Baker Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Return of the Pied Piper"

A Corrupt Politician Who Steals Public Funds!

As common back in 1959, when this never-reprinted story was published, as today, 65 years later!

Written by Joe Gill, penciled by Matt Baker (with only a single beautiful woman in sight) and inked by Vince Colletta, this story from Charlton's anthology Out of this World #13 (1959) is dependent on the reader being familiar with the classic fairy tale of "The Pied Piper of Hamlin"!
Wonder how many kids today know about the tale and would get the "punchline"...

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Matt Baker

Art of Glamour

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Monday Madness OUT OF THIS WORLD "Xondu the Eternal"

A never-reprinted 1950s sci-fi tale by legendary Black artist Matt Baker...

..with a Twilight Zone-style twist ending!

OK, it's more a "Third from the Sun" than "To Serve Man" ending, but still, it's fairly effective!

(And kudos to those who didn't have to click on the links to understand what I was talking about!)

Penciled by Matt Baker and inked by Vince Colletta, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #15 (1959) unfortunately suffers from both Colletta's rushed inking and the poor printing Charlton was notorious for.

(Unlike other comics companies, Charlton had their own printing press, which had been designed for packaging...including breakfast cereal boxes...not newsprint!)

The writer is unknown, but many believe it to be Joe Gill, who was rapidly making a name for himself with an impressive, and varied, body of work.
Penciler Matt Baker was one of the few Black comic book artists of the Golden and Silver Ages, and was easily the most prolific of them!
Though known for his "good girl" art, including the famous (and infamous) Phantom Girl stories, he handled every genre with ease, including horror, war, sci-fi, and romance!
Sadly, though, few of his stories featured Black characters...who were rare in comics until the mid-1960s!
You can read a short, but complete bio HERE!
He's also our featured artist this month in the Baker Reading Room at Atomic Kommie Comics, spotlighting his amazing cross-genre versatility!

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Matt Baker

Art of Glamour
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Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "My Secret"

You may ask "Why is a simple crime story being published in a sci-fi comic?"

The answer will surprise you...

Y'know, Donald Trump and his ilk could take a lesson from this Steve Ditko-rendered tale...illegal alien makes good and government rewards him with a free pass!

Originally-published in Charlton's Out of This World #3 (1957), this oft-reprinted story's author is unknown, but suspected to be Charlton mainstay Joe Gill.

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Antique Collectors"

What's "antique" really depends on your point of view...

...as this tiny tale (from 1959) demonstrates!

Cars from 1959 are extremely collectible now, and it's only 66 years later!

Both the writer and artist of this story from Charlton's Out of This World #13 (1959) are, sadly, unknown.

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Science Fiction Comics 

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "What Happened?"

It's a question I've groggily-asked on more than one New Year's Day...

...but here it's the title of an example of classic Ditko storytelling!

Most likely scripted by Joe Gill, this taut tale from Charlton's Out of This World #3 (1957) is one of those fun "gotcha" shorts in the vein of both EC Comics' sci-fi line and, later, TV's The Twilight Zone.

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Man Who Stepped Out of a Cloud"

Let's have a look at a Steve Ditko story...

...that shows both his storytelling and rendering talents at their best.

Written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #5 (1957) is a superb example of how to tell a complete story in just five pages.

While the script isn't the greatest, Ditko tells the story effectively with both "talking heads" (and very distinctive, individualistic talking heads, at that), and kool graphics showing things impossible to portray convincingly with the SFX technology of the 1950s.

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

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...