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Saturday, June 22, 2024

Space-Hero Saturdays CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT "Last Rites of Jagga!"

When Last We Left Our Hero (and His Astral Arch-Enemy)...

Jagga the Space Raider has been caught and is now on trial!
Will this truly lead to his execution and "last rites"?

Yeah, you knew he wasn't dead, right?
Writer Otto Binder and illustrator Leonard Frank didn't kill the evil alien in this story from Fawcett's Captain Midnight #56 (1947), but fear not!
His end is closer than you think!

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Friday, June 21, 2024

Friday Fun AMAZING WILLIE MAYS "Diamond Doings" "Splinters" "Balls and Strikes"

Besides tales about the title person, the Amazing Willie Mays one-shot comic we ran yesterday...
...featured humorous one-page "fillers" about (what else) baseball!
Note that every page has at least one Black ballplayer in a cartoon, a rarity in the 1940s-50s unless the illustration focused on a specific Black sports figure!
BTW, "ballhawk" is outdated slang for an expert fielder!
Who says comics ain't educational???

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Reading Room AMAZING WILLIE MAYS Willie Mays (1931-2024)

I'll leave the eulogies for the legendary Willie Mays (1931-2024) to those better-equipped to present them.

What I will do is present a couple of tales from a comic published 70 years ago, when he was just beginning his major league career...but, even then, was considered one of the greats of the game!
Eastern Color's 1954 one-shot Amazing Willie Mays heralded a baseball player with, at that point, only two years in the majors!
Mind you, he had won Rookie of the Year in 1951.
But in 1952, Mays was drafted and served two years in the Army, returning to pro baseball in 1954!
BTW, we don't know if the following is actually Willie's "favorite story" or not!
Here's a bonus feature, supposedly using quotes from Willie himself...
Sadly, the comic doesn't list credits for the writers or artists, and Eastern Color has been out of business for decades, so the creatives behind these tales are unknown.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION "Day of the Triffids" Part 3

We Have Already Seen...

(Yes, this pulp-style cover by legendary sci-fi artist Frank Kelly Freas is incredibly-inaccurate, but it is incredibly-kool!)
When a smuggler's plane is shot down after he stole bioengineered plant pods from a Soviet lab, the now-released spores were carried by wind to the four corners of the earth, where they propagated like crazy!
The invasive species, initially-thought to be harmless, possessed stingers, which would strike any animal (or human) who wander too close!
However, scientists discovered the triffids' sap was valuable as the basis for cures for several diseases.
Wherever they were found, the plants were transferred to farms for cultivation and harvesting!
Triffid researcher Bill Mason, temporarily-blinded by a sting to the face, doesn't get to see a once-in-a lifetime meteor shower.
But when he removes his bandages the next morning, after no one in the hospital comes to do so, he discovers that everyone who did see the meteors is now blind...and that triffids are now mobile...and attacking anything that moves!

To Be Continued...
Next Wednesday!

To correct my comment from last week, this story, meant for the color comic Worlds Unknown, was not an attempt to do a novel in one issue, but as a two-part tale, much as Marvel was doing with its' adaptations of Doc Savage novels...which were almost all penciled by this story's artist, Ross Andru!
Trivia: the cover art was altered by Marvel's Art Director, John Romita, Sr, when a deadline loomed and artist Kelly Freas was unavailable to do the changes himself.
The unaltered version of the cover was used for the cover of the British edition of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.

Note the different human figures on the left!
Interestingly, Romita's alteration were done to a photographic print of Freas' art, since the original, unaltered painting has since been sold to a collector by a noted auction house!
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Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Happy Birthday to Me!

Taking the day off to celebrate...
...despite the temperature hitting record highs!
But,what could even the Man of Steel do about the menace of...
Climate Change???
See you tomorrow...

Monday, June 17, 2024

Monday Madness AMAZING ADVENTURES "Cosmic Comics"

Ziff-Davis' 1950s sci-fi anthology Amazing Adventures...

...ran interesting "filler" pages including these humor strips by Harry Sahle from the first two issues.
Note the one above, from the inside back cover of #2, is b/w.

But the one above, from issue #1, while also an inside cover, is two-color!
Perhaps there were budget cuts between the printing of the two issues!
Sadly, these were the only two Cosmic Comic strips to run in any Ziff-Davis comics!