Saturday, July 27, 2024

Space Hero Saturdays MOON ZERO TWO Conclusion

Clementine Taplin arrives on the Moon and hires down-on-his-luck, former hot-shot space pilot Bill Kemp to find her space-miner brother, Wally.
Kemp considers doing it while he completes another job: diverting an asteroid composed primarily of sapphire to crash on an unoccupied area of the moon so it can be mined.
He succeeds, barely surviving the perilous task.
Returning to the Moon, the pilot is warned not to help Clementine.
Not the sort to bow to threats, Kemp takes the job and he and Taplin go in search of her brother. They find him at his remote mining location...dead!
It's actually a pretty good film with a lot of kool elements including...
  • A real differentiation between "old style" 1970s-1999 tech used by the poor hero and 2020 tech used by rich villains!
  • Set, prop and costume design motifs that proved so popular that they popped up for more than a decade on shows from UFO to Space:1999 to Starlost to Star Maidens to Blake's 7.
  • A nice snarky action-hero performance by extremely-underrated actor James Olsen, whose main fault seems to be having a receding hairline at a time when a full head of hair was more important than acting ability in film.
Script adaptation and art by Paul Neary for this comic from Fleetway's House of Hammer #5 (1976).
The cover was by Brian Lewis.
For more background and pix from the film, there's a kool page covering all things MZ2 HERE!
and a special bonus...
Moon Zero Two: the Movie!

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Moon Zero Two
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Friday, July 26, 2024

Friday Fun / Trump Reading Room SAVAGE DRAGON

Didn't see any comics characters (and their creators) endorsing Don da Con at any time...

...but I did see them proudly endorsing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020...and will likely see them endorsing Kamala and whomever she selects as her running mate!
Wonder why?

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Reading Room STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL "Stowaway in the Sky!"

Here's a never-reprinted Cold War tale...

...about secrets, spies, and sabotage from Atlas' Strange Tales of the Unusual #9 (1957).
Written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Ed Winiarski, this was a typical 1950s tale of sneaky Russkies being out-maneuvered by smarter Americans!
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Unspeakable Shrine" Part One

Though Brak was the least-successful of Marvel's early 1970s barbarian horde...
...it wasn't for lack of trying, as this never-reprinted story from Marvel's Savage Tales V1N7 (1974) demonstrates!
To Be Concluded
Next Issue
(I Mean Next Week!)
Doug Moench and Steve Gan both went on to other kool high-adventure projects at Marvel!
Doug scripted the b/w Doc Savage series (considered by many, myself included, to be the best comics version of the Man of Bronze ever) and Steve worked on TarzanConan, co-created Skull the Slayer, and co-created the Guardians of the Galaxy's own Peter Quill/StarLord!
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(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)
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Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Reading Room STRANGE TALES "Beware the Uboongi!"

Let Us Gaze At Uranus...

...sorry, I can't resist occasionally reverting to 10-year old sense of humor when presenting a comic story, in this case from Marvel's Strange Tales #100 (1962).
OOPS!
Silly us, not warning the Russkies about which animals were dangerous...
Illustrated by Don Heck, the plotter and scripter are likely the book's editor, Stan Lee (plot) and his brother, Larry Lieber (script).
Note: Stan Lee's birth name is Stanley Lieber.
He used "Stan Lee" on his comics work because he hoped (as most writers do) to script the Great American Novel and wanted the Lieber name on that.
He eventually legally-changed his name to Stan Lee.

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Monday, July 22, 2024

Monday Madness MAD-DOG "Rabid"

He is The Hero We Need NOW...

...at least, that's what they thought in 1992, according to Ace Comics' editor Harlan Stone.
Writer Evan Dorkin, penciler Gordon Pucell, and inker Ray McCarthy play along with the premise of the short-lived TV 1990s series BOB (starring Bob Newhart) about a Silver Age comic character being revived in the Dark Age of the 1990s.
Editor Harlan Stone, mentioned above, is the character on the show who supports reimagining the Adam West-Batman-like Mad-Dog as a psychopathic killer vigilante, which Mad-Dog's creator, Bob McKay, hates, as shown in this "behind the scenes" page...
So, Stone proposes this comic (published by Marvel) which will present both versions!
You can read Bob McKay's upbeat Silver Age version right now over at our 'brother" RetroBlog Hero Histories by clicking HERE!
And you can watch (yes, watch) the series' origin story at another "brother" RetroBlog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, by clicking HERE!

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from Paramount Home Video on Demand
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Sunday, July 21, 2024

Bob Newhart (1929-2024)

Everybody knows the late, great, Bob Newhart's...
...two long-running TV series, The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart.
But, how many remember his final series, Bob...which was set in the world of comic books and greeting cards?
(Silly side note, considering the progression of series titles from The Bob Newhart Show to Newhart to Bob, if he had done another series what was it going to be called..."The"?)
In the 1992-94 series Newhart played Bob McKay, a Silver Age creative now doing greeting cards, who created, wrote, and illustrated Mad-Dog, a super-hero with the abilities of...you guessed it...a dog!
(He also, somehow, retained the copyright to the character, a rarity for creatives before the 1990s!)
When a new publisher wants to revive the character, Bob agrees, provided he does the book.
But, that's not what the publisher has in mind...
Note: we don't call the 1990s "The Dark Age" for nothing!
As you can see, Marvel Comics published a never-reprinted six-issue tie-in comic in "flip-book" format, with one half being Bob McKay's Silver Age version, and the other half being Ace Comics' Dark Age version.
In tribute to this unjustly-forgotten project, which featured an episode guest-starring noted comics creatives Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Sergio Aragones, Jim Lee, and Mark Silvestri; we're interrupting our "Time-Lost" Summer Blogathon to do the following...

Presenting the pilot episode on
NOW!
Presenting the "Silver Age" Mad-Dog on Monday at
And presenting the "Dark Age" Mad-Dog on Monday right here at
Atomic Kommie Comics!
Miss them at your peril!