Pages

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Best of Holiday Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Mummers from Mercury"

70 years ago, the world almost ended on New Year's Day...
...but it was saved by the participants of the annual Mummers Parade!
This never-reprinted story from Charlton's Space Adventures #1 (1953) was illustrated by Albert Tyler and Dick Giordano.
The writer (who was probably from Philadelphia) is unknown.

The Mummers Parade is usually held every New Years Day in Philadelphia.
Mummers tradition dates back to 400 BC and the Roman Festival of Saturnalias where Latin laborers marched in masks throughout the day of satire and gift exchange.
This included Celtic variations of “trick-or-treat” and Druidic noise-making to drive away demons for the new year.

Reports of rowdy groups “parading” on New Years day in Philadelphia date back before the revolution.
Prizes were offered by merchants beginning in the late 1800s.
January 1, 1901 was the first “official” parade offered about $1,725 in prize money from the city.
January 1, 2021 was the 120th Anniversary of the event, but, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was cancelled.
The Parade returned in 2022, and will happen on New Years Day, 2024!

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Space Secret Agent Saturdays MYSTERY IN SPACE "Operation Phobos"

We presented the first Interplanetary Investigations tale from the Swinging Sixties HERE...
..now here's their second, final, never-reprinted adventure from DC's Mystery in Space #102 (1965)!
Note Sean Connery-lookalike Damos appears again.
Also note (from the ad at the end of the story), this month also saw the Strange Adventures premiere/origin of "The Man with the Animal Powers" who would morph a couple of issues later into superhero Animal Man, who's still active in DC's comics and tv series over 50 years later, unlike the secret agents of Interplanetary Investigations!
Written by Dave Wood, illustrated by Gil Kane, the series had a lot of potential.
Jan and Davos could've been a futuristic Man from U.N.C.L.E./Wild, Wild West/I Spy duo...
Ah, what could have been...
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...
(which contains only a couple of stories from this previously-listed volume)

Friday, December 29, 2023

Best of Friday Fun THE FORGOTTEN SILVER AGE DC "COMIC"!

...and asked if anyone could identify what DC comic it was from.
Nobody could!
The answer is this...
DC's Teen Beam #2 (1968)!
Yeah, it doesn't look like a comic, but it was comic-sized, and DC produced it!
From '66-'69 several comics companies took a shot at doing mixed-format comics/teen mag titles...
Tower's Teen-In
Charlton's Go-Go
Harvey's Pop Comics
Warren also tried their hand with two b/w mag titles...
Freak Out, U.S.A.
and
Teen Love Stories!
Oddly, Marvel, once noted for their tendency to jump on trends, didn't do one of these!
DC advertised their attempt with this...odd...ad...
...featuring the mascot character Teeny and, presuming it would appeal to the target teenage girl audience, a grungy hippie!
The first issue featured Teeny introducing articles about various heart-throbs...
...but no other comics-type material!
The incredibly-popular mag they based the title on...
...immediately threatened a trademark infringement lawsuit!
So, DC hastily-altered the title in their ads and the book's logo to Teen Beam...
...and added comic pages along with the articles!
It didn't help, since distributors, unwilling to anger the insanely-hot Tiger Beat, refused to rack the title!
(as the ad points out, you had to ask for it, since it was now, as they used to say "under the counter" along with porn magazines!)
The second issue was the last!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Best of Reading Room ASTONISHING "The Scientists"


This original version is a page longer and has a couple of rather witty touches which put the lie to the concept "If our meddling with time changed anything, we'd notice!"
This never-reprinted story, penciled by Harry Lazarus and inked by George Klein, from Atlas' Astonishing #9 (1952) is based on one of the basic rules of time-travel; "don't change anything in the past, or you'll alter the future"...which is in direct contradiction to another of the basic rules of time-travel; "no matter what you do, you can't change the future".
Hey, I'm just telling you the rules.
I never said they made sense...

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CLAWFANG THE BARBARIAN

Here's a one-time World of Wonder for you before the New Year!
(BTW, isn't it weird how most fictional barbarians have a "hard C" or "hard K" name...Conan, Crom, ClawFang, Claw, Kull, Kothar, Kyrik, etc.)
We'll never know, since this was ClawFang's only published adventure!
A cool mix of sf/fantasy genres written and laid-out by Wally Wood with pencils and inks by Al Williamson, appearing in Harvey's Unearthly Spectaculars #2 (1966), part of a short-lived line of action/adventure comics produced by Harvey Comics in the mid-1960s.
Oddly, while there were numerous "jungle hero/heroine" strips and books with sci-fi/fantasy elements, Clawfang was only the second actual barbarian strip in comics history, after Crom...which was also from Harvey Comics!
Five years later, Marvel would launch Conan the Barbarian, and suddenly, an entire new genre bloomed in comics with almost every publisher launching at least one barbarian-themed comic!
Speaking of which...
The "barbarian in a post-apocalyptic future Earth" concept is an oft-used trope in sci-fi/fantasy...
...from ClawFang to Teenage Caveman to BlackMark to Kamandi to Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds to Lost World (from Fiction House's Planet Comics) to IronJaw, to Talos of the Wilderness Sea,  to Planet of the Apes (Yes, PotA qualifies since mankind is reduced to primitives) to Thundarr the Barbarian to Yor: Hunter from the Future, scantly-clad heroes using primitive weapons against super-science and/or sorcery in a devastated world has proven to be a popular trope in various media, not just print.
Join us next Wednesday as we begin our re-presentation of one of the best (though least-known) series featuring this concept...
Wolff the Barbarian
by
Esteban Maroto, Sadko, and Laurence James

