Showing posts with label avon comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label avon comics. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Reading Room: STRANGE WORLDS "Weapon Out of Time"

Barbarians, advanced technology, and beautiful, half-clad women...
...we're obviously back in the retro-cool era of the Golden Age of science fiction!
So, if the fountain was "Old Faithful", where would nearby Anthor be located?
And, what happened to Anthor and it's inhabitants, who obviously weren't around when Paleoindians first migrated across the Beringia land bridge between Asia and North America around 12,000 years ago (or earlier)?
Yeah, I know it's "just a comic book story", but I can speculate, can't I?
Was this meant to be the first in an ongoing series about Prof Chalmers and his time-viewer/matter analyzer?
Art for this wild story from Avon's Strange Worlds #2 (1951) is by Wally Wood.
The writer is unknown, but it's theorized to be Gardner Fox, who created comics' first barbarian, Crom, for Avon the previous year.
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Buy...
Vol 3
Paid Link

Sunday, October 5, 2025

Halloween Reading Room PHANTOM WITCH DOCTOR "Out of the Deep!"

 Avon's Phantom Witch Doctor (1952) was a unique one-shot...
...with a lead story featuring the title character and a trio of totally-unrelated tales (including this one) backing it up!

Whether the creature is a Lovecraftian-type Elder-God, a stranded alien, or just a sentient life-force is never really explained.
Another unsolved puzzle is who the writer and artist(s) for this short story were.
But what's life without a few mysteries, eh?
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Thursday, September 11, 2025

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told STRANGE WORLDS "Sabotage on Space Station 1"

...now you'll see where that "flavor" came from!
Damn, we humans are good at this sort of world-saving stuff, eh?
This Norman Nodel-illustrated tale from Avon's Strange Worlds #7 (1952) could have been the basis of an episode of Space: 1999 or Classic Star Trek with just a couple of tweaks!
As to why it was reworked...
Eerie Publications had been using photostats and negatives from defunct comics companies as the source material for their b/w magazine line.
About a year in, they started using South American artists eager to break into the comics market and American artists like Dick Ayers and Chic Stone (who were losing work as the Silver Age ended and comics companies cut back their lines) to re-do old stories with a more contemporary style.
Some illustrators totally-redid the art, using new "camera angles" and clothing/technology designs reflecting contemporary tastes.
In this particular case, artist Cirilo Munoz just lightboxed and re-inked the Nodel artwork!
Editor Carl (Golden Age Human Torch) Burgos eliminated the opening captions and modified a couple of captions and dialogue balloons, but otherwise left the unknown writer's original script intact.
Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

Saturday, August 30, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays SPACE DETECTIVE COMICS "Cargo from Mars"

A non-sensationalistic title hides a damned good detective story...

...that appeared in back of a science fiction detective's comic book!





Illustrated by Gerald McCann, this well-written little tale by a currently-unknown author was hidden in the back of this 1952 Avon Comics comic book...

...about the ongoing adventures of a private investigator "fighting crime in a future time"!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Reading Room STRANGE WORLDS "Invasion from the Abyss!"

Alien Invasions of Earth are a Popular Story Concept...
...even when the "aliens" are from inside the Earth, rather than outer space!
This story from Avon's Strange Worlds #3 (1951) was a "Fleagle Gang" production.
The "Fleagles" were a group of artists including Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, and George Woodbridge who would help each other out on tight deadlines by doing a "jam" with individuals penciling and inking different pages and even different panels on a single page, producing some absolutely-amazing visuals!
Trivia: the group was named by EC Comics editor/writer/artist Harvey Kurtzman.

The idea of advanced beings living inside the Earth and invading/reconquering the surface was very popular in the early 1950s.
Richard Shaver and 1930s-40s pulp magazine editor Raymond A Palmer caused a media firestorm with a series of stories presenting a theory that combined the "civilization inside the Earth" concept with another pop culture phenomenon...flying saucers!
Numerous readers wrote in, claiming that they had actually seen creatures and vehicles exactly as described in the stories!
The "Shaver Hoax" (as it came to be known) influenced 1930s-50s sci-fi/fantasy ranging from the two-part pilot episode of the TV's Adventures of Superman "Superman and the Mole Men" to movie serials like The Phantom Empire and movies like Brain Eaters!
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...
Vol 3
Paid Link

Saturday, June 7, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays WITCHCRAFT "Hero of the Venus Flyer!"

Being a Space Hero Can Be as Easy as Being in the Right Place at the Right Time...

...and as difficult as being willing to die to save others!




Illustrated by Gene Fawcette and scriped by an unknown writer, this tale appeared twice within a year, first in Avon's WitchCraft #6 (1953), then in Avon's Strange Worlds #18 (1954), where, due to a miscalculation in pagination, the last page of the story ended up on the inside back cover, in black-and-white!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...