Wars Christmas Special!

Would it really be a Merry Christmas without the...
I think not!
See the one Star Wars tale George Lucas doesn't count as part of the Expanded Universe!

Merry Christmas!
or is it
"Happy Life Day"?

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Christmas Comics on RetroBlogs!

Over the past week, the RetroBlogs™ have presented a slew of classic Yuletide-themed tales...





To wind-up the series, on Christmas Day, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™ will present a long-unseen, never-reprinted, Xmas story from the first comic book based on a TV series based on a line of toys!
Which one?
You'll have to visit it on Christmas Day to find out!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Sometimes Truth, Justice, and The American Way DO Triumph!

Now THIS is the guy we elected...
...faster than a filibuster, more powerful than the Speaker of the House, able to leap tall Tea Partyers at a single bound...

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Holiday Reading Room: ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND "Man Who Didn't Believe in Christmas"

I'm not sure what to make of this story.
It's "A Christmas Carol", yet it's not!
Weird, eh?
This story appeared in Adventures in Wonderland #5 (1956), the Christmas issue, and both writer and artist are unknown.
The editor/publisher was Lev Gleason, who had also published a number of classic comic series including Crime Does Not Pay, DareDevil Comics, and Silver Streak Comics.
However, this was at the tail end of his career, and being constrained by the newly-implemented Comics Code Authority apparently didn't sit well with him.
Perhaps this tale was his commentary on the sort of material the Code was limiting him to?

Holiday Reading Room: ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND "Man Who Didn't Believe in Christmas"

I'm not sure what to make of this story.
It's "A Christmas Carol", yet it's not!
Weird, eh?
This story appeared in Adventures in Wonderland #5 (1956), the Christmas issue, and both writer and artist are unknown.
The editor/publisher was Lev Gleason, who had also published a number of classic comic series including Crime Does Not Pay, DareDevil Comics, and Silver Streak Comics.
However, this was at the tail end of his career, and being constrained by the newly-implemented Comics Code Authority apparently didn't sit well with him.
Perhaps this tale was his commentary on the sort of material the Code was limiting him to?

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Holiday Reading Room: SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "Santa in Wonderland" Conclusion

The night before Christmas Eve, Santa was disturbed when a little girl named Alice appeared at his door and pleaded for him to "bring Christmas to Wonderland".
The blonde girl lead Santa to the rabbit hole/entrance and showed him mushrooms that reduced both of them in size.
Once in Wonderland, Santa encountered inhabitants including the Mock Turtle and the White Rabbit, who shrank while using a white fan which Claus inadvertently also uses...
This story originally appeared in Santa Claus Funnies #2 (1943)
It was reprinted in a stand-alone giveaway comic in 1951 to capitalize on the release of the Disney animated film based on the Lewis Carroll story!
Oddly enough, the reprint's new cover art shows Alice rendered with the same hairstyle and blue dress as the movie version, rather than the hairstyle and violet dress shown in the comic story.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Holiday Reading Room: SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "Santa in Wonderland" Part 1

Now HERE'S a crossover team-up you never thought you'd see...
...as Santa Claus meets Lewis Carroll's Alice and travels to Wonderland!
What does Santa find?
You'll have to come back tomorrow to find out!

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