Showing posts with label Friday Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday Fun. Show all posts

Friday, May 8, 2026

Friday Fun FROM HERE TO INSANITY "Inside Mr America"

When I Think Weird, I Think Wolverton!
And, if you didn't before, you'll agree after reading this never-reprinted feature!
The amount of detail he put into this 2-pager from Charlton's From Here to Insanity V3N1 (1957) is astounding, considering...
a) the low (even for comic books) page rates Charlton was paying!
and
b) the usually-poor printing Charlton was infamous for!
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Friday, May 1, 2026

Friday Fun BASEBALL COMICS "Rube Rooky"

Is there anything Will Eisner hadn't done during his long, illustrious  career?
He took chances experimenting with genres like this baseball-themed 1949 comic book...
...which predated a rush of sports-themed comics from various publishers the next year.
Unfortunately, the big problem with being first is that, often, the world isn't quite ready for you, and Baseball Comics lasted only one issue.
But it certainly wasn't for lack of quality, as this Eisner-written and penciled tale, inked by Tex Blaisdell, proves.
There's more to Rube Rooky's one shot at stardom, and we'll be running it here at Friday Fun for the next few weeks, so don't miss it!
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Baseball Comics #2
(A follow-up published decades later)

Friday, April 24, 2026

Friday Fun HOT DOG "Harry Hotdog in 'Mad, Modern and Egad!' "

Though the Series' Title was Hot Dog...

...the character's name was Harry Hotdog, who can best be described as Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David as a generic yellow canine!






This never-reprinted story from Magazine Enterprises' Hot Dog #3 (1954) aka A-1 #124 (1954) satirizes the "Greatest Generation's" attitude towards "modern art"!
If you're wondering why the comic has two titles and numberings, let me explain...
Like Dell's Four Color ComicsA-1 was an anthology title which served as a tryout platform for various concepts, so it had both the strip's numbering and the title's numbering.
That way, if the strip didn't sell well, the publisher wouldn't have to pay for another second-class mailing permit (which was required for each title published) for a new series!
Numerous ME strips were published this way, including Cave GirlI Am a CopTrail ColtManhuntGhost Rider, Undercover Girl, and Thun'da!
This issue was the third of four Harry Hotdog-starring issues!
Writer/Artist George Crenshaw began as an animator for Walt Disney, then MGM before going to comic strips and books.
Besides being a longtime "ghost" on Dennis the Menace, he created his own long-running strip, Belevdere, about (surprise) a dog...but not an anthropomorphic one like Harry!

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Friday, April 17, 2026

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...
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Friday, April 10, 2026

Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Reservation to the Moon!"

Sometimes the heroic Space Mouse ventured into outer space to fight menaces...
...sometimes the menaces commuted to Earth!
And, sometimes, very rarely, there is no menace...just misunderstood alien visitors!
Writer/artist Frank Carin told this never-reprinted tale of misinterpreted Moon-people motives in Avon's Peter Rabbit #31 (1956)!
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Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder TRAGG AND THE SKY GODS

Man-Gods From Beyond the Stars Wasn't the Only Comics Project Based on Chariots of the Gods!

Art by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia
The best-known (and most successful) was Jack Kirby's Eternals series, which he began when he returned to Marvel in 1975!

In fact, the series was going to be called "Return of the Gods" with a logo using the same font as the Chariots of the Gods books!
But there was another series, also utilizing the theme of "ancient astronauts interacting with our ancestors" launched about the same time...but it didn't start out that way...


Art by Jesse Santos
Writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos had conceived a tale about Tragg, a prehistoric caveman in a world where a crashed alien ship leakd chemicals into a lake which turned a human who drank from it into a proto-werewolf!
You can read it HERE!
Glut and Santos tried to promote Tragg again, this time facing a shaman who utilized herbs to control others.
That story appeared HERE.
When neither tale prompted the editors to greenlight Tragg as a series, a new approach was taken, combining Tragg with Chariot of the Gods-style aliens...and that was OKed as a new series...

