Showing posts with label 1940s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1940s. Show all posts

Sunday, May 3, 2026

Mifipristone Madness TOPS "Anthony Comstock: Fanatical Reformer"

Is it any wonder MAGA cons are using the work of a puritanical, conservative con-man from the 19th Century...

...to promote and serve their anti-choice agenda in the 21st Century?







Both Federal and local Republican politicians are currently attempting to use the ancient Comstock Act's19th Century definitions of "obscene material" (which includes birth control printed information and contraceptive drugs) to prevent them from being provided to pregnant women today!
Written by George Hansen and illustrated by Lee Ames, this feature from Lev Gleason's TOPS #2 (1949) presents itself as a "review" of a biography of Comstock, Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (1927)..which praised the man!
However, where the book put Comstock on a pedestal, the comic strip savaged him, taking the material from the tome and presenting it in a historical context.
BTW, you'll note the art here is larger than we usually present.
That's because the periodical it was presented in was tabloid-sized, like Marvel and DC Treasury Editions of the 1970s and 80s and the lettering would be unreadable in our usual 525-pixel wide format.
Editor Charles Biro conceived and produced the mag as an attempt to do an "adult oriented" magazine using the comic book format.
Sadly, it only lasted two issues and either issue is incredibly hard to find!
Happily, Fantagraphics worked with noted writer/artist/historian Michael T Gilbert to produce a superb book reprinting those two issues with an astounding amount of historical material about the periodical...
Note: We presented this post only a few months ago, but with Repugs in states banning abortion re-introducing this two-century old legislation as the reason to validate preventing women from receiving contraceptive drugs or even printed matter about birth control, we felt it was worth showing what the cons are using at the basis for their insanity!
And now that a Federal judge has (hopefully temporarily) stopped patients from being able to recieve needed medication by mail, it seems that (for now) their goal has been achieved!

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Friday, May 1, 2026

Friday Fun BASEBALL COMICS "Rube Rooky"

Is there anything Will Eisner hadn't done during his long, illustrious  career?
He took chances experimenting with genres like this baseball-themed 1949 comic book...
...which predated a rush of sports-themed comics from various publishers the next year.
Unfortunately, the big problem with being first is that, often, the world isn't quite ready for you, and Baseball Comics lasted only one issue.
But it certainly wasn't for lack of quality, as this Eisner-written and penciled tale, inked by Tex Blaisdell, proves.
There's more to Rube Rooky's one shot at stardom, and we'll be running it here at Friday Fun for the next few weeks, so don't miss it!
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Baseball Comics #2
(A follow-up published decades later)

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Space Hero Saturdays SKYROCKET STEELE "Chapter 2"

Three Years Ago, We Left Space Hero Skyrocket Steele in a Cliffhanger...

...but we're going to correct that oversight starting now!




Great!
Another Cliffhanger!

But we're not gonna wait three more years to present the next chapter!
Skyrocket will return next month!
This second chapter in Steele's space-spanning saga by writer-artist Bill Everett appeared in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies V1N3(a) in 1938.
And there's a simple reason for the weird numbering, which we'll explain when you return next month!
Trivia: Pop culture historian and prolific genre author Ron (Star Hawks) Goulart utilized the name (but nothing else from Everett's strip) for a hysterically-funny novel about 1940s sci-fi movie serials...

(click for bigger image)
...which, while available on Amazon (as seen below) can't be found as this 1980 first edition with a kool cover by noted artist Carl Lundgren!
Snarky Note: I bought it in 1980,when it came out!
That and Goulart's very HTF Tremendous Adventures of Bernie Wine...

...a PG-13/soft R mass-market novel about a young (and extremely horny) comic book artist in NYC, are among my favorite Goulart books in my collection (and I have a lot of them, including ghost-written standalones and series)!
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Sunday, April 5, 2026

EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE Cover Gallery

From 1946 through 1949, Dell  produced an Easter with Mother Goose  annual..
...with all-new stories and art by Walt (Pogo) Kelly!
Here's several of the best covers (also by Kelly)!

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Lunar Reading Room CONTACT COMICS "Moon Express"

Before We Actually Put Anybody into Space...
...we had to figure out how we would get them out there!




