Monday Mars Madness: a Twice-Told Tale INVASION!

One of the best-known Mars invasion tales is Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio show...

Edited version

...which this twice-told tale "updates" to the television era!

But, it's radically-altered from it's first appearance, and that the original version had never been reprinted!

First the toned-down version, then the original, scarier version...

Original version

 Note in the original version, both the wife and singer on tv show a lot more cleavage!

Edited version

Original version

Again, more cleavage in the original version...

Edited version

Original version

Oddly enough, the wife's cleavage is unchanged, but the look of terror in the last panel is toned down!

Edited version

Original version

Panel four in the original version is much more gruesome than the edited version.  Note the dialogue balloon is unchanged, even though there's no actual weapons fire in the edited version!

Edited version

 This last page is radically-different! Prepare yourself!
Ready?
Proceed...but remember, I warned you...

Original version

Wow!

The edited pages were from Race for the Moon #1 (1958), which was reprinted in Shocking Tales Digest #1 (1981)

The original story was from Witches' Tales #21 (1953)

As you can see, the Comics Code Authority insisted on some major redos, including most of the last page!

What do you think, fans!

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The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics: Volume 2

Bob Powell's

Terror

Reading Room BLACK CAT MYSTERY "Halloween Nightmare"

Here's a re-presentation of a topical terror tale about Halloween from Harvey's Black Cat Mystery #34 (1952).

Penciled by Manny Stallman and inked by John Giunta.
The writer is unknown.

Unlike many other Harvey Comics horror stories (as shown HERE), when this one was reprinted in Black Cat #52 (two years later), nothing was altered!

Happy Halloween!

Reading Room: "Supreme Penalty" Versions 1.0 & 2.0

A couple of months ago, we presented two different versions of the same tale...

...and we're doing so again!

This version appeared in Harvey's Black Cat Mystery #47 (1953) during the height of the horror comics boom.

It was re-presented in Harvey's Race for the Moon #1 (1959) after the Comics Code went into effect.

Let's see how things have changed...

Almost every panel has a change from the original, either in art or balloons!

Panel 4 has an interesting change in dialogue indicating the condemned survive in space...

Only change is dialogue in the first panel, which indicates the exiled criminals are still alive, but in orbit.

The figure of Judge Krenk being murdered in Panel 6, and his corpse in Panel 7 have been removed!

Panel One: Judge Krenk is said to be wounded, not dead!

Panel Six: Frances' face redrawn to look less maniacal and his sentence altered to confine him to his lab!

Interesting to note the alterations inflicted by the Comics Code Authority!

Art (and probably story) by Bob Powell.

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Reading Room STRANGE JOURNEY "Space is a Secret"

Before you read this tale, go HERE...

..because this is the second version of this story!

Like almost all other comics publishers, Ajax/Farrell was hit hard by the Seduction of the Innocent witch-hunt of the 1950s.

They survived where many others didn't by kow-towing to the sometimes inane restrictions placed on them by the censor agency created by the industry itself...the Comics Code Authority!

This story, from Ajax/Farrell's Strange Journey #2 (1957) is a classic example of how extreme the Code took matters.

Every page has alterations, including changing the ending (in the original version, the Earthmen never escape)!

The final version, taken back to it's original level of horror...and beyond...can be found on our "brother" RetroBlog, Seduction of the Innocent!

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Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "If...!"

Ever think men and women are from different worlds?

Our pre-Valentines Day offering proves you right!

Writer Carl Wessler had already used the basic plot for this story twice before:

1. "If!" in Atlas' Suspense #27 (1953), with the girl and her family being werewolves and vampires (talk about a blended family)! BTW, you can read that version of the tale HERE!
2. "Out Cold" in EC's Haunt of Fear #25 (1954), with the girl and family shown to be ghouls!

But, by the time this never-reprinted story in Atlas' World of Fantasy #2 (1956) was published, the Comics Code had been implemented, banning "creatures of the night".

So Wessler went with aliens.

Sci-fi was experiencing a resurgence, so it was the logical way to go.

The illustrator was Jay Scott Pike who ended up specializing in romance comics.

You can see some of his work on our "sister" blog True Love Comics Tales.

Reading Room TREASURY OF PIRATE LORE "Origin of the Buccaneer"

Ever wonder where the term "buccaneer" came from?

This interesting bit of historical trivia appeared in, of all places, Charlton's Soldier & Marine Comics #14 (1955).

However, that was not the first time it saw print!

Previously, it was the inside front cover of Fox's Variety Comics 1950 one-shot which took several unsold comics and bound them together under a new cover!

Note: Inside covers were two-color, instead of the usual four-color used for covers and actual comic pages.

In this case, the second color was Magenta, one of the four colors used in standard printing.

BTW, note the changes in the first and second captions between the Comics Code-approved top version and the earlier non-Code-approved version at bottom!

Boy, were they squeamish in those days!

Be here tomorrow when we'll have some more pirate-themed stuff during our celebration of the new pirate/adventure series Black Sails!

Reading Room: FORBIDDEN WORLDS "Mysteries of the Unknown: Interplanetary Episode"

Here's a tale filled with irony...

...about a special man who held the fate of the world in his hands.

Note: there are some "politically-incorrect" references to mental illness, so it might be NSFW.

Appearing in ACG's Forbidden Worlds #86 (1960), this Richard Hughes-scripted and Ken Landau-illustrated tale was an oddly-modified re-presentation of a story originally-published in a pre-Comics Code issue of Adventures into the Unknown!

For one thing, most of the artwork changes restore the original Ken Landau artwork that was modified by Ogden Whitney in the AitU tale!

(The exception is the splash page which is changed from the original version (which had Landau's signature.)

Plus, an entire plot point, involving the dead dog, which was redrawn in the original story into a "mistaken identity" plotline by Whitney, is restored!

Check out our "brother" blog, Seduction of the Innocent™, tomorrow (Wednesday) for the first version of this tale that the Comics Code disapproved of!

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Telling the T-Man Tale Twice...with Tweaks!

The Comics Code Authority was supposed to "clean up" comics after the Seduction of the Innocent scare of the 1950s, but sometimes they took it to ridiculous levels!
Over at our brother blog, Crime & Punishment™, we presented a tale of a secret agent in Iran as shown HERE.
Pretty standard stuff, nothing too violent or sexy.
No blood, gore, or gratuitous "headlights".
We noted it had been reprinted a couple of years later, so we checked the reprint to see if the printing was cleaner on that version.

Imagine our surprise to discover numerous alterations to both text and art in the reprint (as well as a nifty new cover)!
The original had been published in Quality Comics' T-Man # 3 (1952), the reprint in T-Man #31 (1956).
The original was pre-Code, the reprint was post-Code.
So we decided to present both versions, albeit a week apart due to an already-scheduled Sherlock Holmes story.
HERE's the annotated reprint.
Contrast and compare for yourself!

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