Space Hero Saturdays 50s FUNNIES "Spaced Rat-Pol"

A somewhat-snarky look at a 1950s sci-fi comic...

...from a 1980s perspective (which you're reading in the 2020s), by writer-penciler Dave Hunt and inker Alfredo Alcala.

Doesn't get much more "meta" than that, gang!

This impressive (and never-reprinted) parody of EC's Weird Science/Weird Fantasy/Weird Science-Fantasy/Incredible Science Fiction is from Kitchen Sink Press' 50s Funnies (1980), which was a one-shot anthology with an impressive list of contributors included Steve Bissette, William Stout, Rick Veitch, Will Meugniot, John Totleben, and Scott Shaw!
(Trivia: The "!" is actually part of Scott's name, legally!).

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50s Funnies

Friday Fun ABBOTT & COSTELLO "Biscuit Eater"

They were one of the top comedy acts in every existing media of the 1940s/50s including comic books...

...with simple but effective storylines, almost always leading up to a satisfying, entertaining conclusion!

This tale from St John's Abbott and Costello Comics #8 (1949) certainly wouldn't have been out of place on their 1950s TV series...if they had the budget to pull off either animal costuming or trained animals (which the low-budget series rarely did).
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Abbott & Costello Story
Sixty Years of "Who's on First?"

Reading Room MYSTERY IN SPACE "The Following Program is Pre-Recorded"

In this era of podcasts, which will be on the internet as long as the servers storing them operate...,

...such a tale as this might seem passe...except for the ending!

Appearing in the final issue (#117) of DC's Mystery in Space in 1981, written by B S Watson, penciled by Don Newton, and inked by Steve Mitchell, the story takes the "last man on Earth" scenario to an unbelievably-narcissistic level!

I mean, he's the last person alive and all he can think of doing is recording and transmitting himself?

Sad...

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Mysteries in Space

The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder: CHILDREN OF DOOM Part 1 - Prologue..."

Presenting a comic the legendary Alan Moore considers "wonderful"...

Quoth Alan Moore from the ninth issue of the must-read mag, Comic Book Artist...

"There's still one of the books, Charlton Premiere—sort of a Showcase title—and I remember in the second or third issue of that, there was this wonderful thing called "Children of Doom" by Pat Boyette,

It was an incredibly sort of progressive piece of storytelling.

He was obviously, I'd imagine, looking at artists like Steranko that were coming up and messing around with the form and sort of experimenting. 

Pat decided to pitch his own hat into the ring, apparently."

 The story continues

Next Wednesday!

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980
which reprints this story

Reading Room I'LL BE DAMNED "Nest Egg"

Here's a sci-fi strip meant for Major Publications' Web of Horror #4...

...but, since that magazine ended with #3, it found a home in Mark Feldman's I'll be Damned #2, a year later!

Note the word balloon coming out of the big black hole in the title lettering where a photostat of "Webster" (the monstrous spider host of Web of Horror) would have been pasted-up.

Instead it's a word balloon coming out of a literal black hole!

Written by Alan Simons, penciled by Steve Hickman, inked by Robert L Kline (1-3) & Dan Adkins (4-6), this never-reprinted tale is an example of the high-quality material in fanzines of the late 1960s-early 1970s, much of which (sadly) has never been seen since the mags were limited to mail order and comics convention sales!

(There were no comics shops, and no such thing as the internet at that time...hard to conceive, I know!)

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Sense of Wonder

My Life in Comic Fandom

Monday Madness MARVEL TALES "Last Man Alive!"

This lovely cover by Bill Everett is sorta true...

...but it's also sorta deceiving!
Read about Freddie Kruger (yep, that's his name)...

So he wasn't the last man alive...nor was he even on Earth!

Why the disconnect between the cover for Atlas' Marvel Tales #153 (1956) by Bill Everett and the story illustrated by Ed Winiarski?

Two possibilities!

1) the cover was conceived and drawn before the story was written, and the tale, done later on, was modified from the basic premise!

2) Editor Stan Lee (who probably didn't write the story) failed to convey the concept of the already-done story properly to the cover artist, and it was too late in the production process to correct it!

Trivia: It's not unusual for a one-shot character's name to became famous for another reason later on!

This character has no relation to the villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise!

Conversely, when Raymond Burr's character in the first Godzilla film, reporter "Steve Martin" was resurrected 29 years later in Godzilla 1985, a certain comedian by the same name had become extremely famous!

Despite that, Burr's character retained the name in the sequel...

BTW, the story's author is unknown and neither the cover nor the tale has ever been reprinted.

This is its' first appearance in 67 years!

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America

RetroBlogs' Summer Blogathon Welcomes...the Memory of Bruce Lee!

With the 50th Anniversary of Bruce Lee's passing last week...

...we began a re-presentation of an almost half-century old graphic novel about his life!

And that story continues, tomorrow, at...

POP ART MARTIAL ARTS!

Meanwhile, the never-reprinted Silver Age tales of The Shadow continue with our last contribution to the re-presentation of his blue/green spandex adventures at

HERO HISTORIES

...followed by another never-reprinted tale of the Bronze Age stories of the classic Pulp/radio version at

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

There's no summer break for our RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon!