Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Happy Birthday to Me!

Taking the day off to celebrate...
...despite the temperature hitting record highs!
But,what could even the Man of Steel do about the menace of...
Climate Change???
See you tomorrow...

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Happy Birthday to Me!

Taking the day off to celebrate...
...being finally able to receive a lot more discounts!
See you tomorrow...

Oh, yeah, it's Father's Day, too!
Celebrate...
Or Else!

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Happy New Year's Day!

Action Comics #81. Art by Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye
One of the coolest New Year's Eve/New Year's Day covers ever!

Friday, April 9, 2021

Friday Fun FUNNYMAN: the Other SuperHero from the Co-Creators of Superman!

 

What do you do after you've created the ULTIMATE comics character...and lost the rights to him?

Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster faced that problem in 1947!
When they sued DC Comics (then National Periodicals Publications), they lost all the assignments (both individually and as a team) they were working on.
To pay the bills, they solicited work from other comics companies both on existing characters and, in one case, creating a NEW character...FunnyMan for Magazine Enterprises!
FunnyMan was Larry Davis, a comedian looking for a shtick.
His girlfriend / agent June suggested a publicity stunt with Larry dressing in his trademark clown outfit, "accidentally" coming upon a (staged with actors) "crime scene" and disarming and capturing the "criminals" using his props, all the while being photographed by conveniently-placed cameramen.
As you might have guessed, Larry stumbled on a real crime in progress, and thinking it was the pre-planned stunt, captured a real criminal!
When he discovered he had captured an actual criminal, Larry decided to continue battling crime, using mocking humor and embarrassing tricks to punish evildoers!
Trivia:
The editor at Magazine Enterprises who bought FunnyMan was Vin Sullivan, who also bought Superman from Siegel & Shuster when he was an editor at National Periodical Publications!
Larry Davis, FunnyMan's civilian identity, was based on movie / radio comedian Danny Kaye!
It was a clever idea, and pretty well executed.
Unfortunately, it didn't catch on.
The book only lasted six issues.
There was also a short-lived newspaper strip.
After FunnyMan failed and Siegel & Shuster lost their lawsuit, they went their separate ways.

But...FunnyMan has NOT been forgotten!
There's a book about the character--Siegel & Shuster's Funnyman: the First Jewish Superhero from the Creators of Superman by Thomas Andrae and Mel Gordon!

Besides the actual comic stories, there's a wealth of background info about Siegel & Shuster, the Danny Kaye connection, as well as the cultural influences that inspired the character!

Plus: we've brought FunnyMan back with a line of kool kollectibles (including mugs, t-shirts, iPad bags, etc.) in our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ collection!

So why not get a gift set of the new book and one of our collectibles for the pop culture aficionado in your life?
What could it hurt? ;-)

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Sean Connery (1930-2020) in Comics

Only one of the late, great Sean Connery's James Bond movies was adapted into comics...
...the first one, Doctor No!
Published in England as part of Gilberton's Classics Illustrated series, it was considered too lowbrow by the publisher's American editors.
They shopped it around to US publishers, almost all of whom passed on it...except DC Comics, who ran it (with Comics Code-approved changes) as part of their Showcase anthology comic!
Ironically, DC released the comic in January, 1963...but the movie wasn't in American theatres until May, 1963, by which point the bi-monthly comic was off the newsstands two issues and four months ago!
Remember, no internet, streaming video, DVD/BluRays, or even video cassettes at that time!
As you may have guessed, it sold poorly, and DC never picked up the option to do other James Bond movie comics...though their contract gave them the rights for a decade!
(Haven't you ever wondered why Gold Key, the leading movie-tv comic adaptor didn't do 007 comics?)
But that didn't mean Sean Connery (or his likeness) didn't appear in DC books!
In 1965, DC launched a futuristic spy series, Interplanetary Investigations in Mystery in Space.
Though the lead character, Jan Vern, was a typical blond, square-jawed comic hero (who looked in some panels like Robert Shaw, Connery's nemesis in From Russia with Love), supporting character Agent X aka Damos was a dead ringer for Sean...
Sadly, the never-reprinted series ran only two issues, but you, dear fan, can see them HERE and HERE!
(and, yes. both chapters feature Damos!)
In the early 1970s, Connery's appearance as Zed in the movie Zardoz...
...inspired (if that's the word) the look of a new Superman character...
...Vartox, a hero from another planet, who, after the misunderstanding on the cover of DC's Superman #281 (1974) was cleared up, became a staunch ally to the Man of Steel!
He's guest-starred ever since in various DC titles in basically the same outfit!
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Sunday, July 5, 2020

Stay Safe by Sheltering in Place with RetroBlogs' Summer Blogathons...

...we'll keep you entertained with time-lost rare and never-reprinted tales you'll find only at...
...our newest RetroBlog
Plus...
...controversial Western tales featuring TV's Confederate protagonists the Gray Ghost and the Rebel at
and
Barbaric action in the Conan/Kull tradition at
...along with the already-announced
Perry Mason...whose never-reprinted comic books will show you why the new HBO series is closer than you think to the early novels!
Check out
Crime & Punishment
for his hard-boiled adventures!
And, to make it a Super-Summer Blogathon...
The book-length saga of Superman dying from "Virus X" was one of the classic (and often reprinted) Silver Age tales of the Man of Steel!
But. that's not what we're showing...since it's been reprinted numerous times over the years (and deservedly so)!
Did you know it was re-conceived as an expanded, multi-part, never-reprinted, story in Action Comics several years later?
That's what you'll see at
Hero Histories
in July!
Plus, we're presenting not one, but two Blogathons featuring the Man of Steel's cousin in stories unseen for 50 years!

Several of Supergirl's (somewhat kinky) romances in
True Love Comics Tales!
And...

The Maiden of Might's weirdest, wildest adventures in
Heroines!
There's still more (we have to keep you entertained and safe), but you'll have to be back next Sunday to find out about them...

Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Summer Blogathons Return...

Yep, it's that time of year, when Atomic Kommie Comics present...
The RetroBlog Summer Blogathon!
...featuring batches of fascinating stuff from our vaults (almost all never-reprinted), in one or two-week blocks of daily entries, giving you a chance to sit back and enjoy complete stories that you haven't seen in years...or have only heard about, but never read, like...
Perry Mason...whose never-reprinted comic books will show you why the new HBO series is closer than you think to the early novels!
Check out Crime & Punishment for his hard-boiled adventures!
And to make it a Super-Summer Blogathon...
The book-length saga of Superman dying from "Virus X" was one of the classic (and often reprinted) Silver Age tales of the Man of Steel!
But. that's not what we're showing...since it's been reprinted numerous times over the years (and deservedly so)!
Did you know it was re-conceived as an expanded, multi-part, never-reprinted, story in Action Comics several years later?
That's what you'll see at Hero Histories in July!
Plus, we're presenting not one, but two Blogathons featuring the Man of Steel's cousin in stories unseen for 50 years!

Several of Supergirl's (somewhat kinky) romances in True Love Comics Tales!
And...

The Maiden of Might's weirdest, wildest adventures in Heroines!
There's even more, but you'll have to be back next Sunday to find out about them...