Monday Mecha Madness ALARMING TALES "I Want to Be a Man!"

Following up on a kool guest-post about artificial intelligence...

...is this little tale about an AI who aspires to be more than mere machine!

Written and penciled by Jack (King) Kirby and inked by Kirby with Simon & Kirby Studios partner Joe Simon, this story from Harvey's Alarming Tales #2 (1957), this short feature would be quite different if done today, since miniaturization would enable David to put FABIAC in a human-sized form with close-to-human features...as Kirby himself did with X-51 aka Aaron Stack aka Mr Machine aka Machine Man 20 years later!

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Monday Mecha Madness JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Orogo!! The Nightmare from Outer Space!!"

Behind this Jack Kirby-penciled/Don Heck-inked splash...

...lurks a mystery. which we'll delve into after you read the story!

When this Stan Lee-scripted, Don Heck-illustrated (except for the splash) tale was reprinted in Marvel's Fantasy Masterpieces #2 (1967), the cover played-up Heck's Cyclopean robot (and Dashin' Don himself)...

...but when it was first published in Atlas' Journey into Mystery #57 (1960)...

...and reprinted a second time in Marvel's Where Monsters Dwell #12 (1971)...

...it used the original Kirby cover that seems to be a reverse-angle of the splash page above and shows a radically-different Orogo with two eyes!

Did editor/art director Stan the Man have The King do the cover and splash and then pass the rest of the story to Heck to finish,...but, for whatever reason, didn't give Dashing Don the cover as reference for Orogo, so Heck came up with his own version of the robot...with only one eye?

There are several Atlas-era monster stories where Kirby would do splashes, then another artist would complete the tale.

Bookmark us and keep an eye out as we attempt to solve the half century-old mystery....

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Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY / WHERE MONSTERS DWELL "Ruler of Earth!"

We had something much different for today's post...

...but after Don the Con's announcement at the United Nations that the US government would now refer to Artificial Intelligence only as "Super Intelligence",  my mind immediately returned to this article we posted last year at fellow RetroBlog Hero Histories!

So, let's travel to the "future" year of 1990...as seen from 1962...

Appearing as the cover-featured story in one of the final pre-Mighty Thor issues of Atlas' Journey into Mystery (#82 in 1962), this story by plotter/editor Stan Lee, writer Larry Leiber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Dick Ayers is a clear Cold War/anti-Communist parable!

But, when the tale was reprinted at the end of the Cold War in Marvel's Where Monsters Dwell #25 (1973)...

...editor Roy Thomas had the hammer and sickle and red star insignias removed from the Russkies' hats...

...and replaced with an "H", which was explained with the change in the dialogue balloon above!

HYDRA???

Why not AIM...who were always more tech-oriented?

So, presumably, there are at least two worlds in the Marvel Multiverse where ROE presides, to this day, over a peaceful Earth!

Bonus for putting up with this all this fanboy mishigas...the lovingly-detailed original art for the spash page by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers!

BTW, did you note how warm, cuddly, and almost teddy-bear-like the cover's RoE is, compared to the version in the story itself?

Monday Mecha Madness WORLD OF FANTASY "Guardian of the Stars!"

What's kooler than a Jack (King) Kirby cover?

How about the Steve Ditko story it leads into?

Did the cover or the story come first?

The total redesign of the robot indicates whichever was done first wasn't provided to the other artist as reference!

Also, shouldn't the title be "Guardian of the Earth"?

Of course, that would be a "spoiler", ruining the drama shown on the cover...

Illustrated by Steve Ditko, this tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #17 (1959) was probably plotted by Stan Lee, though the scripting doesn't read like his work.
Trivia: Though both the Jack Kirby cover and the Steve Ditko story have been reprinted, they weren't reprinted together!
Each was reprinted in an expensive Omnibus devoted to that particular artist's work!

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Captain America Celebrates America!

A Half-Century Ago, Marvel Did an All-New Tabloid-Sized Special Celebrating the Bicentennial...

Unpublished Page by Jack Kirby

...titled Captain America's Bicentennial Battles, written and penciled by Jack (King) Kirby, who had just returned from a tenure at DC Comics!

While it did show some of the flaws and blemishes of American History, the tale ended on an extremely-optimistic note...

Penciled page (from photocopy) by Jack Kirby

...and gave us an iconic image of the Star-Spangled Avenger congratulating Uncle Sam on making it to 200!

Bicentennial Bonus: the original art by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia!

Happy Birthday, America!

(Hope it isn't our last one...)

Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Doorway to the Future!"

Is this a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s?

Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) and judge for yourself...

When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".

Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.

This story is a prime example.

The figure poses, faces, machinery, even the futuristic buildings all but scream "KIRBY"!

The Grand Comics Database lists the story's artist as Marvin Stein with a "?", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, and the fact Stein worked primarily for their studio, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material page count came up short.

Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown, but it might also be Kirby...

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Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Into the 4th Dimension"

Is this a lost "Kirby Klassic" from the 1950s?

Read this never-reprinted tale from Prize's Monster of Frankenstein #31 (1954) and judge for yourself...

When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".

Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by the legendary Jack (King) Kirby.

This story is a prime example.

The Grand Comics Database lists the story's illustrator as Marvin Stein, who worked primarily for the Simon & Kirby studio, so this most likely was an S&K "inventory" story laid-out by Kirby and meant for insertion wherever editorial page count came up short.

Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown...

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Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Face on Mars"

The most famous story from Harvey's Race for the Moon anthology series...

...is this tale from #2 by writer/peniler Jack Kirby and inker Al Williamson which doesn't take place on the Moon...but on Mars!

Why is it so famous?

When NASA's Viking satellite reached Mars in 1976, it took this photo...

Keep in mind that this was the era of the Chariots of the Gods? fad, and to many, this pic was confirmation that aliens had either come thru the Solar System and stopped off not only on Earth, but Mars as well, or were from Mars initially!

And, there were those who remembered this little comic tale from their childhood.

The truth was a bit more mundane.
Click HERE for NASA's explanation.

To this day, there are still those who say it's a cover-up, that there is life on Mars, and that "the face" is a relic of their existence.

Judge for yourself.

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