Holiday Reading Room JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS "They Wait in the Shadows!" & JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Monsters on Mercury!"

No Matter Where Humans Travel in the Universe...

...they will find a way to celebrate joy and happiness even under the most stressful of circumstances, as in this tale behind a very misleading (but extremely-kool) Bill Everett cover!

Illustrated by Bob Forgione and scripted by an unknown writer, this story from Atlas' Journey into Unknown Worlds #47 (1956) is more "hard" science-fiction and less "science-fantasy" than this later tale by a pair of Silver Age legends following the same basic plot...

This long-forgotten Stan Lee/Steve Ditko (You've heard of them, right?) tale from Atlas' Journey into Mystery #78 (1962) amps up the humans' paranoia, but plays down scientific accuracy!
(Even in 1962, we knew Mercury was unlivable for humans without extensive protective equipment and clothing!)

But, to be fair, both tales are equally-good at getting the Yuletide message across, eh?

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

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

Monday Madness STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL "Five Sinister Statues"

Does "madness" lie within a tale...

...where the kool Bill Everett-rendered cover illustration doesn't match the interior art by Richard Doxsee?

The statues in this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Strange Tales of the Unusual #11 (1957) resemble Indo-Chinese (Siamese or Laotian) sculptures, unlike the ones on the cover, which look decidedly-Chinese!

Makes you wonder which came first, and how long it was between the cover and the story actually being drawn!

Sadly, we'll never know the answer, since none of the creatives involved are still alive!

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

Reading Room AMAZING DETECTIVE CASES "Ghost Story"

Here's a never-reprinted 1950s tale...

... that's both about law enforcement and justice from beyond the grave!

You may note the Joe Maneely-illustrated cover doesn't really match the Bill Everett-rendered tale from Atlas' Amazing Detective Cases #13 (1952)

There are several possible reasons for that.

1) the cover and interior art were done at two different points in time, sometimes months apart!

2) The cover artist didn't have copies of the interior pages as visual reference, only plot descriptions from the editor!
3) the cover was done before the interior art as a "springboard" and the actual writer/artist(s) made changes when they were creating the story!
All three of these reasons could (and did) apply to Atlas Comics' books if the story's artist didn't do the cover...as was the case most of the time!

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Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped
A Crime Does Not Pay Primer

Monday Madness MARVEL TALES "Last Man Alive!"

This lovely cover by Bill Everett is sorta true...

...but it's also sorta deceiving!
Read about Freddie Kruger (yep, that's his name)...

So he wasn't the last man alive...nor was he even on Earth!

Why the disconnect between the cover for Atlas' Marvel Tales #153 (1956) by Bill Everett and the story illustrated by Ed Winiarski?

Two possibilities!

1) the cover was conceived and drawn before the story was written, and the tale, done later on, was modified from the basic premise!

2) Editor Stan Lee (who probably didn't write the story) failed to convey the concept of the already-done story properly to the cover artist, and it was too late in the production process to correct it!

Trivia: It's not unusual for a one-shot character's name to became famous for another reason later on!

This character has no relation to the villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise!

Conversely, when Raymond Burr's character in the first Godzilla film, reporter "Steve Martin" was resurrected 29 years later in Godzilla 1985, a certain comedian by the same name had become extremely famous!

Despite that, Burr's character retained the name in the sequel...

BTW, the story's author is unknown and neither the cover nor the tale has ever been reprinted.

This is its' first appearance in 67 years!

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America

Reading Room WORLD OF SUSPENSE "While Simon Slept"

If you go by the never-reprinted Carl Burgos-illustrated cover, these are horror stories!

But, you'd be wrong.

Let's present a story shown on the cover as a small vignette on the right, but still given the first spot in the book!

I'm compelled to ask "Why would anyone be carrying around both theirs and their brother's birth certificates?"

Illustrated by Bill Everett, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Suspense #5 (1956) has some serious plot holes.

But, hey, what can you expect in only four pages?
BTW, the scripter is unknown, but could've been Everett himself.

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

Space Hero Saturdays SKYROCKET STEELE "...in the Year 'X' "

Though best-known as the creator of Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner....

...Bill Everett's first published strip featured this Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...

...Bill Everett's first published strip featured this Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...

In this premiere chapter, the series starts "mid-stream", indicating events crucial to the plot occurred before we join Skyrocket and his buddies.

The captions and dialogue balloons are heavier than normal as expositional dialogue is used to clue the readers in on the situations in the "world of the future".

You'll also note the use of upper and lower-case lettering, unique, even then.

Everett's unique inking style is already developing, though crude in comparison to his later work.

To his credit, Bill doesn't swipe layouts from Alex (Flash Gordon) Raymond, Hal (Tarzan/Prince Valiant) Foster, or any of the already-established masters of the graphic storytelling form as so many of his comic book contemporaries do!

He's not afraid to try his own "camera angles" to tell the story...not always succeeding, but experimenting and learning!

Trivia: Though the character debuted in this tale which appeared in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies #2 (1938), he was the cover feature of issue #1...

....where no sign of him can be found inside of the book!

No one knows why!
Trivia: Pop culture historian and prolific genre author Ron (Star Hawks) Goulart utilized the name (but nothing else from Everett's strip) for a hysterically-funny novel about 1940s sci-fi movie serials...

(click for bigger image)

...which, while available on Amazon (as seen below) can't be found as this 1980 first edition with a kool cover by noted artist Carl Lundgren!
Snarky Note: I bought it in 1980,when it came out!
That and Goulart's very HTF Tremendous Adventures of Bernie Wine...

...a PG-13/soft R mass-market novel about a young (and horny) comic book artist in NYC, are among my favorite Goulart books in my collection (and I have a lot of them, including ghost-written standalones and series)!

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Skyrocket Steele
by Ron Goulart