Showing posts with label Bronze Age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bronze Age. Show all posts

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Holiday Reading Room presents MARVEL CLASSIC COMICS' "A Christmas Carol"!

There have been numerous comic adaptations of Charles Dickens' legendary Yuletide ghost story...
...but this never-reprinted one from (believe it or not) Marvel Comics, has the distinction of being illustrated by more artists than any other version!
Credited to "Diverse Hands", the art styles I recognize include Bob Hall, Frank Giacoia, Frank Springer, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Carmine Infantino, Steve Leialoha, John Romita Sr, Al Milgrom, Mike Esposito, and probably anybody who wandered into the Bullpen while this book was in production in 1978!
Trivia: 
This was the final title in the Marvel Classics Comics line which had started out as color reprints of the early '70s b/w Pendulum Press "comic adaptations of classic stories" series.
After a dozen issues, Marvel began doing their own adaptations, continuing for another two dozen issues.
Scripter Doug Moench was no newcomer to adapting prose to comics having worked on comics versions of literary properties including Doc Savage, The Shadow, James Bond, and Fu Manchu!
Colorist Francoise Mouly later became the art editor of The New Yorker, co-creator of the legendary comic anthology Raw, and is currently the publisher/editorial director of Toon Books.
You can read this HTF story by clicking HERE for Stave One, then just clicking the links at the bottom of each post!

Thursday, October 31, 2024

HALLOWEEN TREAT (No Trick!) DRACULA One-Page Tales

While the English-language reprints of the 1970s Spanish Dracula magazine didn't have any Dracula...
...the original Spanish title had these one-page jokes on the back cover!
Both England's New English Library and America's Warren Magazines (who licensed the NEL translated version) left out these entertaining pieces...despite the fact no translation was needed!
Written and illustrated by Alfonso Figueras, these one-pagers now make their American debut!
Written and illustrated by Alfonso Figueras!
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(from 1971, featuring the first six issues of the translated-from-Spanish Dracula magazine...but not these Dracula humor strips...nor any Dracula content!)
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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Unspeakable Shrine" Conclusion

...it's not a synopsis, but the Steve Gan art was too kool for me not to present it!
Anyway on with the story (and an actual synopsis)...
Afraid not, Septegundus! 
This story in Marvel's Savage Tales V1N8 (1975) was the finale for Brak's graphic story adventures by any publisher to date!
Unlike other barbarian/high adventure characters, Brak was never reprinted or revived.
OTOH, he fared better than Lin Carter's Jandar of Callisto!
There was a text feature in the previous issue of Savage Tales about that multi-volume John Carter/Carson of Venus pastiche by noted fantasy author Carter being adapted by Marvel.
Unfortunately, except for a couple of promo pieces, there was never any work done on the projected strip.
Next Week:
More Worlds of Wonder!!!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
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(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Unspeakable Shrine" Part One

Though Brak was the least-successful of Marvel's early 1970s barbarian horde...
...it wasn't for lack of trying, as this never-reprinted story from Marvel's Savage Tales V1N7 (1974) demonstrates!
To Be Concluded
Next Issue
(I Mean Next Week!)
Doug Moench and Steve Gan both went on to other kool high-adventure projects at Marvel!
Doug scripted the b/w Doc Savage series (considered by many, myself included, to be the best comics version of the Man of Bronze ever) and Steve worked on TarzanConan, co-created Skull the Slayer, and co-created the Guardians of the Galaxy's own Peter Quill/StarLord!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
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(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)
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Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Sword and the Road"

Who is Brak the Barbarian?
Though we presented his first comic appearance last week, most current comics fans are totally-unaware of him!
So let's clear up the matter...
After this never-reprinted text feature from Marvel's Savage Tales V1N6 (1974), there were two more Brak prose short-story collections; When the Idols Walked (1978) and Fortunes of Brak (1980).
All the books were re-edited into the collection shown below.
Next Week: 
Part One of "The Unspeakable Shrine"!
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
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(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)
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Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Spell of the Dragon!"

In the Bronze Age, Marvel adapted every barbarian/sword and sorcery character they could get...
...often giving the original prose writers (if they were alive) the chance to script the series themselves!
Author John Jakes commented...
I long ago admitted in print that I created Brak because there were simply no more Conan stories from Robert E. Howard, whose work I admired.
In my adolescent years I wrote – on notebook paper – further adventures of Batman and Superman because I enjoyed them but there weren’t enough of them in comic books to satisfy me. Somehow the other sword and sorcery strong men – Lin Carter’s, Michael Moorcock’s et al. – while deserving of praise in their own right, didn’t do it for me. I needed more Howard.
I invented Brak.
There were only three Brak comic tales, this one plotted and laid out by Dan Adkins and scripted by Jakes himself along with penciling by Val Mayerik and inking by Joe Sinnott.
(It seems to be an original tale, not an adaptation.)
Then a two-part adaptation of the (chronologically) first Brak tale, "The Unspeakable Shrine" by Jakes, Doug Moench, and Steve Gan.
Then...nothing!
No more new comics tales!
No reprints!
Next week, we're presenting an illustrated text feature from Savage Tales featuring background info about the character and author, John Jakes!
After that, the complete, unseen for decades two-part comic story!
Don't miss them!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...
(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Reading Room HOT STUF' "Heartfelt Thanks"

Remember the movie Fantastic Voyage, about a surgeon and his support staff...
...miniaturized to enter a patient's body to perform a delicate operation?
This is like that...but only up to a point!
OUCH!
Didn't end quite the way it did in Fantastic Voyage, eh?
Written by Kathy Barr and illustrated by Ken Barr, this somewhat grisly tale from SQP's Hot Stuf' #8 (1978) was one of his last comic stories before transitioning to doing movie poster, magazine, and book cover paintings on a full-time basis.