The hopeful author of this feature from Aviation Press' Contact Comics #12 (1946) believed we'd have a rocket reaching the Moon by 1950!
(In fact, the first rocket, the Russian 'Luna 2', didn't reach the Moon until 1959.)
The writer also believed legendary science fiction writer/editor John W Campbell to be a "uranium expert"!
(Campbell did have a BA in Physics, and, as an editor, pushed his writers to be as scientifically-accurate as possible.)
This 80 year-old never-reprinted story should give you an idea of how the concept of reaching somewhere outside of our atmosphere has captivated humans for centuries, and returning there a half-century later can still grab our attention!

Friday, March 27, 2026

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Fun and Games"

Besides numerous single-page, two/three page, and longer stories...
...Dell's annual Easter with Mother Goose books by Walt (Pogo) Kelly usually included a game/puzzle page centerfold!
Three of the four issues from 1946 thru 1949 had them, and none have ever been reprinted!
...but we have them for your reading (and playing) pleasure, you lucky duckies!
Enjoy!
All written and illustrated by Walt Kelly, from Dell's Four Color Comics #103 (1946), #140 (1947) and #220 (1949)!

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Hickory and Dickory Help the Easter Bunny"

Though the rodent duo in this tale are named after the classic nursery rhyme "Hickory, Dickory, Dock"...

...the nursery rhyme featured only a single, anonymous, mouse...and there's no one named "Dock" in this story, either!
Walt (Pogo) Kelly scripted and illustrated this story from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949), which was the mouse duo's second (and last) appearance!
The first was several months earlier, in Dell's Four Color Comics #201: Christmas with Mother Goose (1948), where they assisted (as you might have guessed) Santa Claus!
You'll see that one this Christmas...

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Friday, March 20, 2026

Friday Holiday/Fairy Tale Fun EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Mother Hubbard's Cupboard"

Walt (Pogo) Kelly loved to incoporate well-known characters...
...(in this case, from a classic nursery rhyme) into his seasonal holiday stories!
This fun, never-reprinted featurette, written and illustrated by Kelly, appeared in Dell's Four Color Comics: Easter With Mother Goose #220 (1949).

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Monday, March 16, 2026

Monday Mecha Madness ADAM LINK!

This Requires a Little Explanation/Background...

Introduced in Ziff-Davis' sci-fi anthology Amazing Stories (1939), Adam Link was the first ongoing series about a sentient robot!

Though credited to "Eando Binder" (a pen-name used by author brothers Earl and Otto Binder when they worked together), the Adam Link stories were entirely Otto's work!
Adam was no soulless automaton!
From his introduction onward (and Binder used the title "I, Robor" before Isaac Asimov) he was on a quest to become as human as possible!
Though created to be totally-logical, he developed emotions!
In fact, after his second story "Trial of Adam Link" where he was accused of killing his creator (scientist Dr Charles Link, not Otto Binder), though found innocent (he was framed)  he decided he couldn't go on living without his "father", and decided to commit suicide.
That's the basis of the third tale, "Adam Link's Vengeance", where another scientist (of the "mad" variety), prevents his untimely death, and plans to use him as a weapon!
That particular story was adapted by writer/editor Bill Spicer and artist D Bruce Berry into a two-part story in Spicer's prozine Fantasy Illustrated in 1965 and reprinted in Spicer's Graphic Story Magazine (under a new Berry cover) in 1971.
You'll be seeing that over the next two Mondays.
The comic story was done shortly after the Adam Link tales were adapted into a fix-up novel combining all the short stories...
Note the Isaac Asimov quote!
BTW, if the name "Otto Binder"sounds familiar to comics fans, that's because he wrote a lot of DC, Quality, Timely, and Fawcett comics in the Golden and Silver Ages, as well co-creating among others, the Legion of Super Heroes, Black Adam, Braniac, Kid EternityKrypto, Young AlliesMary MarvelBizarro, and Supergirl!
But, for some, he's best-known as the writer of the first Marvel Comics prose novel...

(Dig the Doc Savage-style logo!)
BTW, We'll be running this long OOP & HTF novel this summer during the annual RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon!

Sunday, March 15, 2026

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE More Walt Kelly Short Subjects

It's a Quiet Sunday, Several Weeks Before Easter...
,,,so let's continue with Walt (Pogo) Kelly's Easter-themed one pagers!
Some, like this one and the one below, are totally-new, one-shot Kelly creations!
Of course, what would a Walt Kelly Easter post be without at least one guest appearance by a well-known fairy tale/nursery rhyme character or two?
Note: this last page is from the inside cover, which was printed b/w to save money, a standard practice until the mid-1970s.
All features from Dell's Four Color Comics: Easter with Mother Goose #220 (1949)!

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