Monday Mecha Madness FANTASTIC "Thinking Machine"

During the Golden Age of Comics, Writers and Artists Sometimes Came Up with Rather...Unique Portrayals of Mechanical Beings...

...as you'll see in this never-reprinted tale from Youthful's Fantastic #8 (1952)!

Illustrated by Vince Napoli and scripted by a writer whose identity is lost to the mists of time, this reads more like a Frankenstein-type horror tale than a sci-fi story about a robot!

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Science Fiction Comics
Taylor History of Comics
Vol 3
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Holiday Reading Room EVERY DAY'S A HOLLY DAY "Thrilling Story Behind Old Glory: Flag Day"

Learn About...

...and try to forget it is also (ironically) the 80th birthday of disgraced, twice-impeached, President Don (the Con) Trump, the Oldest President in American History!

Coloring goof: the Union soldiers in panel 5 are wearing Confederate gray!

Why is this 1955 comic entitled "Every Day's a Holly Day" instead of "Every Day's a Holiday"?

Because it was given away to kids by grocers who sold Holly Sugar!

Illustrated by John Rosenberger, it's a unique pamphlet covering a number of American holidays, including both Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays (before they were combined into "Presidents' Day" in 1962), Mothers' Day (though not Fathers' Day), Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a couple of holidays we've largely abandoned...Pan-American Day and American Indian Day!
Note: We're gearing up for our traditional multi-blog Summer Blogathons which we'll announce the week before the 4th of July weekend and begin the week after!

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Cartoon History of the United States
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Space Hero Saturdays SPACE MOUSE "Master Mind" & "Believe It or Not"

This short-lived, but entertaining, series was uneven...

...with some stories, like this one from the back cover of Avon's Space Mouse #1 (1953) featuring the heroic character as a thief, obviously adapted from a different strip...

...and this one, from the inside cover of Avon's Space Mouse #3 (1953) showing him both in "hero mode" and cleverly breaking the "fourth wall"!

Writer/artist Frank Carin was an experienced pro who started as an animator the Fleischer Brothers and TerryToons, then moved over to comics in the early, writing and/or illustrating several hundred stories and covers for everybody from Timely/Atlas to Magazine Enterprises, to Nation-Wide, to Harvey, to, of course, Avon, and finally, to Gold Key!

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Fleischer Story

A History of the Cartoon Studio in the Golden Age of Film Animation

(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)
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Reading Room VENUS COMICS "Strange Rocket!"

Here's a tale combining sci-fi with the "present day" West...

 ...from the back of Atlas' Venus Comics featuring the art of a future major Silver Age Marvel artist!

The parents weren't questioned as to where their son went after he failed to show up for school...ever again?

"Well, officer, Toby went into space with a bunch of extraterrestrials, but they promised they'd bring him back.

It's OK!
We gave him permission..."

The writer of this somewhat silly story from Atlas' Venus #12 (1951) is unknown, but the artist is Gene Colan, best known to Marvel fans as one of the definitive artists on Silver and Bronze Age titles like Daredevil, Iron Man, and Dracula!

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Secrets in the Shadows

Art & Life of Gene Colan
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Monday Mecha Madness: Before ULTRON...there was MAKINO!

Who created Ultron, the Ultimate Evil AI?

If you go with the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron...Tony Stark aka Iron Man. and Bruce Banner aka The Hulk!

If you go with Marvel Comics history...Henry Pym aka Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket/Wasp/etc (Don't ask. It's too long a story...).

In reality, it was writer Roy Thomas and artist John Buscema in Marvel's Avengers V1 #54 (1967).

But where did Roy come up with the idea?

Well, he "borrowed" it from Captain Video!

Yep!

In #3 of Captain Video's short-lived 1950s Fawcett Comics title, he faced a robot named Makino who killed his scientist creator and then threatened all mankind!

The story left such an impression on the young Roy Thomas that, almost two decades later, he adapted elements of that story into the long-running saga of Ultron!

Roy explained how it came about in TwoMorrows' Alter Ego #114.

You can read the actual comic story on our "brother" RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video HERE and HERE!

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Friday Fun RIOT "Advertisements"

Several people have complained my post about Bill Everett's Marvin the Mouse was too harsh...

...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!

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Fire & Water

Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics
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Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Doorway to the Future!"

Is this a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s?

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...

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Simon & Kirby Library
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Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Into the 4th Dimension"

Is this a lost "Kirby Klassic" from the 1950s?

Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize's Monster 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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Science Fiction Comics
Taylor History of Comics
Vol 3
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Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Atom and Evil"

Dan DeCarlo defined the look of teen humor comics for half a century...

...which is an appropriate point to make as we re-present a series from the 1950s that looks at teen life in the early 2000s!

Written and penciled by Dan DeCarlo and inked by Fred Eng, this story from Standard's Jetta of the 21st Century #7 (1953) has the "feel", both in writing and art, of an Archie tale!

At this point, Dan was freelancing, working for Standard, Atlas (later Marvel) and Archie!

Archie co-creator Bob Montana's version still set the visual standard for the company's flagship character, but DeCarlo was given leeway to adapt the characters to his art style, which would become the defining "look" for the entire line by the late 1950s, and remain so until the mid-1990s, when they stared to experiment with more realistic, and even anime-inspired art!

Ironically, Archie Comics published a series about Archie and his gang set in the far future...

...from 1989 to 1991, which combined then-current fashions with the same retro-tech look as Jetta!

Though based on DeCarlo's design concepts, Dan didn't do any covers or art for the 16-issue series!

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta
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Reading Room MYSTICAL TALES "Lair of the Thunder Lizard!"

Bernie Krigstein was one of the most under-appreciated artists of the 1950s...

...and this kool tale he illustrated just begged to be unearthed for the first time in almost 70 years!

Scripted by Carl Wessler and rendered by Bernie Krigstein, this never-reprinted piece from Atlas' Mystical Tales #8 (1957) is a low-key character study enhanced by Krigstein's naturalistic art.

Bernie was already phasing out of comics and into mainstream commercial art (including book and magazine illustration).

This tale was one of his last stories before leaving the comics field altogether.

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Messages in a Bottle

Comic Book Stories by B Krigstein
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Reading Room: MYSTICAL TALES "Nomad of Outer Space!"

It's mind-blowing how much Atlas (pre-Marvel) stuff hasn't been reprinted...

...such as this story from Atlas' Mystical Tales #1 (1956)!

While hunting thru files for un-reprinted Jack Kirby tales for a previous Kirby Reading Room mini-marathon, I came across a lot of never-reprinted material!

This Bob Powell-rendered story is just the tip of the iceberg!

Sadly, we don't know the writer of this tale...

BTW, despite the title, Mystical Tales was an almost-totally "hard sci-fi" anthology!

Only a handful of stories from the anthology's 8-issue run have been reprinted, all in the 1970s, which makes even the reprints at least 40 years old!

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Atlas Era Tales of Suspense

Volume 1
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