Friday Fun YAK YAK "How to Win Friends"

Sometimes, we need to get away from current events...

...and just enjoy a good laugh, courtesy of legendary writer/artist Jack Davis!

From Dell's Four-Color Comics #1186 (1961)

Dell gave MAD mainstay Jack Davis his own title in the Four Color Comics series, to do with as he pleased.

The series, Yak Yak (subtitled "A Pathology of Humor") only ran two issues, but they were pure Davis, who wrote, penciled, inked, and colored the whole project as well as providing painted covers for both issues!
It's never been reprinted, except for excerpts here and there.
Hopefully, somebody will do so in the near future...

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Art of Jack Davis
Paid Link

Lunar Reading Room & Theatre WALT DISNEY'S MAN INTO SPACE

Walt Disney Was a Major Supporter of America's Space Program...

...so much so that, even before Sputnik launched the Space Race, he devoted a number of episodes of his various TV series to then-infant American space program!

The original plan to send men to the Moon involved first creating a space station as shown above to serve as a launch platform for lunar-bound ships.

Obviously, that never occurred, but a lot of what was presented by Disney, based on info from such authorities as Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley, was to become fact years later!

Written by Don F Christensen and illustrated by Tony Sgroi, this section from Dell's Four Color Comics: Man into Space #716 (1956) adapts part of one of the first episodes of Magical World of Disney devoted to the then-infant Space Program, "Man and the Moon" scripted by William Bosche, John W. Dunn, and director Ward Kimball, which aired Dec 28, 1955.

And. because the servicable (but hardly spectactular) artwork above doesn't do justice to the concepts involved, here's the actual segment of the episode combining live-action, minature SFX, and animation in a tour-de-force only Disney could bring to TV at the time.
BTW, though it initially-aired in b/w, the episode was shot in color, because Disney knew color TV for the mass-market was only a few years away!
Reruns from the early 1960s onward were broadcast in color...
Trivia: the voice of the narrator is Dick Tufeld, best-known as the voice of The Robot on Lost in Space!

Note the "state of the art" technology used on the spacecraft.

In reality, the actual tech used in the Mercury and Gemini space programs was barely a few years ahead of this stuff!

It's a miracle they survived those flights!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Walt Disney Treasures

TomorrowLand
Disney in Space and Beyond
Which contains all the kool 1950s Disney episodes about space travel, plus bonus features including an interview with Ray Bradbury about Walt Disney!
Paid Link

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)!

Space Hero Saturdays MEN INTO SPACE "Space Probe"

Just as the #Artemis Crew are Currently "Taking the Jalopy Out for a Test Drive"...

...the astronauts who will soon travel to the Moon in this amazingly-realistic TV series from the early days of the Space Race needed to see how their ship will handle in space and "work out the bugs" before heading all the way to a lunar landing!

Adapted by writer Gaylord DuBois and illustrator Murphy Anderson from the episode's screenplay by Arthur Weiss, you may note there are some differences between the comic and the episode as aired, as you'll see when you click HERE to open a new window to see the actual episode!
That's because, with the long lead-time to produce a comic (about 3 months from script and art to production to printing), DuBois and Anderson had to work from an early draft of the script!
Trivia: Angie Dickenson played Col. McCauley's wife Mary in this episode, but Joyce Taylor portrayed Mary in the other eight episodes the semi-regular character appeared in!

Note: We already re-presented the comic adaptation of the show's second episode, "Moon Landing" HERE and HERE at our brother RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, our usual locale for comic book/graphic novel adapatations of movies/TV shows/radio shows!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Men Into Space

The Making of the TV Series

Paid Link

Good Friday KING OF KINGS "Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday"

You may be wondering "Where's Parts 1 & 2?"...

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ

...and the answer is; we haven't run them yet!

Since it's Good Friday, we're presenting the Dell Comics adaptation of the final part of the 1961 movie, covering the period from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.

We'll run the first part around Christmas, and the second shortly after that.

While the writer for this movie adaptation from Dell's Four Color Comics King of Kings #1236 (1961) is unknown, the artist is Gerald McCann, a pulp artist who moved to comics in the early 1950s and did numerous Classics Illustrated covers and stories including "Abraham Lincoln" and "Ben-Hur".

Who says comics ain't educational?

Lunar Reading Room MEN INTO SPACE "Perils of Outer Space" and "What Is on the Moon?"

Before We Actually Launched People into Space...

...the newly-formed NASA was incredibly-concerned about "real-world" problems most sci-fi stories never addressed!

Both pages above written by Gaylord DuBois, illustrated by Murphy Anderson

When you look back on it, it's astonishing how much info we did have when the only tools we were utilizing were ground-based visual telescopes and spectrometers!

The only satellites we (or the Russkies) had at that point were just metal-hulled shells with radio transmitters and radiation detectors (like geiger counters)!

One thing the scientists were adamant about, even then, was first taking the vehicle that would orbit and land on the lunar surface and "field-test" the ship as much as possible before actually landing!

In fact, the surprisingly scientifically-accurate 1959 TV series Men into Space did exactly that in the series' premiere episode, "Space Probe", which was adapted into comic form...

We're running that tale in Space Hero Saturdays this coming Saturday!

Don't Miss It!

Note: We already re-presented the comic adaptation of the show's second episode, "Moon Landing" HERE and HERE at our brother RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, our usual locale for comic book/graphic novel adapatations of movies/TV shows/radio shows!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Men Into Space

The Making of the TV Series

Paid Link