Reading Room IMAGINATION and RAVENS AND RAINBOWS "Explored"

"What are Saturn's rings made of?"

Writer/artist Jeffrey Jones had a better question...What if it wasn't what we thought it was?

Jones' short tale in David Jablan Publishing's one-shot fanzine Imagination (1971) offered a cool explanation.

Remember, the first probe to pass near Saturn, Pioneer 11, didn't do so until 1979!

While it was theorized that ice and rocks made up the rings, there was no way to verify it!

So the tale, though improbable, was not unreasonable!

By the time Pacific Comics reprinted the story in their anthology Jeffrey Jones: Ravens and Rainbows (1983), several probes (including two Voyagers) had done flybys and analysis.

Sadly, they didn't find a Sargasso Sea of Space...

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Jeffrey Jones

A Life in Art

Reading Room REALITY "Endless Chain!"

Long before the internet and sites like DeviantArt, up-and-coming artists were published in fanzines...

...to get their work in front of an audience, receive feedback, and make a few bucks!

Originally-drawn for Web of Horror, this early tale by Frank Brunner ended up in the first issue of Reality, a fanzine published in 1970 by 15-year old Robert Gerson.

When Web died after only three issues, a number of writers and artists had no market for their material without losing all the rights to it, so, in order to get it published to make a few bucks for their labor (and retain the copyrights), they let young entrepreneurs use the stories in their fanzines, which were sold at conventions and in used book stores and head shops alongside underground comics.

(There were no comic book shops until the late 1970s.)
NOTE: This story has never been reprinted...anywhere!

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Mythos: Fantasy Art Realms of Frank Brunner

COMIC READER "Invasion"

Here's a single image that conveys an entire story...

...a, sadly, never-completed tale meant for one of the Charlton sci-fi anthologies of the late Silver Age.

Probably abandoned when Jim Aparo joined editor Dick Giordano when he moved over to DC, it's typical of the detailed work Aparo produced for them, despite the awful printing that would obscure a lot of the time-intensive rendering.

The Comic Reader was a late 1960s-early 1970s newszine/fanzine, available at comic conventions and by subscription.

The covers were almost always featured art exclusives, either pieces done to promote current projects (a Manhunter cover by Walt Simonson during the character's revival in Detective Comics) or unpublished work like this one that editor-publisher Paul Levitz felt deserved exposure to an appreciative audience!

Reading Room PHASE 1 "Impact"

Best-known for his work on Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost...

...writer/artist Ernie Colon started expanding his creative horizons with samples like this!

Shortly after this, Ernie started getting more non-humor work from Warren, the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard, and Marvel, eventually ending up as a writer/artist/editor for DC in the early 1980s, where he co-created Arak: Son of Thunder and Amythyst: Princess of Gemworld!

This never-reprinted piece was just one of many pin-ups and short stories that appeared in the extremely HTF 80-page fanzine Phase 1 (1971) featuring work from gifted up-and-comers like Bernie Wrightson and Frank Brunner and long-established pros including Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson, Gray Morrow, and Ken Barr.

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Phase 1

Reading Room PHASE 1 "Rocket Jets Thundering..."

It's a never-reprinted single-page...

...from an incredibly-HTF one-shot early 1970s fanzine!

But WHAT a page!

A solo piece by the legendary Murphy Anderson at his Silver/Bronze Age prime!

Is this illo from SQ's Phase 1 (1971) a beautiful example of pulp-style sci-fi or what?
BTW, note the elegant way Murphy solves the problem of the jet-pack NOT burning the wearer's butt...by using flanges/pylons to keep the engines attached to the back, but not on it!

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Phase 1