Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES / UNUSUAL TALES "They Say It Really Happened"

Here's a kool one-pager by writer Joe Gill and artist Dick Giordano...

...originally presented in Charlton's Space Adventures #4 (1953) in b/w (it was on the inside cover, which is usually black line/grayscale or two-color)!

But when it was reprinted two years later in Charlton's Unusual Tales #1 (1955), it was in color.

As you can see, the gray tones were left intact, giving the color art a really unique look. 

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Charlton Arrow #4

A tribute to this kool, eccentric, comics company!

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "The World Awaits"

You know Steve Ditko as the co-creator of The Amazing Spider-Man...

...but he was equally-adept at visualizing insects as well as arachnids!

This lovely Ditko-rendered story from Charlton's Out of This World #12 (1959) would really have benefited from some Stan Lee-esque scripting rather than Joe Gill's stilted prose, which renders the ending rather...dull.

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Creativity of Ditko

Reading Room BLACK MAGIC "Black Fog"

A never-reprinted 1960s Steve Ditko story is, literally, a buried treasure...

...and this long-unseen tale from Prize's Black Magic #47 (1961) has just been uncovered for your enjoyment!

Considering this is Ditko's only Prize Comics work since the pre-Comics Code days when he assisted in the Simon & Kirby studio, some speculate it was a rejected Charlton story that was "shopped around" to other publishers.

If that's the case, the unidentified writer is more than likely Joe Gill, who wrote almost all Ditko's stories at Charlton during this period.

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Outer Limits

Steve Ditko Archives Vol 6

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "A Better World than Ours"

A never-reprinted tale with roots in Western (ie European, not Wild West) culture...

...particularly the repressive 18th-19th centuries!

This Joe Gill-scripted and Eccio-rendered tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N8 (1969) has it's roots in exhausted European 18th and 19th Century sailors' obsession with primitive island societies which they considered to be the incarnation of an innocent "paradise"!

Of course, being a Comics Code Authority-approved book, the creators couldn't present what Selig was probably doing besides "fi-shing"...

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Charlton Arrow #4

featuring non-superhero stories from the long-gone and greatly-missed publisher!

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Imitation People" Part 1

Do androids have souls?

Can they feel "real" (not programmed) emotions?

What does this Don (the Con) Trump wannabe have in mind?

This never-reprinted story from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N4 (1968) will be continued at our "sister" RetroBlog; True Love Comics Tales...

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Charlton Arrow #4

Best of Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Night of the Red Snow"

As near-record heat grips most of the good ol' USA...

Art by Steve Ditko

...we re-present a chilly comics tale to take your minds off it, illustrated by the co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko!

Unfortunately, due to Charlton Comics' legendarily-bad printing, the "red" effect on the canvas is muted almost to uselessness, diminishing the ending's effectiveness!

BTW, did you note the sneaky "red herring" on the sides of the moving van on page 3?

Beautifully-rendered by Steve Ditko, this tale from Charlton's Unusual Tales #9 (1957) has no credited writer, but many researchers/historians believe the scripter is the prolific (and underrated) Joe Gill.

Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Look into the Future"

One of Charlton Comics' defining traits was...

...using montages of interior art as their covers.

Usually, the cover would utilize several different stories' art, but in this case, they played up the final story in the issue!

A morality play in a sci-fi/fantasy context.
Rod Serling was a master of this concept, as he displayed weekly on the original Twilight Zone.
This never-reprinted story from Charlton's Unusual Tales #27 (1961) illustrated by Steve Ditko and probably written by Charlton mainstay Joe Gill follows the concept to a "T", within the limitations established by the Comics Code Authority.
If it had been done pre-Code, Simms would've come to a horrific (and graphic) end...

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "From All Our Darkrooms..."

Here's a tale we couldn't tell in today's world of digital photography...

...but until a couple of years ago, it was quite plausable!

Though set in 1972, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #4 was published in 1957!

Wonderfully-rendered by Steve Ditko at his moodiest, the story was most-likely scripted by Charlton workhorse Joe Gill.

The "negative" effect was achieved by simply making negative photostats of parts of the original art and pasting them onto the art boards before photographing them for color separations.

To demonstrate, here's the printed cover...

...and here's the b/w original art with the caption and negative photostat removed...

You didn't think Ditko inked the right side as "negative space", did you?