Friday Fun HOT DOG "Harry Hotdog in 'Mad, Modern and Egad' "

Though the Series' Title was Hot Dog...

...the character's name was Harry Hotdog, who can best be described as Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David as a generic yellow canine!

Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme...

This never-reprinted story from Magazine Enterprises' Hot Dog #3 (1954) aka A-1 #124 (1954) satirizes the "Greatest Generation's" attitude towards "modern art"!
If you're wondering why the comic has two titles and numberings, let me explain...
Like Dell's Four Color Comics, A-1 was an anthology title which served as a tryout platform for various concepts, so it had both the strip's numbering and the title's numbering.
That way, if the strip didn't sell well, the publisher wouldn't have to pay for another second-class mailing permit (which was required for each title published) for a new series!
Numerous ME strips were published this way, including Cave Girl, I Am a Cop, Trail Colt, Manhunt, Ghost Rider, Undercover Girl, and Thun'da!
This issue was the third of four Harry Hotdog-starring issues!
Writer/Artist George Crenshaw began as an animator for Walt Disney, then MGM before going to comic strips and books.
Besides being a longtime "ghost" on Dennis the Menace, he created his own long-running strip, Belevdere, about (surprise) a dog...but not an anthropomorphic one like Harry!

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Reading Room BLAST-OFF "Little Earth"

This is a classic example of an unheralded gem by two graphic-story masters...

...that has been reprinted only twice...in now OOP limited-run books, so most of you have never seen it!

Oddly, the GCD lists it as penciled by Reed Crandall and inked by Al Williamson, but Teddy I at pencilink.blogspot.com reverses the credits!
Personally, I think both artists, in typical Fleagle Gang-style worked at both tasks in various panels.

The writer is Larry Ivie, who scripted several dozen stories for Marvel, DC, Tower, King, and Warren in the 1960s, and also published Monsters and Heroes, a competitor to Famous Monsters of Filmland!

According to the Kirby Museum, this story was intended for Harvey's never-published Race for the Moon #5 in 1958, but remained unused until 1965, when it ran in the Harvey one-shot anthology Blast-Off!

Wednesday World of What the Hell??? SLOW DEATH FUNNIES "It Grows!"

Happy Earth Day...sort of!

We look back at the cover-featured (but never-reprinted) story of the first issue a now-legendary series that debuted on the very first Earth Day in 1970!

Though the cover of this first issue has reached "graphic icon" status, reproduced (often unlicensed/unauthorized) all over the place, the actual story by writer-artist Greg Irons has never been reprinted!

Slow Death was published for 11 irregularly-produced issues, from 1970 to 1992.

Besides environmental/ecological stories, it also featured tales about diseases/plagues/epidemics, and other (sometimes deliberately-produced) medical horrors!

A 50th Anniversary Special (numbered "Zero") appeared (a few months late) in 2021.

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Reading Room WEIRD THRILLERS "Shadow on the Screen!"

For all those whose parents told them "TV is bad for you"...

...and "comics are bad for you", well, they were right, as this comic tale about TV proves!

This tale from Ziff-Davis' Weird Thrillers #3 (1952) was illustrated by Bob Powell.

Powell, besides being a gifted illustrator was also a pioneer in the use of "color holds" in comic books.

The same technique he used on the tv screen was also used in a tale of radio and pulp hero The Shadow HERE, taking artwork that normally would be black-line and making it one of the color plates.

It was a very tricky thing to do back in those days since the interior pages were almost never proofed due to time and cost restraints.

But, Powell does some amazing things with the holds, making them line up exactly almost all the time!

Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown...

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Monday Mecha Madness STAR TREK "Planet of the Robots"

WhenYou Think of Artificial Intelligence in Star Trek....

...you think of androids or non-humanoid sentient computers, not robots!

Captain Kurt?

The Enterprise lands on a planet?

Spock shouting?

Lt Bailey, who was left on the Fesarius with Balok in the episode "Corbomite Maneuver" is still aboard the Enterprise?
And...robots??

It was 1969.

Star Trek had not yet aired in England.

The publisher of the wildly-successful weekly comic magazine TV Century 21, which featured strips based on the various Gerry Anderson-produced series (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, etc.), decided to launch a new weekly magazine showcasing the currently-running Anderson series, Joe 90.

Entitled Joe 90: Top Secret, it also featured a couple of two-page strips about imported American TV series, Star Trek and Land of the Giants.

Since those shows hadn't yet aired in England, the writers and artist Harry Lindfield were working off whatever print material and photo reference was sent from America.

(Apparently nobody gave them a copy of Stephen Whitfield's Making of Star Trek, which explains things like the Enterprise being unable to land on a planet's surface.)

The storylines usually ran six weeks, but could go longer if required.

Because the Trek strip had the centerfold slot, it allowed for panels running thru what would be the interior gutters on any other page, giving them a wide Sunday newspaper-strip feel and layout.

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