Let's Play Ball! MYSTICAL TALES "On a Lonely Planet"

Can playing a sport unite alien cultures?

This never-reprinted story from Atlas' Mystical Tales #1 (1956) suggests an answer...

OK, it's an ethnocentric (species-centric?) conceit that the aliens were playing something even remotely like baseball, but illustrator Bill Everett and the unknown writer still manage to "sell" it for four pages.

BTW, despite the title, Mystical Tales was an almost-totally "hard sci-fi" anthology!

Only a handful of stories from the anthology's 8-issue run have been reprinted...all in the 1970s...which makes even the reprints almost a half-century old!

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Atlas Era Tales of Suspense

Volume 1

Friday Fun AMAZING WILLIE MAYS "Diamond Doings" "Splinters" "Balls and Strikes"

Besides tales about the title person, the Amazing Willie Mays one-shot comic we ran yesterday...

...featured humorous one-page "fillers" about (what else) baseball!

Note that every page has at least one Black ballplayer in a cartoon, a rarity in the 1940s-50s unless the illustration focused on a specific Black sports figure!

BTW, "ballhawk" is outdated slang for an expert fielder!
Who says comics ain't educational???

Reading Room AMAZING WILLIE MAYS Willie Mays (1931-2024)

I'll leave the eulogies for the legendary Willie Mays (1931-2024) to those better-equipped to present them.

What I will do is present a couple of tales from a comic published 70 years ago, when he was just beginning his major league career...but, even then, was considered one of the greats of the game!

Eastern Color's 1954 one-shot Amazing Willie Mays heralded a baseball player with, at that point, only two years in the majors!
Mind you, he had won Rookie of the Year in 1951.
But in 1952, Mays was drafted and served two years in the Army, returning to pro baseball in 1954!

BTW, we don't know if the following is actually Willie's "favorite story" or not!

Here's a bonus feature, supposedly using quotes from Willie himself...

Sadly, the comic doesn't list credits for the writers or artists, and Eastern Color has been out of business for decades, so the creatives behind these tales are unknown.

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Say Hey
Autobiography of Willie Mays
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Celebrate America's Pastime...Baseball...with "Jackie Robinson Story" Collectibles

Baseball's back, and better than ever!
Celebrate with...

Poster

...the poster and lobbycards from the first movie about the first Black player in the major leagues (which starred Jackie Robinson as himself), now offered as posters and prints, digitally-remastered and restored from the actual poster and cards!

LobbyCard 1

LobbyCard 2

The originals are worth hundreds, even thousands of dollars!
But these affordable reproductions can put these HTF examples of classic Baseball Americana in your den, study, game/media room, bedroom or wherever you want at reasonable cost!

Monday Madness YAK YAK "How to Bat 400!"

Winding up our month of baseball-related comics...

...is the legendary Jack Davis' take on how to be the greatest hitter in whatever league (major or minor) you're in!

Follow the advice in this never-reprinted feature from Dell's Four Color #3196: Yak Yak, and you'll either win the league's batting championship or qualify to run as the Republican Presidential candidate!

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Art of Jack Davis

Monday Madness HOME RUN "Daffy Dodgers"

This year is the 65th Anniversary of baseball's Dodgers deserting my beloved Brooklyn (sob) for Los Angeles...

...so let's look at a few of the most infamous moments of the "Da Bums" during their long stay in the illustrious County of Kings!

Rendered by Bob Powell in his rarely-seen humorous style, this piece appeared in Magazine Enterprises' Home Run #3 (1953)...which was the only issue of that title!

Note: Almost everybody attempted one or more sports-themed titles to show comics were still wholesome, all-ages appropriate entertainment during this period as "comics cause juvenile delinquency" mania swept America!

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Tales from the Dodgers Dugout

(the Brooklyn Dodgers!)

and/or

The Ten-Cent Plague

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

Monday Madness REAL FACT COMICS "Rookie of the Year" & PICTURE NEWS "California Flash"

For the past few weeks, we presented a fictional tale about a ballplayer facing prejudice...

...today, it's the "real deal" with the guy who broke the racial barrier in Major League Baseball!

The story from DC's Real Fact Comics #14 (1948) presents the story in a straightforward, if slightly patronizing, manner.

The following tale from Parents Magazine's Picture News #4 (1946) by writer/artist Charles Wessel, predates his being called up to the majors.

Note it does contain a couple of racial stereotypes common to the era, and may be NSFW.

There was also an official Jackie Robinson comic book from major comics publisher Fawcett that lasted six issues (longer than most other comics based on real-life sports figures) from 1949-52.

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Buy the Cover of The Never-Reprinted Premiere Issue...

...of Jackie's Own Comic as a Collectible Poster or Print!

Digitally-restored and remastered from a scan of the actual original cover!

Monday Madness BASEBALL COMICS "Rube Rooky Heads Down the Home Stretch"

When Last We Left Our Wholesome Hero...

...under coach Pop Flye's guidance, Rube has developed into a top-notch pitcher.

But even a first-rate hurler needs a great team behind him!

Fortunately, the formerly-mediocre Badgers are inspired by the pitching prodigy and...

Regrettably, there was no "next issue" of Baseball Comics, so no World Series appearance for Rube Rooky.

But we still have this one-shot wonder from 1949 by writer/penciler Will Eisner and inker Tex Blaisdell to remember.
And, after Kitchen Sink Press reprinted this issue in 1991, there was a second issue  in 1992 reprinting a horror comics baseball story and a Will Eisner Spirit story about baseball, but without The Spirit!

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Baseball Comics #2

(A follow-up published decades later)