Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES "Cosmic Brain"

Here's a cool, never-reprinted tale about a nuclear energy-created mutant...

...linked to the bombing of Hirsohima in 1945.

Look carefully at the artwork, because someone you might not realize apparently contributed to it...

The Grand Comics Database lists Leonard Starr as the artist for this story from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #3 (1951).

But many of the "camera angles" and figures don't look like his work from the period. as seen HERE and HERE!

IMHO, some of the layouts were done by none other than Jack Kirby!

Everything fits Kirby's layout and figure-posing style and Starr was doing occasional work for the Simon & Kirby studio at the time.

Starr might have been unfamiliar with the genre and asked Kirby to do layouts to help him, paying Kirby in cash from his own pocket (If Kirby even took money for the work. I've heard he helped other artists out without renumeration on a number of occasions.)

Either way, I believe this is a "lost" Kirby Klassic!

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Reading Room HOUSE OF MYSTERY "Second Death of Abraham Lincoln"

For the past couple of days, we've been presenting straightforward retellings of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln...

...but that's about to change.

It's gonna be a looong vacation, since he screwed up his job as Abraham Lincoln by "breaking character"...one of the worst faux pas an actor can commit!

Written by Arnold Drake and illustrated by Leonard Starr, this cover-featured story from DC's House of Mystery #51 (1956) is one of several stories where people from the present become involved either in the actual assassination or recreations of it.

Be here tomorow for another comic book story about the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Reading Room BLACK BUCCANEER "The Story Begins..."

In the Golden Age of Comics, pirates with their own strips were a fairly common sight...

...though few were the lead tale in the books they appeared in!

Appearing in every issue of the short-lived Blazing Comics, the Black Buccaneer was typical of the "heroic pirate" strips that most companies gave a test run.

Apparently, unlike mad scientists (who headlined a number of strips), publishers felt pirates who were actually villains wouldn't sell.

So they created pirates who were undercover agents for their governments, or framed for crimes they didn't do, or just misunderstood.

The writer for this intro tale from the first issue of the anthology title Blazing Comics from short-lived publisher Rural Home is unknown.

And, though it's not definitive, the general consusus is that Gil Kane and/or Leonard Starr illustrated it.

Be here tomorrow when we'll have some more pirate-themed stuff during our celebration of the new pirate/adventure series Black Sails!