Reading Room JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS "Lost...One World"

James Blane is in for a rough day...

...or is it a rough year...or decade...or...

"A chance to do your life over, with no memory of what you've done previously.

Would you repeat your mistakes, or take a different path...into The Twilight Zone?"

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

This odd tale of time and turnover was the lead (but not the cover feature) in Atlas' Journey into Unknown Worlds #53 (1957).

However, these scans are from Marvel's Worlds Unknown #4 (1974), which had better reproduction.

Art by Bob Powell, but the writer is unknown.

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America
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Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Beware the Future!"

Does a never-reprinted tale from the 1950s offer a clue as to how Don (the Con) Trump became President?

And can it happen...again?

Judge for yourself...

This Stan Lee-plotted, Larry Lieber-scripted, Al Williamson-illustrated tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #16 (1959) points out a uniquely-human foible...if we "know" things will be OK, we don't see the need to take action ourselves to make sure they do turn out OK...and things can go horribly-wrong as a result!

In 2016, many Bernie Saunders supporters, POed because Bernie wasn't nominated as the Democratic candidate figured they'd protest by staying home and not voting in the general election, believing there were still enough Dems and intelligent Repugs and Independents voting to assure Trump wouldn't get into the White House!

Didn't quite work out, did it?

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Al Williamson Adventures

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Last Ship from Earth"

Ever hear the phrase "Damned if you do, damned if you don't"?

Well, Commander MacKenzie Smith is about to live it!

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N32 (1960) asks the questions: "What happens if the cure is worse than the disease?" and "Do you blame the person who found/brought you the cure?"

Sadly, even the Grand Comics Database isn't sure who created this story, though they propose two prolific Charlton contributors, writer Joe Gill and artist Bill Montes as the creatives.

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

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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

Science Fiction Comics 

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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

Science Fiction Comics 

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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!