Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN "Giant from Beyond!"

Return to a time before Atlantis sank with comics' first barbarian...

...as we present the third and final chapter in the saga of Crom, from Avon's Strange Worlds #2 (1951)

 

Thus do the tales of Crom come to an end, two decades before the coming of Conan in 1970...

His last adventure was produced by co-creators Gardner Fox (writer), and John Giunta (artist).

None of his stories were reprinted, even after the success of Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, and others made sword and sorcery a hot genre!
One bit of barbarian trivia; around this time, artist John Giunta took on a 15-year old apprentice who would later illustrate many fantasy characters including Conan, Kull, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan!
His name?
Frank Frazetta!

Next Wednesday!

A New World of Wonder!

Past, Present, or Future?

This Universe or an Alternate Reality?

The Only Way You'll Find Out is to Be HERE!

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN "Spider God of Akka!"

"Between the years when the ocean drank Atlantis and the Rise of the Sons of Aryas..."

Oops! Wrong barbarian!

This is the second tale of the swordslinger who appeared before Conan the Cimmerian in the comics!

Impressive!

He starts out totally-lost, with no food or water, and by the end of the story, he's become the ruler of a city!
Man, he works fast!
This tale by writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta appeared twice within two months, first in Avon's anthology Strange Worlds #1, then, along with all the other stories from that issue, in a color insert in the Avon sci-fi/fantasy anthology pulp Out of This World Adventures #2!

If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, Kenton of the Star Patrol, Moon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atom, both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories in genre magazines.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam...but with little paying work for a lawyer during the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?

We'll never know...

Reading Room STRANGE ADVENTURES "Science-Fiction Convention on Mars!"

You gotta ask: how can three of the best creatives of the Silver Age of Comics...

...make such an exciting concept so decidedly-deadly dull?

Writer Gardner Fox, penciler Gil Kane, and inker Joe Giella (together and separately) produced some of the koolest tales of the Silver Age!

Yet, this story from DC's Strange Adventures #73 (1956) almost put me to sleep!

The premise is great, the concepts are well-thought out, but the rendering of it is...well...drab!

Why aren't the Martians more visually-interesting?

They're just bald orange guys with slightly-elongated brain-cases!

Couldn't they be using disguises (either masks or holograms) while on Earth and then reveal themselves to be funky-looking Martians when the convention-goers arrive on Mars?

It's not like penciler Gil Kane has any problem with rendering kool-looking humanoid aliens, as shown HERE and HERE!

And, would it have killed them to give the creatives an extra page?

Jamming in all that exposition into the last page really limited Gil into what he could present.

(Remember, DC worked "full script", so Kane knew how much room the captions and dialogue balloons needed to take!)

Using two pages for that last sequence would've helped enormously!

And what about the weird rays that destroy any spaceships?

Natural?

Artificial?

We'll never know...

In comparison, this tale from Dell's Four Color #1288: Twilight Zone has a less-epic, but much more "fun" feel to it!

Special Gardner Fox Note: Fox's Crom, the first barbarian in comic books, returns tomorrow in Wednesday Worlds of Wonder!

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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN

While Conan the Barbarian rampaged thru pulp magazines in the 1930s...

...another barbarian would be the first to slash his way thru comic books!

CROM WILL RETURN NEXT WEDNESDAY!

Crom was the brainchild of writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta.
His first story appeared in the 1950 Avon one-shot anthology Out of This World, then was reprinted the next month in Out of This World Adventures #1, an offbeat pulp magazine/comic book hybrid combining b/w text and spot illustration sections with a color comic insert section.
After a second appearance in OoTWA, he moved over to the comic Strange Worlds which reprinted his second OoTWA appearance, then ran one more tale before the barbarian disappeared into the mists of history.
If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, Kenton of the Star Patrol, Moon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atom, both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam, but with little paying work for a lawyer duing the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?

We'll never know...

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder PSYCHO "Swordsman of Sarn in 'City of Living Light!' "

Created in 1971 for Skywald's b/w magazine Science Fiction Odyssey...

...this cover by Jeffrey Catherine Jones and the following story by writer Gardner Fox, penciler Jack Katz, and inker Vince Colletta were left homeless when the book was cancelled before publication.

However, both were presented in Skywald's Psycho #12 (1973!)!

Enjoy!

This was obviously-meant to be an ongoing high-adventure series in the John Carter/Gullivar Jones mold.

Sadly, there was no follow-up!
Note: Though the cover for Psycho #12 didn't really display Jeff Jones' art to best advantage...

 ...when the cover was reprinted in Toutain Editor's 1984 #36 (1982) in Spain...

...it got the treatment it deserved!

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