This superb, never-reprinted Murphy Anderson illustration encapsulates what made DC's science fiction line in the 1950s and 60s so entertaining!
Adam Strange and Alanna! (DC's premiere Silver Age space-going heroes!)
Winged Apes! (DC was famous for using apes almost anywhere you could think of!)
A ridiculous, physically-impossible image (giant arrow thrown by aforementioned winged [but normal-sized] ape through the Earth) that you just must know the story behind! (Though, sadly, in this case, there's no actual story behind this particular piece!)
Fireside's Mysteries in Space (1980), a $7.95 trade paperback reprint compiled from Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, Tales of the Unexpected, and From Beyond the Unknown came and went quickly through bookstores.
Sadly, it didn't sell well, and many copies were returned to the publisher and pulped!
It's not available in e-book form, and a different 1999 trade paperback, Mystery in Space, doesn't reprint any of the stories featured in this compilation!
When you can find a copy now, it runs from $30 to $100, depending on condition!
...but I submit these never-reprinted pages from Atlas' Riot #5 & #6 (1956) demonstrate Everett could do humor...and in a variety of styles!
Spoofing actual ads from Kleenex, Wildroot Cream Oil, Ford Motors, Westinghouse Electronics and TWA (I have no idea what the bike ad relates to), artist Bill Everett demonstrates his mastery of the page, even imitating the art style of Little Lulu's creator Marjorie Henderson Buell! The mystery of why his work on Marvin Mouse was, to put it mildly, substandard may never be discovered! Trivia:Atlas was a bit of a trend-follower, rather than a trend setter, as it became in the Silver Age as Marvel! Trying to capitalize on EC's success with MAD, Atlas launched four different satire/parody anthologies...Crazy, Riot, Snafu, and Wild, only one of which lasted to seven issues!
Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize Comics'Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The figure poses, faces, machinery, even the futuristic buildings all but scream "KIRBY"!
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's artist as Marvin Stein with a "?", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, and the fact Stein worked primarily for their studio, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material page count came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown, but it might also be Kirby...
We've been showing aliens who dare to land on Earth "who's the boss" for centuries...
...but this is one time that may not have been the best approach!
Adapted from a short story by Keith Laumer, this tale from Marvel's Worlds Unknown #2 (1973) has a kool "Twilight Zone" twist ending, but couldn't have been adapted for the show due to the crudeness of tv special effects work at the time.
OTOH, writer Gerry Conway, penciler Gil Kane, and inker Tom Sutton had no such constraints, and they do EC Comics' writers and artists proud with a tale that would have fit right in with Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, or the merged Weird Science-Fantasy books!
Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize'sMonster of Frankenstein #31 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by the legendary Jack (King) Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's illustrator as Marvin Stein, who worked primarily for the Simon & Kirby studio, so this most likely was an S&K "inventory" story laid-out by Kirby and meant for insertion wherever editorial page count came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown...
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...they were engaged in combat with a giant automaton hand whose fingers, like Combatra itself, can separate and battle independently, turning the whole area into a mecha demolition derby...
Mecha vs Mecha and the Military vs Everyone!
Plus: Who are the Men in Black?
(And no, they're not the ones in the later graphic novel and movie series!)
In 1968, the creator of I Dream of Jeannie predicted what may yet occur in 2026...
...with a tv-movie that aired on network only once, yet had an enormous impact on those who saw it!
The year: 1968! Race Relations were cratering! The economy was doing well, but individuals thought, because they weren't personally doing well, the whole economy was collapsing!
The current President (a Democrat) was not on the ballot for the Presidental election!
A Republican who promised "law and order" and to "protect America from potential invaders" won the White House!
Sidney Sheldon, creator/producer of lightweight escapist entertainment like I Dream of Jeannie and The Patty Duke Show, looked at what was going on around him and took a chance.
Screen Gemsgave him carte blanche, probably expecting something in a similar vein to his previous projects.
He greenlighted a story by Nedrick Young, scripter of controversial movies like The Defiant Ones (1958) and the adaptation of the novel Inherit the Wind (1960).
Sheldon selected an experenced, versatile director, Richard C Sarafian, with credits ranging from Dr Kildare to Batman!
The cast used both established pros like John Forsythe (against type as the villainous General Bruce, the Leader's trusted military commander) and Jackie Cooper (as the heroic, but doomed, Lt Col Davis), as well as up-and-comers like Gene Hackman and Carol Lynley in supporting roles.
(Trivia Note: one of the supporting characters, Lt Allen, is played by Jonathan Lippe/Jonathan Goldsmith, known recently as "The Most Interesting Man in the World" in Dos Equis beer commercials!)
The protaganist, rebel leader Major McCloud, was played by Marc Strange in his only leading role.
The tv-movie, using concepts from both Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here and George Orwell's 1984, portrayed a near-future America where the President declared a national emergency and imposed martial law...but the undefined "emergency" never ended, and martial law quickly mutated into fascist repression!
But the Society of Man, an organized resistance group with people placed within the government, fights back as best it can against the overwheming military might and technological superiority of the fascists.
Left open-ended, the movie practically begs to be continued as a mini-series, if not an ongoing series!
Airing on ABC during the Christmas season (December 4, 1968), it failed to garner decent ratings, and the potential series died quietly!
(Trivia: Kenneth Johnson proposed a similar concept called Storm Warnings to NBC in the early 1980s.
They turned it down, and Johnson, following in the steps of Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, revamped the concept with science fiction elements, making the fascists into reptilian aliens, and sold the concept as V, which ran as two mini-series and a brief ongoing series in the 80s and a two-season reboot in 2009-10.)
Never available on VHS, DVD or BluRay, the only way, currently, to see Shadow on the Land is right HERE.
We reccomend you download it as well, since the flick is deleted wherever it appears!
I'd say "enjoy, but, it's really more disturbing and frightening than enjoyable...
