Wednesday Worlds of Wonder MAN-GODS FROM BEYOND THE STARS Part 2

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Neal Adams

In the far-distant past...

technologically-advanced aliens visit the Earth on a mission of exploration.

Their mandate is to observe, but not interfere.

In the present (1975)...

scientists discover ancient cave paintings that tell of god-like beings who came down among the primitive humans.

But, the paintings don't tell the whole story...

Next Wednesday: The Conclusion!

Written by Doug Moench, illustrated by Alex Nino. this tale from Marvel Premiere #1 (1975) has never been reprinted!
As we said last week, When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel in 1975, while he did take on writing and illustrating two of his greatest co-creations, Captain America and Black Panther, his new projects (Eternals, Machine Man/Mister Machine, and Devil Dinosaur, were all set firmly outside the Marvel Universe, as was the one-shot Silver Surfer graphic novel Kirby and writer Stan Lee produced (which you can read HERE),often referring to Marvel characters as fictional, 
All that went by the wayside, when Kirby left Marvel to do animation design for Hanna-Barbara and Ruby-Spears along with his own independent comics projects.
It appears the Marvel creatives couldn't wait to incorporate the new characters and within months, all of Kirby's characters were guest-starring in various titles including Thor, Hulk, Ka-Zar, and even What If?, firmly integrating them with links to everyone from the Norse and Greek gods to Thanos himself (who was retroactively made the son of two Eternals).

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Eternals by Jack "King" Kirby

Monster-Size

A HUUUGE HardCover, reprinting the entire Kirby run at Original Art Size (15"x22"), 1 1/2 times the size of the printed comic book and other trade paperbacks!
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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder MAN-GODS FROM BEYOND THE STARS Part 1

 Chariots of the Gods? was the primary inspiration for Jack Kirby's Eternals...

...now part of both the Marvel Multiverse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
So let's look at a strip from the same era, the mid-1970s, also inspired by Erich Von Daniken's concepts!

The Story Continues..Next Wednesday!

Written by Doug Moench, illustrated by Alex Nino.

Though largely discredited today, Von Daniken's books about "ancient astronauts" influenced pop culture from the 1970s to the present, including tv (BattleStar Galactica), movies (Prometheus and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull), and comics (Tragg and the Sky Gods)

The Eternals was originally called Return of the Gods and, like Mister Machine/Machine Man was intentionally not intended to be part of the Marvel Universe!
We'll go more into that next week...

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Chariots of the Gods

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Lunar Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Saucer Man"

From the era when actual space travel was brand new...

 ...and flying saucers were probably real, here's a tale from Harvey's Race for the Moon #3 (1958).

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson, an absolutely magnificent combo, rivaling Kirby's pairings with Wally Wood and Joe Sinnott!

Science fiction was in a state of flux as real-world science began catching up with our imaginations.

Instead of far-future sagas with warp-drive ships, tales of "the day after tomorrow", when we would make our first landings on the Moon and Mars came into vogue.

That didn't mean that visitors from beyond our Solar System were left out, but the technology we used to respond to them (friendly or not) was much closer to "present-day" (1950s) tech than ray-guns and photon drives.

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Simon & Kirby Library
Science Fiction

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Reading Room BLACK CAT MYSTIC "Great Stone Face!"

Despite the title, Black Cat Mystic was actually a sci-fi anthology...

...featuring the final work of the Simon & Kirby Studio!

NOTE: May be NSFW due to racial stereotypes common to the era.

Penciled, inked, and probably scripted by Jack Kirby, this tale from Harvey's Black Cat Mystic #59 (1957) is Jack's first look at what would become known as the "ancient astronauts" theory in the 1970s due to the interest generated by Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods.
At the same time, Kirby himself would expand the concept into The Eternals, (originally-titled Return of the Gods), which is now one of the lynchpins of the Marvel Universe.

Kirby would present a variation of the theme a couple of years after "Great Stone Face" in Race for the Moon's "Face on Mars" as shown HERE.

Note: Kirby and Stan Lee did a variation of the concept at Marvel in the 1960s with The Inhumans, who were created by Kree scientists visiting Earth in prehistoric times and genetically-manipulating humans to draw out dormant abilities.

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Simon & Kirby Library

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Space Force Saturdays CAPTAIN QUICK & THE SPACE SCOUTS "Martian Canal Frog and the Jewel Flowers"

Strap On Your Rocket Packs for Another Adventure with...

...who are still on Mars, as we saw last time!

Though the art for this never-reprinted tale from Prize Comics' Tom Corbett: Space Cadet V2#2 (1955) is credited solely to Marvin Stein at the Grand Comics Database, the layout appears to be by Jack Kirby, which would make sense since Simon & Kirby's studio was packaging the book for Prize Comics!
Beyond being set in the near future, there was no connection to Tom Corbett!

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Pre-Code Classics

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

Volume One

The First 7 Issues

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Monday Mecha Madness WORLD OF FANTASY "To Build a Robot!"

Does this tale take place in the present...or the future?

Or has it already happened, and we don't know it?

Considering the way industry tried to slow the introduction of the electric car, is it that far-fetched someone for their own ulterior motives is trying to suppress mobile artificial intelligence?

Or have we just seen the Teminator and Matrix films too many times?

Plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Christopher Rule had their own take in Atlas' World of Fantasy #18 (1959), decades before James Cameron or the Wachowskis...and it didn't take multiple films to tell it, just four pages!

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Science Fiction

Simon & Kirby Library
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Tales Twice-Told BLACK MAGIC "Screaming Doll!"

You Saw This Tale on Tuesday...

...to be more precise, you saw a re-illustrated version of the same script!

This is the first, never-reprinted, rendering of the story!

Illustrated by Bill Benulis, and scripted by a currently-unknown writer (Though it could be Simon & Kirby Studio bosses Joe Simon and/or Jack Kirby) this story from Prize's Black Magic V4N4 (1954) has some oddly-unique attributes!

It's only 5 pages, when most of the stories are 6-8 pages.

(The re-drawn version is 6 pages!)

There's no half or full-page splash panel, though almost all Black Magic stories (except for one or two-pagers) have them!

Was the original story condensed/re-edited for space or content?

At the time (early 1954), there was a rising rage against comics in general and horror comics in particular due to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent witch-hunt!

Sadly, we'll never know...

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America

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