Saturday, January 16, 2021

Space Force Saturdays SPEED CARTER "Space Trap!"

"Wow! That's the second biggest robot I've ever seen!"
But, in the 1950s (or the future as seen from the 1950s), giant robots didn't transform into trucks...
This is the sort of story you wish Joe Maneely had ten pages instead of five to play with to allow a couple more pages of kool robot vs spaceship mayhem.
The series continues to play up the Saturnians as the future's equivalent of the Chinese Communists of the 1950s.
This never-reprinted tale from AtlasSpeed Carter, Spaceman #2 (1953) is written (as are all the Speed Carter stories) by Hank Chapman and illustrated by original artist Joe Maneely.
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Friday, January 15, 2021

Friday Fun BLACK ZEPPELIN "The Strip"

Artist Gene Day was best-known for his work on Marvel's Master of Kung Fu and Star Wars books...
...but he had a rarely-seen humorous style as well!
After Gene passed away, his family went through his files and found a wealth of unpublished and uncompleted work, whch served as the basis for the anthology mini-series Black Zeppelin.
His brothers Dan and David, also talented artists, finished the incomplete tales, and his wife Gale served as editor for the project.
In addition, several stories Gene had plotted or scripted, but not drawn, were rendered by friends like Dave Sim and saw publication in the book.
Here's the intro by Gale to this tale...
We ran one of Gene's earlier tales HERE.
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Thursday, January 14, 2021

Trump Reading Room ALIEN WORLDS "Ride the Blue Bus"

Was this the future Don the Con had in mind for us?
Thanks to him, we were edging ever closer and closer to it.
But next week, we reverse course...
This never-reprinted post-apocalyptic tale by writer Bruce Jones and artist George Perez from Pacific's Alien Worlds #7 (1984) has an odd quirk.
Both Toby's friend, Juke, and the unnamed bus driver are illustrated as black/ethnic.
Yet neither is colored differently than the blond/blue-eyed Toby!
Was this deliberate?
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Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LOST WORLD "Fugitives from Volta Vengeance"

When Last We Left the Four Humans and One VoltaMan with a Human Brain...

...now that you're up to speed, let's continue...

Is Bruce's VoltaMan body "Guth" or "Garth"?
Does Hunt make a new bow for him?
Will they head back for New York City?
This never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #39 (1945) offers questions, but few answers!

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Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Andrew Johnson: the FIRST Impeached President!

With lame-duck President Donald Trump about to be impeached for the second time...
...lets look at how the first President to undergo the ritual was portrayed in comics, starting with this one-pager by writer/artist Joseph Kaliff from Centaur's Wham Comics #1 (1940) which doesn't mention his impeachment!
OTOH, this one-pager by artist John Buscema and an unknown writer from Dell's one-shot Life Stories of American Presidents (1957) tackles it head-on...
....while this half-pager from Our Presidents (1953) doesn't have the space to go into detail...
....unlike this text piece illustrated by Alex Blum and scripted by an unknown author from Classics Illustrated #105 (1953)!
The matter was ignored in the same publisher's Classics Illustrated #162a (1961), illustrated by George Evans...
...though the political conflict behind the impeachment is mentioned!
The impeachment is covered again (briefly) in the same publisher's World Around Us #21 (1960), though only referred to as a "trial"!
Finally, EC's Picture Stories from American History #4 (1947) presents the matter in their feature on the post-Civil War Reconstruction period...
Writer Jerry Coleman and artist Allen Simon cover the impeachment as a sidebar to the main story.
You'll note differing "points of view" in the various versions, much as TV and movie "docu-dramas" tend to differ when retelling the same events.
Which is closest to the truth?
I offer the legendary Encyclopedia Brittanica as an unbiased source on the topic HERE and HERE.
Then judge for yourself...

Monday, January 11, 2021

Monday Madness MAD "Mad's All-Inclusive Do-It-Yourself Impeachment Newspaper Story"

When the previous criminal Repug Prez was about to be impeached in 1974...
...it was (unlike now) for a non-violent crime and MAD Magazine was at a creative peak, as demonstrated by this classic (and pretty comprehensive) piece by writer Frank Jacobs published in EC's MAD #170 (1974)!
The process took several months, allowing for such satirical pieces to be produced.
Today, sadly, MAD is gone, and the increased speed political matters are now proceeding at prevents such material from being created.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Don da Con Suspended Permanently from Twitter...

From Trump in 100 Tweets by Vanessa Duhamel and Francois Boucq!
Order it HERE!
No English edition available, but it's easy to translate and the cartoons are hilarious!