Atomic Kommie Comics: Roy Thomas

Showing posts with label Roy Thomas. Show all posts

Monday, January 31, 2022

Monday Madness FANTASTIC FOUR UNLIMITED "Shape of Things That Came!"

You thought you'd never see this guy...

...anywhere except in reprints?

well, you don't know Marvel, Bunkie!

Decades after his initial appearance (which we showed HERE), both the monster and his supporting cast re-emerged from obscurity in Marvel's Fantastic Four Unlimited #7 (1994), beginning with Frank Johnson, the illustrator who created Zzutak, meeting the team (minus Reed Richards, but plus Scott Lang aka Ant-Man II)...

However, there was a familiar (to Frank Johnson, at least) party-crasher...

Mayhem ensues, but the Aztecs manage to grab both Frank and his son...

Once in Mexico, we learn why Frank had the ability to bring illustrations created using those paints to life...

In comics, that's actually a quite plausible theory...and it works!

And before you can shout "Here I come to save the day!"...

Subtitled "A ten-story tribute those those marvelous Lee/Kirby monsters", writer Roy Thomas, penciler Herb Trimpe and inker Carmen Imperato followed the original tale's plot and concepts closely enough that anyone reading them back-to-back (as you did) would have no problem considering it a legitimate sequel to the original!

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Monster Masterworks
(HTF anthology TPB from the 1980s featuring Zzutak's first appearance plus a kool never-reprinted "Kirby-tribute" wraparound cover by Walt Simonson)

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Trump Reading Room / CoronaVirus Comics CHAMBER OF DARKNESS "Day of the Red Death!"

Don da Con's "let them eat cake" moment, including partygoers withour masks, yesterday..

...reminded me of an updated version of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of disease, "Masque of the Red Death"! Here's that updated "adaptation", set present-day, which freely admits the source material!

In fact, out of the mouth of the legendary Stan (the Man) Lee himself...

A rich, uncaring guy who has the power to destroy the entire world and wouldn't hesitate to allow a plague to do so...as long as he was safe!

Now who does that remind us of?

Writer Roy Thomas had been a teacher before turning to writing/editing comics, and he loved utilizing classic literature in his work!

Don Heck, whose Marvel work was usually inked by others, apparently relished the opportunity to do both penciling and inking, as he had done in his 1950s horror and war comics work!

In addition, John Romita Sr turned in a wonderfully-rendered cover which was somewhat obscured by the black tints used to create "mood".

Look at the original art to see the detail you might've missed on the printed version...

Kool, eh?

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Raven and the Red Death

Adapted by Richard Corben

Thursday, May 14, 2020

CoronaVirus Comics CHAMBER OF DARKNESS "Day of the Red Death!"

Here's another "adaptation" of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of disease...

...which, for a change, freely admits the source material!

In fact, out of the mouth of Stan (the Man) Lee himself...

A rich, uncaring guy who has the power to destroy the entire world and wouldn't hesitate to allow a plague to do so...as long as he was safe!

Now who does that remind us of?

Writer Roy Thomas had been a teacher before turning to writing/editing comics, and he loved utilizing classic literature in his work!

Don Heck, whose Marvel work was usually inked by others, apparently relished the opportunity to do both penciling and inking, as he had done in his 1950s horror and war comics work!

In addition, John Romita Sr turned in a wonderfully-rendered cover which was somewhat obscured by the black tints used to create "mood".

Look at the original art to see the detail you might've missed on the printed version...

Kool, eh?

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Order...

Raven and the Red Death

Adapted by Richard Corben

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Best of Holiday Reading Room DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Conclusion

(A New Year's Eve repost you readers demanded...)
When Last We Left the Sorcerer Supreme...

...it was the end of 1968, New Year's Eve, to be exact.

After seeing a vision of the etherial Eternity changing into his old enemy, Nightmare, Dr Strange takes his alien love, Clea, to Times Square to experience New Year's Eve: New York City Style...where a pterodactyl crashes into the clock as it strikes midnight!

Yep, True Believer, it's another of Marvel's patented "continued stories"!

But our intent here is to present only the New Year's Eve part of the tale, since both parts have been reprinted recently.

So we're going to show you how Marvel itself got out of re-running the entire two-parter when it ran this tale from Doctor Strange #180 (1969) in Marvel Treasury Edition #8: Giant SuperHero Holiday Grab-Bag (1975)!

The editors took the Gene Colan penciled and inked presentation piece showing the finalized design for Doc's "superhero-style" costume that appeared as a pin-up in Doctor Strange #180...

...took out the final panel of the story and used the Doc figure with a new word balloon!

Sneaky, huh?

Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gene Colan, and inked by Tom Palmer, this tale is one of the koolest of the era's Dr Strange stories with pop culture references galore and accurate NYC locales!

The cover, btw is a combination of a Steve Ditko Eternity figure, a new Doctor Strange by Colan and Palmer and a New York City photo background (Marvel did several photo background covers during this period)

Tomorrow:

The Splash Pages that Became BlackLite Posters!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics This New Year's

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