Monday Mecha Madness ASTRO BOY "Gangor the Monster"

Though technically a "robotto", not a "mecha"...

...this manga-to anime character was America's first exposure to Japanese pop culture's passion for artificial life-forms!

Now, we're presenting the first American comic book adaptation of one of the episodes from the 1963 series, which aired afternoons Monday through Friday on local channels!

But Wait!

Do You Believe the Threat of the Weird Robot is Over???

You're in for a surprise...

Next Monday!

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Astro Boy

Ultra Collectors' Edition Set 1

(Contains the complete [52 episodes] First Season, PLUS, Lots of Extra Features!)

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Space Hero Saturdays FLASH GORDON Happy 45th, Flash!

Before we end 2025, we wanted to acknowledge that it's the 45th Anniversary of Flash Gordon.

Though critically-reviled when it came out, the movie has attained cult-classic status, primarily due to the soundtrack by Queen...

...and over-the-top performances by (among others) Brian Blessed (Hawkman Prince Vultan), Topol (Dr Zarkoff) and Max Von Sydow (Ming the Merciless).

The comic adaptation was written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by legendary artist Al Williamson (who, ironically, was also doing the equally-magnificent graphic novel version of The Empire Strikes Back at the same time)!

Interestingly, Williamson inked the entire Flash adaptation, while allowing the talented Carlos Garzon (himself, no slouch) to ink the bulk of Empire.
Read it, from the beginning...HERE!

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Flash Gordon
2-Disk Limited-Edition BluRay
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The RetroBlog Thanksgiving Turkey for 2025 Is...

Wait!
WHAT???
Where is that damn intern???
WTF is going on???
"You said "pull the poster for yadda-yadda-Man-yadda-Flint-yadda-sitting in a chair surrounded by women!"
That's not what I meant!
This is what I meant!

(and yes, the poster was deliberately-designed to mimic Bob Peake's iconic art!)
Now that is a turkey worth roasting...although what we're presenting is the HTF comic book adaptation...which is quite different from the film!

(With the long lead-in time to write, draw, and print the comic, I suspect they only had the early drafts of the script to adapt.)
At any rate,
Part 1 will run on Thanksgiving!
Part 2 will appear on Black Friday!
And, here's a kool early Christmas present for you...
On Saturday, the original, uncut theatrical print (including the pre-credits sequence with Wilma instead of Lady Liberty holding the Columbia torch aloft!) will be seen for the first time in decades, so you can compare it with the comic!
So Visit Secret Sanctum of Captain Video on Thanksgiving...or wander over on Saturday (after shopping on Black Friday) if you want to binge everything at once!

The RetroBlog Summer Blogathon Concentrates This Week on HEROINES!

What's Better Than a Heroine?

A whole TEAM of them!

We've been presenting their complete, never-reprinted, exploits from the Swinging Sixties which will, sadly, end this week with the last of their 4-page tales and the one-shot book-length story that finishes their run...but left it open-ended!
Trivia: Though the last two issues of Gold Key's The Man from U.N.C.L.E. were reprints of earlier Napoleon Solo & Illya Kuryakin stories, the Jet Dream tales were new!
You'll be seeing everything this week between RetroBlogs Heroines! and Crime & Punishment!
Meanwhile (as they say in comics) here are the previously-re-presented stories...
Heroines: "Spy in the Sky" "Spider and the Spy" "Ting-a-Ling--Enemy Agent" "Powder-Puff Derby Caper" "Splash-Down to Death" "Day of Infamy" "Captive Jet" "Call to Freedom"
Crime & Punishment: "Super-Tiger of Targan!" "Death Plunge" "Set-Up Sultan" "Farmer Brown Fiasco"
True Love Comics Tales: "Achilles Heel"

As they say in the trading card business...
Buy Them!
Trade Them
Collect Them All!

Reading Room TWILIGHT ZONE "Mars: Dead or Alive"

Almost 60 years ago, when I saw this painted George Wilson cover on the comics spinner...

...I just had to read it!

(BTW, the model posing as the astronaut is Steve (Doc Savage) Holland!)

Written by Dick Wood and illustrated by Nevio Zaccara, the cover-feature (though not lead story) from Gold Key's Twilight Zone #17 (1966) offered a somewhat-plausable explanation (in those pre-Mars Rover days) as to why we hadn't seen signs of life on Mars.
Wood and Zaccara also collaborated on the never-reprinted Explorers in the Unknown strip that ran in Gold Key's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea comic.

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Twilight Man

Rod Serling and the Birth of Television

Friday Fun MODNIKS "Noel Talent: the Most Unkindest Cut"

By the early 1970s, Jack Davis was an established, successful, and busy, commercial artist...

...so when was this weird filler piece, published in 1970, created?

Written by Gary Poole and illustrated by Davis, this one-off tale appeared in the second (and final) issue of Gold Key's Modniks in 1970.

But here's the weird part...

The previous issue of this title appeared three years earlier...in 1967!

That's a loooonnng time between issues!

Plus, Davis had never done any work for Gold Key, and it had been years since Jack had done any work for Dell (which Gold Key split off from)!

And, Poole didn't start working in comics until the mid-1960s, after GK had split from Dell, so this wasn't inventory from that period!

Did Davis know Poole (who had been a radio/tv writer for years before coming to comics) and illustrated this as a favor for a friend entering the field?

We'll never know...

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Jack Davis

Drawing American Pop Culture: a Career Retrospective

Friday Fun HOLY CREAM-FILLED PASTRY!

When Hostess Baking ceased operation in 2012, a chapter of comics history ended...

This wonderfully-looney series of ads featuring all the major comics characters from Archie to Spider-Man to Casper the Friendly Ghost to Wonder Woman appeared in comics for almost a decade, featuring some of the best artists in the business including Neal Adams (above with Dick Giordano), Gil Kane, John Romita Sr, Curt Swan, Jim Starlin, and Frank Miller doing the rendering!

Note: You can see a complete set of the Marvel and DC ones HERE!

Bonus: the original art for this ad...

BTW, Hostess' nigh-indestructible pastries have since returned to supermarket shelves...but the comic advertising never did!

Reading Room UFO FLYING SAUCERS "Life on Other Worlds"

Specifically-themed anthologies are difficult to keep going for more than a few issues at a time...

...but Gold Key's UFO Flying Saucers / UFOs and Outer Space managed an impressive 25-issue run!

The series combined stories using documented UFO sightings with features based on reasonable speculation and tales that were flights of sheer fantasy,

Written by Leo Dorfman and illustrated by Luis Dominguez, this short from  UFO Flying Saucers #1 (1968) falls into the "reasonable speculation" category...albeit with aliens who look like refugees from a Golden Age (1920s-1940s) pulp magazine!

BTW, Gold Key's former publishing partner Dell, had their own 1960s anthology, Flying Saucers, which began before UFO Flying Saucers, but only managed five issues!

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Flying Saucers from Outer Space

by Major Donald E Keyhoe

Monday Medical Madness TWILIGHT ZONE "Plague"

Submitted for your approval...

...a tale so frightening, it couldn't be told on TV...but it did appear in comic books...in The Twilight Zone!

There wasn't a sequel to this never-reprinted story by writer Leo Dorfman and illustrator Joe Orlando (with an assist from Mike Sekowsky) from Gold Key's Twilight Zone #20 (1967)!

Perhaps it's best we never know,,,

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Andromeda Strain

by Michael Crichton

and the sequel

Andromeda Evolution

by Michael Crichton & Daniel H Wilson