Reading Room LOST WORLDS Feature Pages

Besides stories, comics often run one or two-page features...

Lost Worlds #5 Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

...based on historical or scientific information available at the time...

Lost Worlds #6 Art by Rocco Mastroserio

...or speculation about future developments, again, based on then-current knowledge!

(I love that third panel, showing spacesuit-garbed scientists on a balcony on the satellite!)
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Reading Room SPACE SQUADRON / MARVEL TALES "Fiends with Four Arms / Starmen"

Going over our previous posts...

...we realized we had stopped posting the saga of Jet Dixon and the Space Squadron long before the conclusion!

Let's continue with a rarity for Atlas Comics...a text feature based on the cover!

We don't know who the scripter is for the text feature from Atlas' Space Squadron #2 (1951), but the artist is George Tuska, who was also illustrating most of the Jet Dixon strips in the book.

Oddly, the feature was reprinted a couple of years later in Atlas' Marvel Tales #116 (1953)...when Jet Dixon's replacement series, Speed Carter: SpaceMan, was being published!

Since the Marvel Tales cover wasn't a reprint of the earlier cover, the title was changed, and the insert art replaced by a generic spaceship.

But the character names remained the same!

Note: This is the only Jet Dixon story to ever be reprinted!

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Marvel Masterworks

Atlas Era Tales to Astonish

Volume 1

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES / UNUSUAL TALES "They Say It Really Happened"

Here's a kool one-pager by writer Joe Gill and artist Dick Giordano...

...originally presented in Charlton's Space Adventures #4 (1953) in b/w (it was on the inside cover, which is usually black line/grayscale or two-color)!

But when it was reprinted two years later in Charlton's Unusual Tales #1 (1955), it was in color.

As you can see, the gray tones were left intact, giving the color art a really unique look. 

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Charlton Arrow #4

A tribute to this kool, eccentric, comics company!

Reading Room VANGUARD ILLUSTRATED "Be It What It Will, I'll Go To It Laughing"

A title based on a line from Moby-Dick becomes appropriate...

...when you reach the last page of the story!

If you don't get the reference, Ray Bradbury penned the screenplay for the 1956 Moby Dick movie.
Written by David Campiti and illustrated by Tom Yeates, this never-reprinted story from Pacific Comics' Vanguard Illustrated #3 (1984) is a sincere tribute to Bradbury and other SF creators, though overwritten and a bit too "self-fanservice" for my taste.
The underappreciated Tom Yeates' superb artwork compensates for that, and makes reading it worthwhile.

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Green Shadows, White Whale

A Novel of Ray Bradbury's Adventures making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland

Reading Room SKYROCKET STEELE "...in the Year X !"

Though best-known as the creator of Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner....

...Bill Everett's first published strip featured this Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...

In this premiere chapter, the series starts "mid-stream", indicating events crucial to the plot occurred before we join Skyrocket and his buddies.

The captions and dialogue balloons are heavier than normal as expositional dialogue is used to clue the readers in on the situations in the "world of the future".

You'll also note the use of upper and lower-case lettering, unique, even then.

Everett's unique inking style is already developing, though crude in comparison to his later work.

To his credit, Bill doesn't swipe layouts from Alex (Flash Gordon) Raymond, Hal (Tarzan/Prince Valiant) Foster, or any of the already-established masters of the graphic storytelling form as so many of his comic book contemporaries do!

He's not afraid to try his own "camera angles" to tell the story...not always succeeding, but experimenting and learning!

Trivia: Though the character debuted in this tale which appeared in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies #2 (1938), he was the cover feature of issue #1...

....where no sign of him can be found on the inside of the book!

No one knows why!

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Trump Reading Room WORLD WAR 3 ILLUSTRATED "Old Pals"

As the world nervously-watches Don the Con joust with the equally-unstable Kim Jong Un...

...let's look back at the last time our country was run by an unstable Republican!

Things haven't changed all that much in 35 years, eh?

Written and illustrated by noted underground creator Peter Bagge,  this short appeared in the premiere issue of World War 3 Illustrated (1980) and has been reprinted in various anthologies since.

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World War 3 Illustrated: 1980-1988

(which reprints the story above and numerous others from the series)

Holiday Reading Room LIFE OF CHRIST: EASTER STORY "Resurrection"

Under this Scott McDaniel cover...

...is one of the most unusual tales Marvel Comics ever told!

Written by Louise Simonson, pencilled by Mary Wilshire and Colleen Doran, and inked by Bill Anderson, this 1993 one-shot, co-published by Thomas Nelson Publishers is a companion volume to The Christmas Story by the same creative team, published earlier in the year.

Easter Story tells the tale from Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to this final chapter, though we're only running the section taking place on Easter here.

If you'd like to buy a copy of the HTF comic, you can find it HERE.

Interestingly, Marvel.wika.com postulates Christmas Story and Easter Story link Jesus Christ into the Marvel Comics Universe!