Showing posts with label dick briefer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dick briefer. Show all posts

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Doorway to the Future!"

Is this a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s?
Read this never-reprinted tale from Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The figure poses, faces, machinery, even the futuristic buildings all but scream "KIRBY"!
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's artist as Marvin Stein with a "?", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, and the fact Stein worked primarily for their studio, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material pagecount came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown, but it might also be Kirby...

Friday, October 26, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER "SpaceShip of the Living Dead"

Our final Rex Dexter adventure truly goes where no space hero has gone before...
...battling interplanetary zombies!
This terrifying tale is from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #21 (1941), several issues before Rex's final tale in #24, which we presented HERE!
We're running it out-of-sequence because we thought it would make an appropriate story just before Halloween!
At any rate, this concludes Rex's saga on this blog, so be here next Friday, when we begin re-presenting another timelost series with a unique twist!
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Friday, October 19, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Who He Is and How He Came to Be" Conclusion

...he was experiencing his revised origin (as compared to his origin as shown in his premiere appearance HERE!)
So far, we've witnessed Rex's great-grandfather Montague leaving Earth in 1939, Rex's childhood after being born on Mars, and his romance as a young man with Cynde, also a descendent of the group who traveled from Earth with Montague Dexter in 1939!
Many of the plot elements from the original origin were altered in this new version which led off Fox's Rex Dexter #1 (1940), which was hoped to be a new, ongoing title, spun-off from Mystery Men Comics!
However. sales weren't strong enough to warrant continuing the separate title, and Rex remained in Mystery Men Comics until the end of its' run!
Next week: Our final Rex Dexter story, featuring space zombies!
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Friday, October 12, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Who He Is and How He Came to Be" Part 1

Remember the Origin of Rex Dexter...
...as shown HERE?
Well, forget it!
Everything you knew was wrong!
(Well, not everything, but it's a lot more dramatic when you say it with italics and/or bold lettering!)
This is the one, true, totally-accurate, never to be contradicted, origin story...which begins before Rex was born...
We'll use this convenient stopping point in the plot to point out a couple of things!
In the first story, Rex is the son of Montague, who left Earth in 1939, and he is a young adult in 2000!
In the second story, Rex is the great-grandson of Montague, who left Earth in 1939, and he is a young adult in 2040!
In the first story, Cynde is a woman Rex meets when he arrives on Earth!
In the second story, Cynde, the great-granddaughter of another couple who traveled from Earth with the Dexters in 1939, accompanies him to Earth!
There are numerous other differences, as you'll see NEXT FRIDAY!
So, why re-tell and revise Rex's origins?
Rex was introduced in Fox's Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939), and turned out to be one of the more popular strips, along with Blue Beetle!
So, after a year, publisher Victor Fox decided to give each of the two strips their own one-shot...
...which would combine a brand-new origin story about each character with selected reprints from Mystery Men Comics!
The Blue Beetle never had an origin story, since his first tale showed him already established and in action, so an origin was no problem.
But Rex's origin had been told in his first appearance!
Fox instructed creator/writer/artist Dick Briefer to re-tell the origin, and Briefer decided to "tweak" the series' concept a bit, as you'll see, next week!
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