The First Korean War Comic...Published a YEAR Before the War Began!

We brought you the comics tale that predicted the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor...

...half a year before the attack!

Now, we bring you the first Korean War comic story...

...a full year before the war broke out!

Are we amazing, or what?

Friday Fun REX DEXTER "Radium Creatures of Capris"

Starting with Fox's Mystery Men #2 (1939), the legendary Lou Fine did a pair of covers...

...featuring a Rex Dexter almost totally-different from the Dick Briefer character inside the book and in situations that had no relation to the story in that issue!

But they were really kool, eye-catching pieces!

When Rex received his own one-shot title, Briefer adapted the garb Fine had designed...

...but with his own distinctive touches!

Now, on with the story!

The use of Earth-based magnetism to propel and recover un-powered spacecraft is a rather unique touch that Briefer seems to have come up with on the spur of the moment.

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Comics About Cartoonists

Stories About the World's Oddest Profession

50 Years Ago, the Avengers' First Non-Comic Book Adventure...

...involved a world-conquering madman!

Note: neither Quicksilver or the Scarlet Witch appear in the book, though they're referenced as past members.

The Wasp and Iron Man are the other featured members of the team in this story!

The cover art is by James Bond movie poster artist Robert McGinnis!

Written by long-time pulp/comic book writer Otto Binder (whose credits include Superman and the original Captain Marvel, this never-reprinted tale is a rolicking, fast-paced adventure that would have made a kool flick back in the Swinging 60s!

Trivia: Binder co-created both Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes!

Though there had been numerous paperback reprints of Marvel comics by Lancer Books, this was the first prose novel...and an original story, not an adaptation of any of the comics tales!
There were three previous comic book prose novels before this...all based on DC characters!
George Lowther's Adventures of Superman (which, technically, was based on the radio show), and Winston Lyons (William Woolfolk's) Batman vs the Three Villains of Doom (based as much on the tv show as the comic) and Batman vs the Fearsome Foursome (a novelization of the 1966 theatrical movie).

Karzz is more an alien Kang the Conquerer than Thanos the Mad Titan, but there are a number of parallels between this and Infinity Wars.
Now, before you go see the new movie...read the intro and first chapter of this lost classic...

The inside cover teaser!

Yes, (Stan the Man) Lee intros the story!

Iron Man does show up in Chapter Two...after running into Karzz!

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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker

by Otto Binder

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CARSON OF VENUS "Terror from the Sky!"

It's not easy when you lose your only friend on an alien world...

...but if there's anything a lifetime of reading/watching science fiction has taught me, it's that things are not as they seem...

There's Always Hope...as We'll See...

Next Wednesday!

Remember, while the "you're not really dead because your alien biology is different from mine" concept is a cliche these days, the novel Pirates of Venus was written in 1932, and was a relatively new idea back then.

(One of the things that drove me nuts about reviews of the movie John Carter was the complaint it was "so derivative" of everything from Flash Gordon to Superman to Star Wars...when the 1911 story Princess of Mars was the inspiration for the aspects of those properties that people were complaining John Carter copied!)

Len Wein and Mike Kaluta keep the story racing along in this chapter from DC's Korak Son of Tarzan #50 (1973).

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Pirates of Venus & Lost on Venus

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

COMIC READER "Invasion"

Here's a single image that conveys an entire story...

...a, sadly, never-completed tale meant for one of the Charlton sci-fi anthologies of the late Silver Age.

Probably abandoned when Jim Aparo joined editor Dick Giordano when he moved over to DC, it's typical of the detailed work Aparo produced for them, despite the awful printing that would obscure a lot of the time-intensive rendering.

The Comic Reader was a late 1960s-early 1970s newszine/fanzine, available at comic conventions and by subscription.

The covers were almost always featured art exclusives, either pieces done to promote current projects (a Manhunter cover by Walt Simonson during the character's revival in Detective Comics) or unpublished work like this one that editor-publisher Paul Levitz felt deserved exposure to an appreciative audience!

Reading Room LEGEND OF "COMIC BOOK" McFIEND "Bella Button Caper"

You thought Golden Age characters SuperSnipe and "Comics" McCormick were fanboys?

They were mere dilettantes compared to this Bronze Age guy!

This origin story actually ran a year after the character's previous published appearance (shown HERE)!
Published in the final issue of DC's Plop! (#24 in 1976), neither story has ever been reprinted, but probably served as one of the inspirations for the 1990s DC character FanBoy!

"Bella Button" was based on NY Congresswoman Bella Abzug, famous for her kick-butt attitude.

Though Abzug never tried to do a "Seduction of the Innocent"-type purge of mass-market comics, she did influence government military comics in the 1970s, when she and fellow Congresscritters William Proxmire and Orrin Hatch urged PS Magazine to"tone down" the mag's female leads Connie and Bonnie to less-sexy imagery.

(PS Magazine was provided to tech/mechanical support personnel with info and updates about equipment in an easy-to-absorb comic format)

The duo had been played as cheesecake from the 1950s through the 1970s, targeting the male GIs.
But with an increase in female recruits for non-combat/support services after the Draft ended, the characters were redesigned more as "buddies" than "babes", since women were now also reading and utilizing the magazine!

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Bella Abzug
How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy...

Reading Room SPACE ACTION "Flight from Destruction"

Here's an apocalyptic tale of the future with a twist...

...direct from the Cold War!

(Considering it was published in 1952, that's not suprising!)

While the writer is unknown, the art for this tale from Ace's Space Action #3 (1952) is attributed to "Jim McLaughlin", who had a short-lived comics career doing work primarily for Ace!

After that publisher dropped comics in 1955 to concentrate on paperbacks, he did a couple of stories for Atlas/Marvel, then a run of Dell's adaptation of the TV series Gunsmoke.

Then "Jim McLaughlin" disappeared.
Totally.
Unlike most comic book artists who went on to do commercial art or newspaper strips, there's no trace of "Jim McLaughlin" after his brief foray into four-color publishing...and no background about his pre-comics career!
Here's another interesting point...his art style altered considerably during his career.
In this story, the inking looks a lot like the work of long-time artist Jim Mooney!
In fact, a number of panels resemble Mooney's work on the DC strip Tommy Tomorrow, which Jim Mooney was both penciling and inking during the same period as "Jim McLaughlin's" work for Ace!
In McLaughlin's later work (particularly his Gunsmoke art), while the layouts look similar, the inking style is totally-different!
Was "Jim McLaughlin" a pen-name for a penciler working with at least two (if not more) different inkers?

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