Art by Jesse Santos
With the concept locked in, Tragg and the Sky Gods launched at the same time as The Eternals, but lasted only eight issues.
The aliens from the planet Yargon apparently didn't believe in a non-interference Prime Directive, and manipulated the DNA of a pair of cavewomen to "improve the species", then left, returning 25 years later to check on their now-grown offspring, Tragg, his mate Lorn, and Tragg's older brother Jarn (born before the Yargon altered his mother's DNA).
The Yargonites themselves were a mixed bag of altrusitic scientists and power-hungry soldiers, whose differing motives constantly produced problems among themselves, and resulted in conflict with the humans!
Note: Jesse Santos did the interior art for the "tryout stories" listed above and the first two regular issues, but continued doing covers for the remainder of the run.
Dan Spiegle took over the art the stories for the remainder of the series.

Unlike The Eternals (whom Kirby deliberately kept separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe), Tragg was incorporated into an already-existing universe of characters at Gold Key also written by Don Glut, including present-day mystic Doctor Spektor and ancient warrior Dagar the Invincible, even doing crossovers through space and time with those other characters!
We're not going to re-present the tales in Wednesday Worlds of Wonder (which would end up running from now to Autumn non-stop), but here are links to the entire series....

Spawn of Yargon
Part 1, Part 2
Day the Earth Thundered
Part 1, Part 2
Race Against Death
Standalone Story featuring Lorn
Slaves of Fire Mountain
Part 1, Part 2
Project: Sabre: Fang
Part 1, Part 2
Attack of the Man-Apes
Part 1, Part 2
Death-Duel
Part 1, Part 2
Battle for a World
Part 1, Part 2
Master of the Living Bones
(Crossover story with Dagar the Invincible & Dr Spekor)
Part 1, Part 2
Where Prowls the Devil Shark
Part 1, Part 2
Plus: Three Text Stories
"Tragg and the Jaws of Death", "Valley of the Shadow" & "Spotlight on Keera"

Next Week: A New "Flashy" World of Wonder!

Friday, March 13, 2026

Friday the 13th Fun TIPPY'S FRIEND GO-GO "Egg-Head in Friday the 13th"

One of the better Archie clones of the 1960s was Tippy Teen, who had both her own book...
...and two spin-off titles featuring a Riverdale-like ensemble of supporting characters who had their own features, including Egg-Head...who was called that only because he wore glasses and looked like a nerd!
If the story doesn't make much sense, the fact it was from Tower's Tippy's Friend Go-Go #15 (1969), which was the last book of the series and the company was already winding down to close the doors a month later, might have loosened the editorial standards a tad...
You'll note the art appears exactly like the Archie Comics "house look"!
That's because the Tippy Teen books were illustrated almost entirely by moonlighting Archie artists, though which particular one did this tale is unknown!
BTW, Egg-Head was not the only Tower Comics character to bear that name!
One of the original members of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad (a non-superpowered backup team for the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) was named...Egghead!


I'm not sure how "well-trained" and "highly-skilled" the "super-brilliant strategist" was since he died in his second appearance...

Friday, March 6, 2026

Friday Fun KOOKIE "Bongo & Bop...a Breather"

...so it's high (in more ways than one) time we checked in on the slackers they called "beatniks" back in the 1960s...

This never-reprinted story from Dell's Kookie #1 (1962) by writer John Stanley and artist Bill Williams was part of an attempt to produce an on-going series featuring young adults in a (then) contemporary setting.
Bongo and Bop were the slackers of the ensemble, like Dobie Gillis' Maynard G Krebs amped up to 11!
Note: this was the only time their real names (George and Robert) were ever used!
Sadly the title only lasted two issues!

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Friday, February 27, 2026

Friday Fun PETER RABBIT "Trouble on the Moon!"

As Artemis prepares to launch, we wanted to present a Moon-themed Space Mouse story...
but all we could find was this strip also by Space Mouse's writer/artist/animator Frank Carin!
This never-reprinted tale from Avon's Peter Rabbit #30 (1955-6) isn't based on the classic Peter Rabbit character created by Beatrix Potter.
Avon Comics had been running a comic since 1947 reprinting the similar Peter Cottontail newspaper strip by Harrison Cady (based on books by Thornton Burgess) under the name Peter Rabbit Comics.
Perhaps due to not wanting to pay to license the Harrison Cady strip, the series was rebooted with a totally-new, very Americanized, contemporary version of the character, as of #7 (1950), which continued until #34 (1956).
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