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

Space Hero Saturdays FLASH GORDON "Return to Mongo" Part 2: MindLife!

When Last We Left Flash, Dale, and Zarkov...
...Ming the Merciless has been freed from exile and returned to the throne of Mongo!

Our heroes, unaware of this development, have been ambushed and shot down over Mongo's "Lost Continent", where they've been captured by a band of Lizard Men and their queen, the priestess Silith!

Flash Gordon Will Return!

Bonus: the original, uncropped cover art by the prolific George Wilson who illustrated a lot of Gold Key comic covers, as well as numerous paperbacks..including the Flash Gordon novels from Avon Books in the mid-1970s.

Note that, according to the hand-written text at the bottom, it's supposed to be for Flash Gordon #2, not #19!

That's because this was, in fact, the second Gold Key issue of Flash Gordon!

The first was a one-shot in 1965.
But, in 1978, King Features (which owns Flash Gordon) insisted Gold Key continue the series numbering which began in 1965 with a short-lived King Comics series with a new #1, then continued when Charlton Comics took over the book as of #12 and ended with #18 in 1970!
The numbering continued to Gold Key's final issue, #37 in 1982.
Since then, every new Flash Gordon series from Marvel, DC, Dynamite, Ardden, etc, began with #1s!

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Flash Gordon Archives

Volume 4

(which includes this issue)

Space Hero Saturdays FLASH GORDON "Return to Mongo" Part 1

In 1978, with production of both a Flash Gordon feature film and an animated TV series under way...

...Gold Key decided to revive Flash's comic book series which had been on hiatus since 1970!

To Be Concluded...
Next Saturday!

Writer John Warner and illustrator Carlos Garzon took their story cues for this tale from Gold Key's Flash Gordon #19 (1978) from the classic Alex Raymond comic strip.
Writer Warner had extensive experience scripting entertainment properties at Gold Key, including Star Trek and Dark Shadows, as well as Planet of the Apes and Doc Savage at Marvel!
Artist Garzon had worked with Al Williamson on multiple projects including Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and the Flash Gordon newspaper strip.
Both were ideal choices for the project!

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Flash Gordon Archives

Volume 4

(which includes this issue)

Monday Mars Madness TWILIGHT ZONE "Mars: Dead or Alive"

55 years ago, when I saw this painted George Wilson cover on the comics rack of my local candy store...

...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