Wednesday Worlds of Wonder / CoronaVirus Comics PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Quest for Blood" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

...(actually we haven't seen this, since there's no scene like it in the book.

Nor is there a cloaked, sinisterly-snarling vampire!

But it's a great Neal Adams/Dick Giordano cover, eh?)

Escaping the virus-created scientifically-advanced blood-suckers who inhabit the Dome in the center of a devastated Manhattan, our four surviving astronauts team up with the primitive, but human Street People.

Rigging a stolen aircraft as a booby-trap, they destroy two pursuing ships sent to recapture them.

There's a price to be paid...and one of the astronauts will pay it...

...NEXT WEDNESDAY!

With the departure of writer/co-creator Larry Hama (GI Joe), John Albano (Jonah Hex) stepped in to the scripting slot, working off Hama's basic plot for the issue as well as several pages already laid out by penciler/co-creator Pat Broderick.

It'a a well-done job, making the transition pretty seamless between the two writers.

Be here next week, as the astronauts and street people take the fight back to the virus-infected "domies"!

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I Am Legend/Omega Man

Which features both the recent Will Smith version and the 1970s Charlton Heston version (which heavily-influenced Planet of Vampires)!

But not the 1960s Vincent Price adaptation.

That one, you can get here...)

Last Man on Earth

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Quest for Blood" Part 1

In the 1970s, science fiction writers thought the 21st century was going to be rather dystopic...

...as this never-reprinted tale of a virus-influenced year 2010 from Atlas' Planet of Vampires #2 (1975) demonstrates!

It's always fun to end a chapter with a BANG!

But LOTS more action awaits us...

...NEXT WEDNESDAY!

With the departure of writer/co-creator Larry Hama (GI Joe), John Albano (Jonah Hex) stepped in to the scripting slot, working off Hama's basic plot for the issue as well as several pages already laid out by penciler/co-creator Pat Broderick.

It'a a well-done job, making the transition pretty seamless between the two writers.

Be here next week, as the astronauts and street people take the fight back to the virus-infected "domies"!
(Don't worry, Harsh Realm will return in the near-future!)

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Order...

I Am Legend/Omega Man

Which features both the recent Will Smith version and the 1970s Charlton Heston version (which heavily-influenced Planet of Vampires)!

But not the 1960s Vincent Price adaptation.

That one, you can get here...)

Last Man on Earth

CoronaVirus Comics PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Long Road Home" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Pat Broderick and Neal Adams

...well, that kool cover says it all, doesn't it?

BTW, though the cover says six astronauts, we only see five, including Dr Ben Levitz, who was killed by savages when the crew first reached shore after crash-landing off Coney Island!

The "sixth astronaut" is never mentioned by name...or even shown in the background...anywhere in the issue!

In 2008, a team of astronauts exploring Mars lose contact with Earth.

After a two-year voyage, they return to find most of the planet devastated and the survivors apparently devolved to primitive savages!

However, some people in Manhattan managed to keep technology functioning and a relatively-civilized society going under an impenetrable dome...but at what cost to their humanity?

This never-reprinted first issue of Atlas/Seaboard's Planet of Vampires (1975) was Larry Hama's intro to comic scriptwriting.

Hama had been a penciler/inker apprenticing under Wally Wood before landing his first ongoing gig; penciling Iron Fist in Marvel Premiere.

But when John Byrne was given Iron Fist (which moved into its' own comic), Hama was without steady work.

The brand-new Atlas/Seaboard company welcomed the young creative with open arms, giving him two books: Planet of Vampires, which he scripted, and Wulf the Barbarian, which he both wrote and penciled.

Larry ended up leaving both the books (and the company) when the publisher refused to allow leeway on the deadlines when Hama's mother was dying, forcing the young writer/artist to bring in a host of pro friends to meet the deadlines while he dealt with the personal loss and handled funeral arrangements.

Hama went on to much bigger things like GI Joe, while Atlas/Seaboard went out of business within a year.

Next Wednesday:

It's Omega Man Meets Mad Max!

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I Am Legend

(the graphic novel verson of the novel, adapted into the then-current movie Omega Man, which "inspired" this series!)

CoronaVirus Comics PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Long Road Home" Part 1

Remember when a pandemic created vampires who took over the world in 2010?

No, I don't mean the Twilight or True Blood franchises...

Be here Next Wednesday, as the astronauts are forced to chose sides.

The early 1970s was one of the more pessimistic periods in pop culture.

Between pollution/ecology concerns, potential overpopulation, and possible war, fear was running wild in pop culture, in particular, movies.

The near-future was believed to be a potential Hell on Earth, with movies like A Clockwork Orange (crime and violence held in check only by mind-control), Soylent Green (overpopulation and food shortages relieved by using humans as food), ZPG (controlled breeding to avoid overpopulation), and Omega Man (man-made plague kills most of humanity and leaves remainder as mutant ghouls).

Even films about the distant future like Zardoz and the Planet of the Apes series showed humanity as either decadent and collapsing, or under control of other species!

Writer Larry Hama and penciler Pat Broderick combined several of the concepts in Seaboard's Planet of Vampires #1 (1973).

It was one of the stronger titles of the new company formed to compete with Marvel and DC, but both internal problems between the publishers and creatives as well as failure to gain newsstand space (there were no comic shops at the time), doomed the company to a short life.

Next Wednesday

The Terrible Truth!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Order...

I Am Legend

(the graphic novel verson of the novel, adapted into the then-current movie Omega Man, which "inspired" this series!)

Reading Room WEIRD TALES OF THE MACABRE "Bog Beast"

Combining sci-fi and horror well is no easy task...

...but this series from the short-lived Atlas Comics of the 1970s was one of the better attempts.

Note that the Los Angeles cop wears a British constable's uniform.

That's because the artist is Spanish and had been illustrating material for the British market for most of his career, and was unfamiliar with American police uniforms.

"Badia Romero" is a pen-name for Enrique Romero, best-known for his work on Modesty Blaise and co-creating the Axa series.

His brother, Jorge Romero had been illustrating for Warren Magazines under the pen-name Jorge Galvez since 1971 and Enrique hoped to join him in the American markets, but this and two Santana tales for Marvel's b/w Haunt of Horror anthology were Enrique's only assignments working directly for American publishers (not counting Modesty Blaise and Axa reprints).

Debuting in Atlas' b/w anthology magazine Weird Tales of the Macabre #2 (1975), the strip moved into the color comic anthology Tales of Evil for the remainder of its' short run.

When it was reprinted in Australia, a previously-unpublished tale finally saw print.

You'll be seeing all of them here, so keep an eye out for them...