Showing posts with label golden age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label golden age. Show all posts

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Space VILLAIN Saturdays QUORAK: SUPER PIRATE "Man Who Stole a World!"

Remember When This Happened 25 Years Ago, in 2000?

No?
Well, I guess we'd better remind you!










OK!
This didn't actually happen in the year 2000!
It did happen...in the pages of Fiction House's Planet Comics #1 (1940), an anthology of space opera series set in the future running from 2000 to 25,000AD!
This particular one was about a mad scientist, since most anthology comics in the early Golden Age, whether they were sci-fi/fantasy, crime, Western, or even super-hero featured an ongoing villain strip with a plucky, stalwart hero and/or heroine thwarting the baddie at every turn!
And though Lt Gary Blake and Joan Perry captured Quorak, he never escaped and threatened the earth again!
The byline on the strip, "Albert Charles", was a Fiction House pen-name.
The company rarely-credited actual creatives on ongoing series (unless one person was both the writer and artist like Dick Briefer or Basil Wolverton), since teams changed members fairly-frequently.
Planet's editors tried several other ongoing villains, the longest-running of which was Mars: God of War who ran for 20 issues until his feature was taken over by Mysta of the Moon, a new heroine who defeated him in his last appearance!

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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays ROCKET KELLY "Mr Weather's Revenge"

As a Heat Wave Bakes the Continental US...

...we thought you'd enjoy a Space Hero Saturday story involving something cooling...like glaciers!








Gotta admit, a smiling Sun is not what you'd expect in the final panel of an ostensibly-serious strip!
This never-reprinted tale from Fox's Rocket Kelly #4 (1946) was credited to "Ted Small", a Fox in-house pseudonym used on all the Rocket Kelly stories (despite several obviously-different writers and artists) along with a number of one-shot features!
Illustrated by Arnold Hicks, this story is from the third (and final) version of the strip, after being a WWII aviator with a souped-up fighter-bomber...then a WWII aviator who accidentally ends up aboard an alien spacecraft...to an ex-WWII aviator whose genius father gives him his own creation to fly around in and keep the Earth safe.

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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays FANTASTIC COMICS "Space Smith and the Mummified Meteor Vacuumites"

If that title doesn't lure you into reading this post...
...I'll eat my Cosmic Transtator!
Enjoy this even weirder-than-usual installment of Space Smith by the legendary Fletcher Hanks from Fox's Fantastic Comics #6 (1940)!
Say what you will about Fletcher Hanks' sometimes-iffy technical proficiency, but his stories are never dull!
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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT "Beyond the Sun"

If a Hero is Judged by the Quality of His Arch-Enemies...

...Captain Midnight has just made a quantum leap from "space pirate" to "ruler of an entire planet"!








Scientific note: though it was known to the scientific community since the 1930s that Saturn, like Jupiter was a gas giant, science fiction/fantasy stories continued to show them as large planets similar to Earth, but with heavy cloud cover that prevented observation of the surface!
Illustrated by Leonard Frank, Fawcett's Captain Midnight #64 (1948) introduces Cap's second (and final) alien arch-enemy, Xog: Ruler of Saturn!
You'll see more of him next month!

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Friday, June 20, 2025

Friday Fun P.S. "Guys in the Trick Suits"

During the Era of Batmania (In the 1960s)...

...mass market magazines oriented towards the over-30 crowd (who apparently had forgotten their childhoods only a decade or two earlier), sought an explanation as to the appeal of comic books to the under-30 crowd.





P.S., a short-lived magazine (only three issues) dedicated to nostalgia, brought in William F Nolan, a noted science fiction writer with numerous teleplays and short stories to his credit.
You've read his piece, written and published just after the Batman TV series debuted in January, 1966.
What do you think of his look back at his childhood during the Golden Age?
Note: A year after this, Nolan, in collaboration with George Clayton Johnson, wrote the novel Logan's Run.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Remember INAPAK, the Amazing Chocolate Drink?

Bosco?
Bah!
Quik?
Crap!
Ovaltine?
Ewww!
You want serious chocolate flavor in your milk?
Here it is...
It must be true!
Major Inapak says so!
And Major Inapak wouldn't lie!
In fact, he uses science to prove his point...
Major Inapak returns to tell the Youth of America what to do...
You'll pardon me while I scamper out to the supermarket to get a box!
Be back Thursday for more on...Inapak!