Reading Room WORLD OF SUSPENSE "By the Dark of the Moon"

The cover depicting this tale has a gothic horror feel...

...but, in fact, the story is hard science fiction!

No ghosts or ghoulies at all!

(Halloween was over a week ago!)

Was this story's ending rewritten to conform to the Comics Code?

Scripted by Carl Wessler and ilustrated by John Giunta, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Suspense #5 (1956) features a last panel with a rather convoluted explanation that seems, as the saying goes "out of left field".

Or is it just the result of trying to cram a lot of story into only four pages?

We'll never know...

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN "Giant from Beyond!"

Return to a time before Atlantis sank with comics' first barbarian...

...as we present the third and final chapter in the saga of Crom, from Avon's Strange Worlds #2 (1951)

 

Thus do the tales of Crom come to an end, two decades before the coming of Conan in 1970...

His last adventure was produced by co-creators Gardner Fox (writer), and John Giunta (artist).

None of his stories were reprinted, even after the success of Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, and others made sword and sorcery a hot genre!
One bit of barbarian trivia; around this time, artist John Giunta took on a 15-year old apprentice who would later illustrate many fantasy characters including Conan, Kull, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan!
His name?
Frank Frazetta!

Next Wednesday!

A New World of Wonder!

Past, Present, or Future?

This Universe or an Alternate Reality?

The Only Way You'll Find Out is to Be HERE!

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN "Spider God of Akka!"

"Between the years when the ocean drank Atlantis and the Rise of the Sons of Aryas..."

Oops! Wrong barbarian!

This is the second tale of the swordslinger who appeared before Conan the Cimmerian in the comics!

Impressive!

He starts out totally-lost, with no food or water, and by the end of the story, he's become the ruler of a city!
Man, he works fast!
This tale by writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta appeared twice within two months, first in Avon's anthology Strange Worlds #1, then, along with all the other stories from that issue, in a color insert in the Avon sci-fi/fantasy anthology pulp Out of This World Adventures #2!

If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, Kenton of the Star Patrol, Moon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atom, both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories in genre magazines.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam...but with little paying work for a lawyer during the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?

We'll never know...

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN

While Conan the Barbarian rampaged thru pulp magazines in the 1930s...

...another barbarian would be the first to slash his way thru comic books!

CROM WILL RETURN NEXT WEDNESDAY!

Crom was the brainchild of writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta.
His first story appeared in the 1950 Avon one-shot anthology Out of This World, then was reprinted the next month in Out of This World Adventures #1, an offbeat pulp magazine/comic book hybrid combining b/w text and spot illustration sections with a color comic insert section.
After a second appearance in OoTWA, he moved over to the comic Strange Worlds which reprinted his second OoTWA appearance, then ran one more tale before the barbarian disappeared into the mists of history.
If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, Kenton of the Star Patrol, Moon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atom, both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam, but with little paying work for a lawyer duing the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?

We'll never know...

Reading Room WEIRD ADVENTURES "Dome of Death"

Reading this blog,  you might think that "sci-fi" just means "space opera" or "futuristic"...

...but it can be set on present-day (meaning when the story was created) Earth, as well!

This never-reprinted tale from the Ziff-Davis one-shot Weird Adventures #10 (1951) reads like a script for an anthology tv show or a b-movie.
It's mostly character interaction and a crime/thriller plot with some easily-done (even for the 1950s) sfx!

Illustrated by John Giunta, whose long career spans both the Golden and Silver Ages with work for literally every company in every genre!
However, Giunta may be best-known to today's audiences as the artist who gave the legendary Frank Frazetta his first job, when he hired the talented teen as a studio assistant!
The writer of this unusual tale is unknown, but could be Giunta himself!

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Reading Room BLACK CAT MYSTERY "Halloween Nightmare"

Here's a re-presentation of a topical terror tale about Halloween from Harvey's Black Cat Mystery #34 (1952).

Penciled by Manny Stallman and inked by John Giunta.
The writer is unknown.

Unlike many other Harvey Comics horror stories (as shown HERE), when this one was reprinted in Black Cat #52 (two years later), nothing was altered!

Happy Halloween!