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...

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Mystery in Space

Pulp Fiction Library

(which contains only a couple of stories from this previously-listed volume)

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

We presented this never-reprinted Silver Age cartoon by Mort Drucker...

...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!

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MEOW!

My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols!

Best of Reading Room ASTONISHING "The Scientists"

We re-presented a later version (by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, no less) of this tale on Tuesday!

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 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

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...

50 Years Ago...FANTASY MASTERPIECES!

"Beware! The Ghosts Surround Me!"

"I Found the Things from Nowhere!"

"I Became a Human Robot!"

"I Saw the Other World!"

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!

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!