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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Space Hero Saturdays LARS OF MARS "Secret Origin"

What if 1950s sci-fi shows like Captain Video or Space Patrol were real?
Or if the aliens shown on the screen were real aliens?
And what if the alien was the Space Hero???
As you've just read, that was the premise of the short-lived (two issues) Ziff-Davis series Lars of Mars!
Created by Jerry (Superman) Siegel and Murphy (Buck Rogers) Anderson, this premiere story from the first issue of his own title (which, oddly enough,  was #10!) established the somewhat-silly premise.
During his run, Lars battled Commies, crooks, and other interplanetary aliens while protecting his "secret identity" from his nosy producer (who bore a disturbing resemblance to Lois Lane).
You'll be seeing all of Lars' stories here (including his final tale from the 1980s (in 3-D, no less) over the next six months.
Watch for them!
Trivia:
The cover paintings for both issues of Lars of Mars were painted by Allen Anderson...who was not related to interior artist Murphy Anderson!
Here's a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"-style factoid (done in only four degrees)...
  • 1) Ziff-Davis also published a short-lived adaptation of an actual 1950s sci-fi tv series, Space Patrol, illustrated by Bernie Krigstein.
  • 2) Krigstein illustrated the first issue of another Ziff-Davis sci-fi series: Space Busters!
  • 3) Bernie was replaced on interior art for the second (and final) issue of Space Busters by...Murphy Anderson!
  • 4) Allen Anderson did the painted cover for the Space Busters issue (#2) illustrated by Murphy! (Norm Saunders had painted #1's cover!)
featuring the covers of both issues of Lars of Mars!

Friday, March 15, 2024

Friday Fun CRAZY "Hollywood Extra"

With the movie industry retrenching as audiences continue to not return to theaters...
...let's take a satirical look at how the film industry reacted the first time that phenomenon happened!
Writer Stan Lee and illustrator Russ Heath show, in this never-reprinted story from Atlas' MAD comic clone Crazy V1N7 (1954), that the movie business was losing customers to the then-new entertainment technology of television...and that was with TVs that had 15 inch (or less) screens and had only black-and-white transmissions (even when they broadcast color movies)!
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Thursday, March 14, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Quangle-Wangle's Hat"

There's something different about the story in today's post!

Can you deduce what it is?
Read carefully...
Figure it out?
1) This never-reprinted piece by Walt Kelly from Dell's Four Color Comics #185: Easter with Mother Goose (1948) is a poem, not a fairy tale, nor a nursery rhyme!
2) Unlike most of Kelly's Easter and Christmas-themed tales, it has no holiday story element except the introduction by the Easter Bunny and Easter Chick!
3) Plus, the source poem is quoted verbatim, without any editorial changes at all!
As far as I've been able to ascertain, this is the only time this occurred in any of Kelly's holiday-book projects!
Mind you, Walt did run things like Clement Clarke Moore's "Night Before Christmas" unedited/uncut (several times, in fact), but those were already Yuletide-oriented!
The poem's author was writer/artist Edward Lear, whose work was a curious mash-up of the literary styles of Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss, which made him the late 1800s-early 1900s most beloved and extensively-read children's author!

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WOLFF "City in the Clouds"

We Have Already Seen...

Note that, though we are presenting the Wolff tale from New England Library's Dracula #10 (1972), this cover is from #9, so we present it now, since it shows a character that appears in this story, but not the previous tale!
...Wolff and Katerina have escaped from the clutches of the sorceress Sadya to Katerina's sorcerer father's kingdom.
Will Wolff survive Sadya's vengeance?

Find Out...
Next Wednesday!
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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Hickory and Dickory Help the Easter Bunny"

Though the rodent duo in this tale are named after the classic nursery rhyme "Hickory, Dickory, Dock"...

...the rhyme featured only a single, anonymous, mouse...and there's no one named "Dock" in the story!
Walt (Pogo) Kelly scripted and illustrated this story from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949), which was the mouse duo's second (and last) appearance!
The first was several months earlier, in Dell's Four Color Comics #201: Christmas with Mother Goose (1948), where they assisted (as you might have guessed) Santa Claus!

Monday, March 11, 2024

Monday Madness CRAZY, MAN, CRAZY "Pocket Book Covers"

How do we get today's would-be readers to actually read the "classics"?

Do what artist Vince Fodera and an unknown writer suggest in this never-reprinted two-page spread from Charlton's MAD Magazine clone Crazy Man Crazy V2N2 (1956)...

BTW, "pocket books" were how what we now call mass-market paperbacks were referred to until the 1960s!
In fact, the first American mass-market publisher to use the format (in 1939) was named "Pocket Books"...a name they utilize to this day!
Who says comics ain't educational???
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Sunday, March 10, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Little Bunny"

Walt (Pogo) Kelly went into full-on "cute" mode with his holiday stories...
...including this never-reprinted one from Dell's Four Color ComicsEaster with Mother Goose #185 (1948)!

Besides doing an annual comic of Easter stories featuring fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters celebrating the holiday, Walt also did an even-more popular series of annual Christmas comics utilizing the same concept!