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Saturday, March 30, 2024

Space Hero Saturdays FLASH GORDON: THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL

Before Flash Gordon the Movie came to movie screens in 1980...
...another Flash-related project came to fruition!
No, not the animated TV series!
A self-contained, feature-length, animated movie!

It was conceived and written by Sam (Classic Star Trek "Where No Man Has Gone Before") Peebles as a prime-time live-action feature, not a Saturday morning animated kiddie series!
But the budget required for the script would've been $30,000,000 (almost $100,000,000 in 2024 dollars!)!
So, it was decided to do the project using classic cel animation, including rotoscoping for both character movement and spaceship action!
Note: Heavy Metal; the Movie, in production at the same time, utilized the same approach!
But they had to use several different studios, working together, to complete their feature film!
Though a lot of the footage from Greatest Adventure of All was recycled, over half is exclusive to the feature, including Flash in a Doc Savage-style torn shirt and jodpurs for the first 2/3rds of the film!
That footage was re-drawn for the series with Flash in his red and blue Mongo uniform.
It's the way Flash was drawn in the first few weeks of the newspaper strip, and Buster Crabbe followed suit in the first couple of chapters of the first movie serial!
BTW, the film starts out in Warsaw, Poland at the beginning of World War II before heading to Mongo, and all the Earth-based technology, including Zarkov's ship, are contemporary to what was shown in sci-fi magazines and flix of the era!
Now, with pardonable pride, we present the complete feature film which is unavailable on American physical media sources and only aired once, on late night TV in 1982.
Note the cameos by Adolph Hitler, to whom Ming is supplying weapon and rocket technology!

Friday, March 29, 2024

Friday Fun RIOT "Mother Goosepimple's Nursery Rhymes" Parts 1 & 2

Atlas Comics' numerous 1950s MAD comic clones...
...gave the company's creatives a chance to flex their artistic muscles in ways rarely-seen by their readers!
This never-reprinted short from Atlas RIOT #5 (1956) gave amazingly-versatile artist Joe Maneely a chance to show his rarely-seen humorous side.
The second, final, also never-reprinted installment in this series features an artist who already had a rep doing humor, John Severin, best known for his serious Western and War comics work at Harvey and EC!
He was also brother of EC Comics colorist Marie Severin, who later became Marvel's resident caricaturist (among her many other talents)!
I suspect this was going to be an ongoing series featuring rotating illustrators, but since Riot was cancelled as of this issue (6) in 1956, we'll never know!
BTW, if the writing style for both stories feels "familiar", that's because it was by snarky Stan (the Man) Lee!
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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Jack Rabbit and the Beanstalk"

The only thing even vaguely Easter-related in this Walt Kelly-written and illustrated story...
...is the fact Jack Rabbit is selling Easter Eggs to make ends meet!
Accept it, and enjoy the obvious adaptation and the guest characters from other nursery rhymes and fairy tales!
This never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949) winds up our holiday-themed posts for the season.
Hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we did producing them!

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Easter Reading Room TICK TOCK TALES "Judy and Her Magic Chalk in the Land of the Easter Bunnies"

Though no other American comic publishers besides Dell ran Easter-themed anthologies...

...many ongoing series did run Easter stories, including this strip appearing in the kids' humor anthology Tick Tock Tales!
Illustrated (and possibly written) by animator Larry Silverman who freelanced for packager Jason Comic Art Studio, this never-reprinted story from Magazine Enterprises' Tick Tock Tales #4 (1947) was only the second entry in the "Magic Chalk" strip, which ran for almost thirty issues!
Judy would also appear on covers and in two-page text stories teamed with other characters from the anthology like Goofus the Gopher and Spanky, but, oddly, never in an actual comic story with them!
Be Here Thursday, When We Present a Walt Kelly Story Featuring Numerous Fantasy Characters in an Easter-Themed Adaptation of a Classic Fairy Tale!

Monday, March 25, 2024

Monday Madness PSYCHO "Weird Way It Was"

If ever a story qualified as "mad" (as in "insane")...

...it would certainly be this never-reprinted terror tale from Skywald's Psycho #12 (1973)
Written by Psycho's editor, Al Hewetson, and illustrated by Pablo Marcos, this story has plot elements from and visual references to Lewis Carroll's surreal Alice tales.

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Sunday, March 24, 2024

It's Palm Sunday! Did You Know the Very First Captain of the USS Enterprise...

...was Jesus Christ?
Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ in King of Kings (1961)
 Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike with Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in Star Trek "The Cage" (1964)
Here's"six degrees of separation" trivia in only five degrees:
  • John Huston, who later did a prequel movie, The Bible: In the Beginning, directed Moby Dick, using a screenplay adapted by Ray Bradbury from the Herman Melville novel.
  • Ray Bradbury wrote the voiceovers in King of Kings spoken by Orson Welles.
  • Welles' The Shadow and Mercury Theatre radio series co-star Agnes Moorehead served as dialogue coach to  Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus Christ) in King of Kings.
  • Jeffrey Hunter later played Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Starship Enterprise in the pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage".
  • Star Trek did an episode, "Bread and Circuses", about a planet where parallel evolution produced a society that resembled a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire, complete with it's own "Christians" and Jesus Christ (who doesn't appear on-camera, but is mentioned in dialogue)!