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Best of Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Those Who Change"

During this holiday week, we're doing a couple of Reading Room re-presentations...
...to ease our workload, starting with this Stan Lee/Steve Ditko tale that takes the "if you time travel, don't change anything in the past or you'll screw up history" concept to an extreme!
This story from Amazing Adult (wonder why they left that out of the reprint credit) Fantasy #10 (1962) was actually a reworking of an earlier tale called "The Scientists" from Astonishing #9 (1952) which was longer and had additional plot twists!
You'll be seeing the original (ironically, never-reprinted) version on Thursday.
As for this particular short, since its' 1965 appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1, it lay unseen until 2005 when it popped up in Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko with additional reprintings in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (2007) and Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection (2009).
NOTE: This was one part of a week-long re-presentation of the first issue of Marvel's Fantasy Masterpieces reprint anthology on the 50th anniversary of publication in 1965!
The comic was particularly notable for new material by Stan Lee introducing the stories!

Click on the titles to read the posts...

Monday, December 25, 2023

Merry Christmas

Santa Claus' World War II-era attempt at updating his transportation...
...doesn't quite go as planned in this wraparound cover from Dell's Santa Claus Funnies #1 (1942).
Unfortunately, the artist didn't sign it, and the experts at various comic indexing sites have been unable to offer possible illustrators.
Personally, I'm thinking Walt Kelly.
(The snarky reindeer are an obvious giveaway)
Any suggestions?
Merry Christmas to All!

Sunday, December 24, 2023

And Now, a Note from Santa Himself...

...from Dell's Santa Claus Funnies #1 (1942).
See you tomorrow with a long-unseen cover by a comics legend!

Saturday, December 23, 2023

Space Hero Saturdays SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

You may not think of Kris Kringle as a "Space Hero"...but he is!
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 cinema greatness, New York's Long Island, in an unused airplane hanger!
Starring a host of tv and b-movie actors including handsome-but-wooden Leonard Hicks as the benevolent Martian leader 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, scenery-chewing Martian villain, Voldar, and John Call as a pretty damn convincing Santa Claus, the flick is touted these days as the debut of future talentless chantuse Pia Zadora as Kimar's daughter Girmar.
(Thankfully, she has rather limited screen time.)

The plot's pretty simple.
The children of Mars are in a funk.
The adult Martians deduce it's due to the children's strict and sterile upbringing, and that to "normalize" them, the kids must have fun!
And what could be more fun than celebrating Christmas?
But, to do a proper Christmas, you need a Santa Claus!
Thus, the Martians journey to Earth to kidnap Santa Claus and force him to create a Christmas celebration on Mars!
Then, as they used to say in TV Guide's plot listings, hilarity ensues! (well, sorta)

As an example of low-budget filmmaking, it's amazingly-effective.
Every penny (what few of them they had) is up on the screen.
The costuming and Santa's Workshop and Mars sets are as good as those of tv shows of the period.
(The Martian robot is probably the weakest element from a design and execution standpoint, but, hey, nobody's perfect!)
There's extensive use of military stock footage (from Dr. Strangelove, no less).
And, the idea to utilize the Wham-O Air Blaster toy guns as 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!
(You''ll thank me later...)
It's available on a host of public domain DVDs and BluRays as well as one of the 
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 snarkfests on YouTube.

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, hoodies, mugs and coasters, tree ornaments, throw blankets and snugglies, and greeting cards!
BTW: The image is from the comic book tie-in. There was also a 45rpm single of the theme, a spoken-word LP album of the movie's dialogue, and a novelization, all of which are HTF...and expensive when you do find them!
Click On These Links to Read the Story...
Part 1
Part 2
Conclusion
Now I can't get that damn theme out of my head..."Hoo-ray for Santy Claus..."
AARRRGGGHHH!

Friday, December 22, 2023

Friday Holiday Fun BOYS' LIFE "A Christmas Carol"

A Couple of Weeks Ago, We Presented What We Believed was the Shortest Version of This Oft-Told Tale!
We were WRONG!
Craig (Golden Age Sandman) Flessel told the tale (with, admittedly, a lot of editing) in two pages, as shown in the Yuletide issue of Boys' Life Magazine (December 1952)!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!