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Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN "Spider God of Akka!"

"Between the years when the ocean drank Atlantis and the Rise of the Sons of Aryas..."
Oops! Wrong barbarian!
Impressive!
He starts out totally-lost, with no food or water, and by the end of the story, he's become the ruler of a city!
Man, he works fast!
This tale by writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta appeared twice within two months, first in Avon's anthology Strange Worlds #1, then, along with all the other stories from that issue, in a color insert in the Avon sci-fi/fantasy anthology pulp Out of This World Adventures #2!
If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, StarmanKenton of the Star PatrolMoon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atomboth the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories in genre magazines.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam...but with little paying work for a lawyer during the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?
We'll never know...

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Thanx for posting!