Best of Reading Room ASTONISHING "The Scientists"

We re-presented a later version (by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, no less) of this tale on Tuesday!

This original version is a page longer and has a couple of rather witty touches which put the lie to the concept "If our meddling with time changed anything, we'd notice!"

This never-reprinted story, penciled by Harry Lazarus and inked by George Klein, from Atlas' Astonishing #9 (1952) is based on one of the basic rules of time-travel; "don't change anything in the past, or you'll alter the future"...which is in direct contradiction to another of the basic rules of time-travel; "no matter what you do, you can't change the future".

Hey, I'm just telling you the rules.

I never said they made sense...

Best of Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Those Who Change"

During this holiday week, we're doing a couple of Reading Room re-presentations...

...to ease our workload, starting with this Stan Lee/Steve Ditko tale that takes the "if you time travel, don't change anything in the past or you'll screw up history" concept to an extreme!

This story from Amazing Adult (wonder why they left that out of the reprint credit) Fantasy #10 (1962) was actually a reworking of an earlier tale called "The Scientists" from Astonishing #9 (1952) which was longer and had additional plot twists!
You'll be seeing the original (ironically, never-reprinted) version on Thursday.
As for this particular short, since its' 1965 appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1, it lay unseen until 2005 when it popped up in Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko with additional reprintings in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (2007) and Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection (2009).
NOTE: This was one part of a week-long re-presentation of the first issue of Marvel's Fantasy Masterpieces reprint anthology on the 50th anniversary of publication in 1965!
The comic was particularly notable for new material by Stan Lee introducing the stories!

Click on the titles to read the posts...

50 Years Ago...FANTASY MASTERPIECES!

"Beware! The Ghosts Surround Me!"

"I Found the Things from Nowhere!"

"I Became a Human Robot!"

"I Saw the Other World!"

Best of Reading Room UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION "Behold the Man" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Frank Brunner

Time traveler Karl Glogauer journeys to Palestine almost 2,000 years in the past to confirm the existence of Jesus Christ.

With his time machine damaged beyond repair and discovering he's gone a decade too far back, the now-stranded Glogauer encounters John the Baptist...

Published in the British sci-fi magazine New Worlds (which Moorcock himself edited) in 1966, the non-linear story running two parallel plot/timelines won the Nebula Award for "best novella".

Moorcock expanded it to novel length...

Art by Robert Foster

...and it is that currently OOP version which is best-known to American audiences and served as the basis of this never-reprinted adaptation in Marvel's Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #6 (1975) by writer Doug Moench and artist Alex Nino.

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Behold the Man
by Michael Moorcock

Best of Reading Room UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION "Behold the Man" Part 1

With Christmas behind us and New Year's Day just ahead...

...we're going to re-present a controversial (albeit award-winning) time-travel tale about the guy whose birthday we just celebrated!

To Be Concluded...

Thursday!

In the 1960s, science fiction experienced an influx of a "New Wave" of writers who wanted to go beyond "hard" sf and experiment, both in form and in content, with a more literary/artistic sensibility.

New Wave writers often saw themselves as part of the modernist tradition, writing "soft" or metaphysical stories instead of the technology-oriented or "hard" sf of Asimov, Heinlein, et al.

The leading proponent of the movement was Michael Moorcock, editor of the British magazine New Worlds as well as an established and successful "hard" sf writer.

to be continued...

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Behold the Man
by Michael Moorcock

Best of Reading Room WEIRD WORLDS "Space Vampires"

How did the cover-featured tale from Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951)...

...end up being used (almost verbatim) in Eerie Publications' Weird Worlds #V1N10 (1970)?

Eerie Publications had been using photostats and negatives from defunct comics companies as the source material for their b/w magazine line.

About a year in, they started using South American artists eager to break into the comics market and American artists like Dick Ayers and Chic Stone who were losing work as the Silver Age ended and comics companies cut back their lines, to re-do old stories with a more contemporary style.

Some illustrators totally-redid the art, using new "camera angles" and clothing/technology designs reflecting contemporary tastes.

In this particular case, artist Cirilo Munoz just lightboxed and re-inked the existing Wally Wood/Joe Orlando artwork!

Editor Carl (Golden Age Human Torch) Burgos rewrote the opening captions and changed the hero's name, but otherwise left Gardner Fox's original script intact.

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The Worst of Eerie Publications

Best of Reading Room KENTON OF THE STAR PATROL "Sirens of Space"

Kenton goes hand-to-hand with space pirates...

...and to think he gets paid to do this sort of stuff!
Where do I sign up for the Star Patrol?

This Kenton story from Avon's Strange Worlds #5 (1951) demonstrates Joe Orlando and Wally Wood's talent for rendering both exotic machinery and beautiful women.
It's also their final Kenton story, but not their final work on the character.
He did the cover for the next issue, which features the final tale in the Kenton series, but illustrated by another artist!
You'll see that one on Monday!

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