25% Off Calendars for New Year!

From now until Jan 2, 2013, all calendars are discounted from $19.99 to $14.99!

Here are the  
Atomic Kommie Comics™
2013 12-Month Calendars 
by genre

Mystery / Crime
Sherlock Holmes: the Greatest Sleuth of All!™ 
Basil Rathbone IS Sherlock Holmes!™
Mr District Attorney™

Horror
WereWolves & Vampires™
Horror Comics of the 1950s™
Vampires of Pulps & Comics™
Werewolves of the Comics & Pulps™
Zombies of Comics & Pulps™
(shown above)

Camp / Kitsch
3-D Movies™
3-D Comic Books™
Seduction of the Innocent!!™
Jungle Girls™
Good Girl / Bad Grrrl™

Romance
True Love Comics Tales™


Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Martians, Martians, Martians!™
Art of Barsoom™ 
Thrilling Science-Fiction Tales™ 
Bugs & Creepy Crawlies of Comics & Pulps™
Dinosaurs of the Comics & Pulps™ 

SuperHeroes
Captains of the Comics™
Heroines!™
Classic Phantom Lady™
Lost Heroes of the Silver Age of Comics™
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics Team-Ups™
1st Appearance Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™
Flag-Waving Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics vs HITLER™
Classic Captain Future™
Classic Green Hornet
Classic Monster of Frankenstein 
Classic SuperSnipe™

Western
Western Comics Adventures™
Real-Life Western Comics™
The Cisco Kid and Pancho™


Military
Captain MidNight™
Aviators of the Golden Age of Comics™
WAR: Past, Present & Future™
Classic Korean War Comics™

NOT available in stores, only on-line! Order now...before time runs out! ;-)

Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE "Dark of the Moon"

He was Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Thun'da!

(And he would've been a helluva Doc Savage, if they had done a feature or serial in the 1940s!)

He was Larry "Buster" Crabbe, the first (and many say, the greatest) cinema action hero.

A two-time Olympian (with a swimming gold medal to his credit), Buster didn't even have to audition for Flash Gordon. (He came to support a friend who was auditioning, and the director, who had seen Crabbe's earlier work as Tarzan offered him the role on the spot!)

Art by Alex Toth

Like many other action-movie actors of the 1930s-1950s, Crabbe had his own comic book where he's shown as Buster Crabbe, not "Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon" or somesuch in the tale, and it's assumed that he's actually able to do anything he's been shown doing in his films.

Unlike most of the other matinee idols, Crabbe's comic adventures covered a variety of genres from Western to sci-fi, and even some cross-genre mashups as shown HERE and HERE.

(The others, except for John Wayne, were purely Western-themed series.

Wayne, because of his extensive war film work also had Korean War and present-day adventure comic stories in his comic series.)

Though the writer for this wild, never-reprinted tale from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #2 (1954) is unknown, the artists are Alex Toth (pencils), Mike Peppe (inks) and John Celardo (retouching on Buster's face in several panels).

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The Future WAS Fantastic!

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Reading Room: SPACEHAWK "My Friend, My Foe"

Let's look in on one of the wildest science-fantasy heroes of all...

...and, yes I said "science-fantasy", since scientific accuracy (even for the 1940s) isn't one of the  story's priorities, so it ain't "science fiction", per se!

But it is a helluva lot of fun, and that's what counts!

This action-packed tale from Novelty's Target Comics #11 (1940) was written, illustrated, and lettered by the one-and-only Basil Wolverton.
The sheer unfettered imagination of the man was astounding, creating vistas and aliens far beyond anything the technology of moviemaking at the time (except for animation) could match.
With the current fascination for high adventure and fantasy, SpaceHawk would be an ideal project for either theatrical or direct-to-home video, and I'm surprised no one is doing it!

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SpaceHawk

Comic Collectibles Shop

Gerry Anderson (1929-2012)

Supercar

Stingray

Thunderbirds

Captain Scarlet

UFO

Space: 1999

That's just a part of the universe Gerry Anderson created for sci-fi/fantasy fans.

Rest in peace.

Batman & Robin Meet Santa Claus

Yesterday we presented Marvel Comics' Stan Lee reading "Night Before Christmas"...

...so, today we're giving DC Comics equal time with a kool Yule scene from the 1960s Batman TV series.

One of the hallmarks of the show was the "Bat-Climb", where the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder would encounter celebrities or characters from other shows as they scaled the wall of a building with their Bat-Rope (using a set turned sideways so the actors were merely pretending to be climbing.)

In this second-season episode ("The Duo is Slumming", featuring the one-shot villain Puzzler), airing right before Christmas in 1966, the Dynamic Duo meet Kris Kringle, played by an uncredited Andy Devine.
(After all, the producers didn't want kids to think Santa wasn't real...)

Merry Christmas!

Stan Lee Reads "Night Before Christmas" (Link Fixed)

You thought 1972's Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall event couldn't be topped for weirdness?

Well, this comes pretty damn close...

All I can say is "Excelsior!"

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

He's the Jolly Old Elf in a red suit!
They are BIG Green Men from Mars with an even BIGGER robot!
Before Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, they were the ingredients for the weirdest Christmas movie ever!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was filmed in 1964 in that bastion of the cinema, Long Island (in an unused aircraft hangar).
Starring a host of tv and b-movie actors including handsome-but-stiff Leonard Hicks as the Martian Leader (and kids' father) Kimar, 60s villain/voiceover artist Vincent Beck (who did lots of work for Irwin Allen's sci-fi shows) as the film's mustache-twirling villain, Voldar, and John Call as a pretty damn convincing Santa Claus, the flick is touted as the debut of future talentless chantuse Pia Zadora as Martian Kid Girmar. Thankfully, she has rather limited screen time.
As an example of low-budget filmmaking, it's actually pretty effective.
Every penny (what few of them they had) is up on the screen.
They make good use of stock footage (from Dr. Strangelove, no less).
And the use of then-popular Wham-O Air Blaster toy guns as the Martian weapons was either a stroke of marketing genius or clever use of limited funds. Either way, sales of the guns shot thru the roof after the film hit the kiddie matinee circuit!

If you're between 3-9 years old, the flick's a lot of fun.
If you're between 10 and whatever the local drinking age is, it'll drive you nuts, especially the theme song!
If you're over the local drinking age, do so before watching! It's available on a host of public domain dvds as well as one of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 snarkfests.

And you just knew we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ were going to include Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in our Cool Christmas collection on stuff including kid and adult sweatshirts and hoodies, mugs and coasters, tree ornaments, and greeting cards!
BTW: The image above is from the comic book tie-in, which you can read in three parts...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

There was also a single of the theme, a spoken-word LP album of the movie's dialogue, and a novelization!
Now I can't get that damn theme our of my head..."Hoo-ray for Santy Claus..." AARRRGGGHHH!

An early Christmas gift from us to you:
The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the film (don't tell Dr Forrester)...