Frank Frazetta (February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010)

If one picture is worth a thousand words, here's two thousand words...

Rest in Peace.

You will be remembered...

Ghost Rider by Frank Frazetta

He began life in the late 1940s as The Calico Kid, a masked hero whose secret identity was a lawman who felt justice was constrained by legal limitations. (There were a lot of those heroes in comics and pulps of the 40s including our own DareDevil and Blue Beetle!)
But, with masked heroes in every genre doing a slow fade-out, and both westerns and horror on the rise, the character was re-imagined in 1949 as comics' first horror / western character!
The Ghost Rider himself was not a supernatural being.
He wore a phosphorescent suit and cape, making him glow in the dark, appearing as a spectral presence to the (mostly) superstitious cowboys and Indians he faced.
And, since the inside of the cape was black, he'd reverse it, and appear in the dark to people as just a floating head, usually scaring a confession or needed information out of them.
Note: some covers, like the one here, show the inside of the cape to be white! Chalk it up to artistic license (and face it, it looks damned good).
BTW, that cover was by the legendary Frank Frazetta! He did several of them, three of which are included in our collection!
In the series' early days the villains were standard owlhoots or, like the Rider, people pretending to be supernatural beings.
That changed around 1952, when he started facing real mystic menaces including Indian spirits, vampires, and even the Frankenstein Monster (though not the one from Prize Comics.)
Unfortunately, it was about this point in time that Dr. Wertham began his crusade against comics in general and horror comics in particular...
By 1954, the Ghost Rider had lost his series. The next year he disappeared entirely.
But, over 50 years later, Atomic Kommie Comics™ brought him back, digitally-restored and remastered on a host of kool kollectibles to go with our other masked Western heroes including The Lone Rider, The Red Mask, The Black Phantom, and The Masked Ranger.

If you're a fan of Westerns, horror, masked heroes, or all three genres, take a long, lingering look at The Ghost Rider!
You'll not see his like again!

Luana & Gwendoline

In our ongoing search for pop culture coolness, Atomic Kommie Comics™ has come across posters for two of the funkiest flix of the 70s-80s for our line of kool kollectibles including t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, and other tchochkies...
Luana (aka Luana - la Figlia della Foresta Vergine [Italy], Luana - Der Fluch des weißen Goldes [West Germany], Luana, the Girl Tarzan [USA]) was an Italian jungle flick featuring the only Eurasian jungle princess I've ever seen, a little-known actress named Mei Chen who looks really good in a fur bikini! Produced in 1968, but not released to the US until the mid-70s, it's best known for two American posters featuring art by none other than fantasy art legend Frank Frazetta! (There was also a novelization by Alan Dean Foster [who did a helluva lot of them in the 70s] with the Frazetta art on the cover! And the key art was used as a cover for Vampirella #31, which featured a comic adaptation of the movie!)
Needless to say, we've found BOTH of the posters (along with a non-Frazetta European one) and are offering them at our Menacing Maidens section of Seduction of the Innocent™.
PLUS: we've added the Indiana Jones-style poster for the 80s Just Jackln movie version of John Wilie's Sweet Gwendoline strip called Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak, featuring video vixen Tawny Kitaen. The film is perhaps the classiest R-rated sexploitation film ever done, with a real sense of visual style, and actors who can actually act, despite truly awful dialogue! (The director also did the 80s versions of Emmanuelle and The Story of O.)
Mix in poster for both Cleopatra Jones blaxploitation flix, SuperChick, and the pre-Charlies' Angels team Ebony, Ivory & Jade, and you'll see why Menacing Maidens is a must-see site for the SERIOUS schlock fan!