Let's Play Ball! MYSTICAL TALES "On a Lonely Planet"

Can playing a sport unite alien cultures?

This never-reprinted story from Atlas' Mystical Tales #1 (1956) suggests an answer...

OK, it's an ethnocentric (species-centric?) conceit that the aliens were playing something even remotely like baseball, but illustrator Bill Everett and the unknown writer still manage to "sell" it for four pages.

BTW, despite the title, Mystical Tales was an almost-totally "hard sci-fi" anthology!

Only a handful of stories from the anthology's 8-issue run have been reprinted...all in the 1970s...which makes even the reprints almost a half-century old!

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Atlas Era Tales of Suspense

Volume 1

Reading Room STRANGE WORLDS "End of His Service!"

Though Isaac Asimov had introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in 1942...

...obviously the unknown scripter of this never-reprinted tale from Avon's Strange Worlds #5 (1951) never read the story,or chose to disregard the concept!

No less than three illustrators contributed to this story.

Norman Nodell did the bulk of the art, and inked the others' pages.
Those others were John Rosenberger on Page 3 and Werner Roth on Page 4.

The reason for the artist round-robin is unknown, though it was likely a tight deadline.

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Taylor Illustrated History

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Reading Room STARSTREAM "City"

Here's a tangled tale of time travel...

...based on the prose short story "A Nice Place to Visit" by Stephen Goldin.

Adapted by Silver Age comics veteran Arnold Drake and illustrated by Jose Delbo, this story was part of the 1976 anthology mini-series Starstream, Western Publishing's move away from the Gold Key imprint and branding to create a less-juvenile presence in newsstands, supermarket magazine racks, and bookstores.

Note: there were less than a dozen dedicated comic book shops in America in 1976!

The 64-page anthologies featured comic adaptations of short stories by noted (and marketable) authors like Isaac Asimov, Jack Williamson, Theodore Sturgeon, A E van Vogt, and Anne McCaffrey, with a couple of non-adaptation stories by Arnold Drake and series editor Roger Elwood to fill out the page count.

Sadly, the project, which came out a year before Star Wars was released, disappeared within six months.

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Questar
OOP 1979 Trade Paperback Reprinting Most (but not all) of the Material from the Starstream Mini-Series
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Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES "Deal to Die"

Here's a never-reprinted short tale with a Twilight Zone-style ending...

...from the final issue of Ziff-Davis' sci-fi anthology Amazing Adventures!

I wonder if Zoro's husband, Space Captain Ventra was as big a SoB as Bernice's spouse Harold Leighton!

Illustrated by the relatively-unknown Lawrence (Louis) Dresser, this story from Amazing Adventures #6 (1952) has no credited writer.

Too bad, because it's a memorable piece for a shorter-than-usual filler.
Trivia: There have been four different comic series entitled Amazing Adventures!
This 1950-51 six-issue book, from Ziff-Davis was the first.
The other three 1960-61 (scifi/fantasy anthology), 1970-76 (featuring ongoing series The Inhumans and Black Widow (ten issues), The Beast (seven issues), and War of the Worlds/Killraven (twenty-one issues), and 1979-81, X-Men reprints (fourteen issues), were all published by Atlas/Marvel.

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Taylor Illustrated History

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Reading Room TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED "Who is Mr Ashtar?"

We usually don't run stories that have already been reprinted...

...but this one is so kool, we just couldn't resist!

(And after reading, I'm dure you'll agree!)

Penciled and inked by Jack Kirby, shortly before his return to Atlas (which shortly thereafter became Marvel), the writer of this story from DC's Tales of the Unexpected #17 (1957) is unknown...but could be Kirby himself!

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Jack Kirby Omnibus

Volume 1

...which includes this story!

Reading Room TALES TO ASTONISH "I Fell to the Center of the Earth!"

Here's a kool 1950s sci-fi story penciled by Matt Baker, whose speciality was "good girl" art!

Yet, there's not a single beautiful woman (not even a cavewoman), in this story, one of his few assignments for Atlas (later Marvel) Comics!

When this story appeared in Atlas' Tales to Astonish #2 (1959), Baker was near the end of his career, working through Vince Colletta's studio, doing only penciling to increase his productivity.

Vince Colletta inked the pages, and it's possible that, seeing how much detail Colletta tended to leave out during inking, Baker did less-detailed pencils than normal.

The writer is unknown, but it's believed to be the book's editor Stan Lee.
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!

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Matt Baker

Art of Glamour
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Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Filbert's Frightful Future!"

After Mighty Thor began his run in Journey into Mystery as of #83......

...and before Norse mythology-related backup series like Tales of Asgard began, the one-shot shorts like this never-reprinted tale continued to fill the back of the book until the inventory was used up!

Don Heck penciled and inked this story from Marvel's Journey into Mystery #85 (1962).

Stan Lee plotted it, but experts are not sure if he scripted it.

Lee usually co-signed the later shorts 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 present!
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Reading Room / Tales Thrice Told TALES OF SUSPENSE "Last Rocket!"

Marvel's Tales of Suspense #39 (1963) is famous for it's cover story...

...but that oft-retold tale is not what we're looking at today!

Instead, we're presenting one of the backup stories...the third and final version of the "Adam & Eve on past/future Earth" trope plotted and/or scripted by Stan Lee.

You can read the previous two tales HERE and HERE.

Ok, I'm willing to believe that, with 1960s-level technology, all of Mankind could pull off a When Worlds Collide-style evacuation of the planet...though how they'd survive to reach another solar system several light-years distant is questionable.

I'm even willing to accept a couple of ecology-oriented sorts being stubborn (and let's face it, suicidal) enough to remain on their home world to the bitter end.

But an "exploding star" close enough to warm and light the planet, yet totally-unknown to anyone before that?

C'mon!

And one more thing...couldn't the space fleet just turn around and return when they noticed the "exploding star" behind them?

In this "Adam and Eve" retelling, it's believed that Lee plotted the story and his brother, Larry Lieber, scripted it.

But it's a fact that the legendary Gene Colan penciled and inked the absolutely beautiful art!

It makes the rather silly story bearable.

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EXCELSIOR!

Amazing Life of Stan Lee

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