Reading Room STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES "One Last Chance"

A never-reprinted, Ditko-rendered, Silver Age tale...

...is the sort of thing we delight in presenting to our blog's loyal fans!

I rather like the idea that the protaganists will never know if they succeeded in saving the future...or inadvertently destroyed it!

Charlton's Strange Suspense Stories V3#2 (1968) was written entirely by Steve Skeates, though the stories in the anthology were illustrated by different artists.

Apparently editor Dick Giordano had planned to allow a single writer to carry each issue, with Denny O'Neil penning all the stories in the first issue and Skeates scripting the the tales in the second one.

Giordano's departure to DC scuttled the concept, and from the third issue onward, a variety of writers would fill the pages.

BTW, though the tale was never reprinted, the cover was...

...to represent a different Ditko-illustrated story reprint in Charlton's Space War #31 (1978)!

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

Holiday Reading Room YOUNG DOCTORS "Dr Tom Brent: Christmas Comes in August!"

You have no idea how few medical-themed Yuletide comic stories there are...

...until you try to find one...and end up with a tale that's the victim of terrible printing!

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Young Doctors #6 (1963) unfortunately shows off the terrible printing Charlton Comics was famous for!

The publisher didn't utilize the printing companies literally every other comics publisher used.

Instead, to save money, they printed on old, second-hand printing presses.

But those presses had been constructed to handle cardboard and plastic packaging, not the much-thinner newsprint paper used for comics!

As a result, their comics had an amazing amount of smearing and off-register color, as you can see from the first page.

It's a shame, because the art by penciler Joe Sinnott and inker Vince Colletta deserves a better presentation!

BTW, Young Doctors was an anthology title featuring tales of all the MDs who had their own Charlton books at the time, including, of course, Dr Tom Brent, Young Intern!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

Reading Room UNLIKELY TALES "Time Machine"

When two Steves...a long-established pro and eager young up-and-comer...collaborate...

...you get this time-travel tale, set only 14 years from now, with a novel twist!

It's amazing what the comics creators of 1967 thought 70 years later would look like!

Considering that we Baby Boomers thought by 2000 we'd have bases on the Moon and flying cars, it's not unreasonable...

Written by up-and-comer Steve Skeates and illustrated by Spider-Man and Dr Strange co-creator Steve Ditko, this never-reprinted story from the Unlikely Tales anthology collection in Charlton Premiere #4 (1968) offers a surprise twist on the usual "time-traveler from the future may change history" concept.

Trivia:

Skeates wrote all the stories in this issue, a rarity for someone just starting out in the industry.

All the stories were both penciled and inked by their respective artists, also a rarity in a business where, in order to meet deadlines, creators usually either penciled or inked, but not both.

The artists in this issue included Ditko, as well as Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, and Charlton mainstay Rocke Mastroserio.

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

Reading Room: THIS IS SUSPENSE "Choice!"

Occasionally you come across something that makes you scratch your head and go "wha?"...

This odd little piece by Dick Giordano was the opener for Charlton's This is Suspense #23 (1955)...which was actually the first issue using that name, as Charlton had bought the series (including unpublished material) from Fawcett under the name Strange Suspense Stories. after Fawcett cancelled their comics line!

(With the Comics Code about to take effect, Charlton apparently decided to make their carryover from the "bad old days" as inoffensive as possible by changing the title.)

BTW, to see how the Code mutilated a story in the very next issue of This is Suspense, check out the original Strange Suspense Stories version HERE and the revised This is Suspense version HERE!

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America
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Friday Fun HILLBILLY COMICS "Mountain Music"

As Oliver Anthony ("Rich Men North of Richmond") is discovering...

...the Trumpettes who are pretending to enjoy country music because they belive it embodies their "ideals" (such as they are) really have no idea about what they're listening to!

Written and illustrated by Art Gates, this tale from Charlton's Hillbilly Comics #1 (1955) was part of a brief trend in comic books during the Li'l Abner series' greatest popularity in the mid-1950s!

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Best of Li'l Abner

by Al Capp

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CHILDREN OF DOOM "Part 3: The Final Hour"

We Have Already Seen...

Cover of the 1978 reprint which left out one page. Which one?

Returning to an Earth already devastated by man-made disaster, a pair of astronauts inadvertently doom the entire planet by using their atomic engines to land safely, causing a Doomsday Weapon (which activates when it senses any uncontrolled radioactivity) to awaken and begin it's lethal countdown...

Shortly after this issue came out, editor Dick Giordano went to DC Comics, taking a number of people including Children of Doom creators Denny O'Neil and Pat Boyette with him.

O'Neil stayed at DC, helping to revitalize several series including (with Neal Adams) Batman and Green Lantern, and carving out a long, multi-award-winning career as one of graphic literature's finest writers!
Boyette did several stories at DC, then returned to Charlton, where he continued to be one of the mainstays of the art staff until the company shut down.

For more about the highly-underrated Pat Boyette have a look HERE!

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980

which reprints this story

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder: CHILDREN OF DOOM "Part 2 The Last Countdown..."

When Last We Visited Our Planet...

The world ended.

But not by nuclear war, since a Doomsday Machine that would destroy the planet if any atomic explosion was detected, ended even the testing of nuclear bombs!

Instead, a European power (implied to be an Iron Curtain nation, likely the USSR) manages to re-direct two meteors to strike Earth, ideally affecting only the USA!

Unfortunately, an attempt to divert the meteors using missiles results in the space rocks fragmenting and hitting all over the planet, creating devastation on an unparalleled scale!

With the Earth apparently doomed, a pair of astronauts in orbit, believing themselves the only survivors, decide to head for the nearest habitable planet...Venus!

But they don't know people have survived...but not unscathed...

The Story Concludes
NEXT WEDNESDAY!

Scientific note: In mid-1967, it wasn't yet known that Venus was covered with clouds of sulfuric acid and the surface was barren, so heading there instead of Mars wasn't an unreasonable concept.

As this issue’s “Postscripts From The Editor” (Dick Giordano) explains: “This issue may reach the stands a little late.

We had an entirely different issue ready for press, cover and all, and lost it on a legality.

We then had to get this one together in a big hurry.

We’ve always liked the idea of a black and white comic book but have been afraid of doing one in a format where everyone else is in four color.

So we mixed it up in this one! Some four color, some black and white. We like it…do you?"

The “we” was writer Denny O'Neil (under a pseudonym) and artist Pat Boyette, who produced the entire 25-page tale from concept to script to camera-ready art and color guides in less than a week!

Boyette did all the penciling, inking and lettering.

Rumor has it that O'Neil also assisted with the color guides.

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980

which reprints this story