Showing posts with label Reading Room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading Room. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2025

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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Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Space Race"

If you think a high-speed auto race is fun...
...what if the race was between high-speed spacecraft?

This is the sort of story that proves the trope that most sci-fi of the Golden Age was just re-written Western stories.
Replace the horse or stagecoach with a spaceship, six-shooters with ray blasters, and Indians with aliens, and voila, a sci-fi story!
This never-reprinted tale from Lost Worlds #6 (1954) was penciled by John Celardo and inked by Bernard Sachs.
The writer is unknown.
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Sunday, January 12, 2025

Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Perfect Crime!"

A never-reprinted cross-genre tale from Journey into Mystery...
...combining crime and science fiction, is our entry for this Sunday!
You'll note the last two panels are re-lettered.
I suspect the Comics Code Authority felt it was too cruel to allow the criminal to die for something he technically didn't commit!
This was one of the two tales backing up Mighty Thor's very first appearance in Marvel's Journey into Mystery #83 (1963).
Ah, you've heard about that story, but not this one, eh?
Don Heck penciled and inked the tale.
Stan Lee plotted it, but experts are not sure if he scripted it.
Lee usually signed the later short stories he scripted, but only Heck's signature is here.
Just about everything Lee didn't script at this point was handled by his brother Larry Lieber.
(Stan's birth name is Stanley Leiber. He used "Stan Lee" on his comics work because he wanted his real name on the Great American Novel he planned to write.
When he finally realized he would be forever known for his comics and not any prose novel he might write, he legally changed his name to "Stan Lee".)
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Thor Masterworks
Volume 1 
featuring the Thor stories that appeared in front of the never-reprinted tales we're presenting!

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Reading Room WEIRD WONDER TALES / STRANGE TALES "When a Planet Dies!"

The current "deep freeze" covering the USA reminded me of the splash panel from this story...
...from Marvel's Weird Wonder Tales #22 (1973), which was actually a reworking of this (literally) kool splash page from a cool story from Atlas' Strange Tales #97 (1962)!
While the art is credited to Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, who wrote it is not entirely clear.
A number of people, myself included, think it's scripted by Kirby!
Bonus: Here's the original art for the cover from a previous issue of Weird Wonder Tales that supplied the Dr Druid figure on the reworked splash page above...
Art by pencilers Jack Kirby and John Romita Sr (Dr Druid's face), and inker Joe Sinnott.
Now, here's the original art for the Strange Tales story's splash page...
Marvel production artist "flipped" a photostat of the Dr Druid figure from the Weird Wonder Tales cover and replaced the bearded aliens with it on a photostat of this splash page!
No original art was harmed in the making of the new splash! page!

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Reading Room WORLD OF MYSTERY "Obey or Die!"

Here's an Ability Any Wanna-Be Dictator...
...like Don da Con, for example, would kill to possess!
This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Mystery #7 (1959), scripted by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Sam Kweskin poses an interesting dilemma!
If you can verbally-command someone else to do something, even against their will, why wouldn't it affect you...if you heard it?
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Thursday, January 2, 2025

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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Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "You Are the Jury"

We Close Out 2024 with a Trial...

...unlike any we've ever seen...with the stakes being the survival of the planet Earth, itself!
What would you decide, considering the state of the planet (and the USA) as of December 31, 2024?
Illustrated by Steve Ditko and scripted by an unknown writer, this tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V1N11 (1954) presents an interesting dilemma.
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(Which reprints this story)
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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told B"ACK MAGIC "Buried Alive!"

...now, we show you the earlier version created by one (possibly two) Silver Age comics legends!
Illustrated by Steve (Spider-Man/Doctor Strange) Ditko, the writer of this tale from Prize's Black Magic Comics V4N4 (1954) is unknown.
It could be either Jack (King) Kirby or Joe Simon, or both, since they were the editor/art director team of the Simon & Kirby Studios which packaged Black Magic and several other books for Prize Comics!
But we don't know for certain!
(And if I have to explain who Jack Kirby is, you're not a regular reader of this blog!)

One thing we are certain of...while both stories used the same script (with a couple of modified word balloons), Ditko's version runs six pages, while Munoz's remake is seven pages long!
Don't believe me?
Click HERE and compare!
Which one do you, dear reader, believe is an example of better storytelling?
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(Which reprints this story...but in black and white)
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Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told WEIRD "The Dead Live"

 Usually, in "Tales Twice Told" we present the original story first...
...but this time, we're going with the later, reworked version from the same script first!



Illustrated (or is that re-illustrated by Cirilo Munoz, this tale from Eerie Publications' Weird V8N4 (1974) is a re-working of a story from 20 years earlier that, up until then, had not been reprinted...despite the fact it had been illustrated by a major Silver-Age artist!
Trivia: that original tale remained hidden under the cowbwebs of history until 2008.over a half century later, and only in black and white!
But you'll see that story from 1954, in brilliant color, right here on Thursday
!

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