Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS PARADE "Crystal the Snowflake"

Kris Kringle is considering getting out of the Yuletide business!

But if he does, who will take over the business?

Thankfully, the then-modern technology of the 1950s offered a solution as this never-reprinted story from Ziff-Davis' Santa Claus Parade (1951) by an unknown writer and artist(s) or writer-artist(s) demonstrates!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

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Monday Madness SANTA CLAUS PARADE "Benny Brown Bear's Christmas Sleep!"

Like Any Kid Before Christmas...

...Benny Brown Bear just can't wait!

But, since bears hibernate, he'll miss Christmas...unless someone wakes him up!

This never-reprinted story by Bill Walsh from Ziff-Davis' Santa Claus Parade (1951) didn't have a sequel, so we'll never know if Benny ever actually saw Santa!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

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Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS PARADE "How the Reindeer Came to Fly"

Did You Ever Wonder About Santa's Flying Reindeer?

After all, reindeer don't usually do that sort of thing!

This never-reprinted tale has the answer...

Illustrated by George Peltz and scripted by a writer whose identity is lost to the mists of time, this story from Ziff-Davis' one-shot Santa Claus Parade (1951) provides an answer to a question that many kids perplexed their parents with!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories
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Space Force Saturdays SPACE PATROL (TV) "Lady of Diamonds"

1950s Media was Loaded with Low-Budget Sci-Fi Series...

...including this one, a saga of those who protect the 30th Century space-lanes in both the video and audio realms!

Tonga later reformed and ended up as the Assistant Security Chief for the entire Space Patrol organization!

Space Patrol ran Monday thru Friday on tv and semi-weekly on radio from 1950 to 1955, using the same performers for both media.

This comic book adaptation from Ziff-Davis Publishing ran for only two issues in 1952, and was written by Philip Evans (who did a lot of movie and tv tie-ins and co-created Drift Marlo, about a special investigator at Cape Kennedy), and illustrated by Bernie Krigstein (who also did SpaceBusters, a comic series about intergalactic Marines which we presented as part of Space Force Saturdays) before moving on to EC Comics, where he achieved his greatest fame).
The book ended not due to poor sales, but because Ziff-Davis left the comic book business during the "comics cause juvenile delinquency" controversy of the early 1950s, deciding to concentrate on publishing magazines instead, and still continuing to this day as seen HERE.

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Space Patrol
Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television
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Space Force Saturdays PERIMETER PATROL SERVICE "Mission to Malooka"

Meet the Perimeter Patrol Service in their never-reprinted premiere...

...from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #5 (1951)!

This story is a superb example of pulp/comic space opera of the era with all the classic elements:

Square-jawed heroes!

Rockets & ray-guns!

Literal bug-eyed monsters!

No scantly-clad women in this particular tale, but the other Perimeter Patrol Service sagas have them!

BTW, this premiere appearance is illustrated by Murphy Anderson, who had just finished his first run on the Buck Rogers newspaper strip.

He would later specialize doing sci-fi/fantasy at DC Comics, including Hawkman, Adam Strange, and Superman!

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Trump's Space Force

(either for yourself, or as a gift for a con friend/relative)
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Monday Madness AMAZING ADVENTURES "Cosmic Comics"

Ziff-Davis' 1950s sci-fi anthology Amazing Adventures...

...ran interesting "filler" pages including these humor strips by Harry Sahle from the first two issues.

Note the one above, from the inside back cover of #2, is b/w.

But the one above, from issue #1, while also an inside cover, is two-color!

Perhaps there were budget cuts between the printing of the two issues!
Sadly, these were the only two Cosmic Comic strips to run in any Ziff-Davis comics!

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 WEIRD ADVENTURES "Dome of Death"

Reading this blog,  you might think that "sci-fi" just means "space opera" or "futuristic"...

...but it can be set on present-day (meaning when the story was created) Earth, as well!

This never-reprinted tale from the Ziff-Davis one-shot Weird Adventures #10 (1951) reads like a script for an anthology tv show or a b-movie.
It's mostly character interaction and a crime/thriller plot with some easily-done (even for the 1950s) sfx!

Illustrated by John Giunta, whose long career spans both the Golden and Silver Ages with work for literally every company in every genre!
However, Giunta may be best-known to today's audiences as the artist who gave the legendary Frank Frazetta his first job, when he hired the talented teen as a studio assistant!
The writer of this unusual tale is unknown, but could be Giunta himself!

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Mystery in Space

Pulp Fiction Library

(which contains only a couple of stories from this previously-listed volume)