Friday Fun ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH IN "Five Year Plan for the Moon" & "...as Used by Our Astronaughts in Space!"

Though largely-forgotten today...

Wraparound cover of #12

Artist Unknown

...this 1960s comedy-variety TV series was ground-breaking in a number of ways.

Besides the show's anti-Establishment content, which was always a source of contention with NBC network censors, it had an amazing amount of tie-in merchandise...including a MAD-style magazine!
In 1969, with the first Moon landing about to occur, the mag took a couple of looks at the space program...

...and...

By the time these features appeared in the final issue of Laufer Publishing's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (#12 in 1969), the use of images of the actual performers from the show had been reduced to the cover and a couple of one-pagers based on long-running gags like the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award".
Laufer Publishing was best-known for the legendary 1960s-70s teen magazine Tiger Beat!

Here's a Kool video about the magazine, which Baby Boomers remember fondly!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Buy...

MEOW!

My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols!
Paid Link

Lunar Reading Room / Tales Twice Told STRANGE GALAXY "Moon is Red"

In the late 1960s-early 1970s, numerous b/w comic magazines popped up...

...to publish risque older material the Comics Code Authority banned from color comic books from the mid-1950s onward!

Despite being drawn in 1970, this tale from Eerie Publications' Strange Galaxy #V1N8 (1971) has the feel of a 1950s tale, which isn't surprising since Eerie both reprinted stories from defunct publishers when they could find photostats/printing film or re-illustrated stories using old scripts nearly verbatim when they couldn't.
In fact, this story's script is adapted from a tale in Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951) called "A Nation is Born", which we'll re-present Thursday so you can compare them!
BTW, this issue, despite being #8, was actually the first issue under that title.
What it was before then is unknown, since the publisher did numerous titles in various categories including astrology, romance, crime, etc.

"Oswal" was the pen-name of Osvaldo Walter Viola, an Argentinean writer/artist who began his career in the early 1960s creating Argentine's first super-hero, Sónoman.

His only American comics work was for Eerie Publications' titles.

Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Buy...

The Worst of Eerie Publications
Paid Link

Friday Fun ACE OF SPADES! The Swinging Seventies Black Super-Hero You NEVER Heard of...

 In 1971, two years before The Black Panther received his own series...

...a Black Super-Hero hit the newsstands of America for a two-issue run almost nobody remembers!

Who is he?

Where did he come from?

And why don't even the most obsessive comics fans remember him?

These, and other equally-valid questions are now answered at...

Not Safe for Work Comics!
In a Two-Part Post!
Part 1
Part 2

Warning!

The Answers May NOT Be Suitable For the Faint-Hearted!

Click at Your Own Risk!

Monday Mecha Madness (Continued) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA "Saga of a Star World" Conclusion

Art by Bob Larkin

There are those who believe...that life here began out there, far across the Universe...with tribes of humans...who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians...or the Toltecs...or the Mayans...that they may have been the architects of the Great Pyramids...or the lost civilizations of Lemuria...or Atlantis.
Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man...who even now fight to survive--far, far away amongst the stars...

When Last We Left the Human Race...

Betrayed by one of their own to the robotic alien Cylons*, the Twelve Colonies of Man are wiped out in a sneak attack.

The survivors hastily assemble a fleet of ships under the protection of the only remaining Battlestar, and head away from their now-devastated worlds....

This second half of the movie version of Battlestar Galactica was presented by writer Roger McKenzie and artist/colorist/painter Ernie Colon.
Because it was based on an early draft of the script, names (Serina is called Lyra) are different, and some characters who live in both the movie and tv series (including Cassiopeia) die!
(Baltar dies in the feature film, but survives in the TV series.)

This first version of Marvel Super Special #8 (1978) was a full-process color, slick-stock magazine.

However, because the editor didn't get approval from Universal Studios on the final art before it went to press, the vast majority of the copies were ordered pulped!
(This story has been confirmed by both then-Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter and the book's artist Ernie Colon.)
Changes in both script and art were made, and the book was reissued as a tabloid-sized Treasury edition, with standard comic book "flat" coloring and a new pen-and-ink cover by Rick Bryant based on the Bob Larkin cover painting!

The story was modified again when it was expanded to fill the first three issues of the ongoing Battlestar Galactica comic book...including keeping both Baltar and Cassiopeia alive!
(Cassie would later die in the comic adaptation of the two-part episode "Lost Planet of the Gods", where she's killed by Cylons.)

*Though the Cylons' Imperious Leader appears reptilian, it is as much a robot as the others, though based on the image of the humanoid lizards who created the robots!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Battlestar Galactica: the Definitive Collection
The Original Series
Galactica: 1980
Original Feature Film
Paid Link

Monday Mecha Madness BATTLESTAR GALACTICA "Saga of a Star World" Part 1

Besides Robots and Androids Created by Humans...

...we also present ones created by aliens, such as the Cylons...as seen in the extremely-limited/never-reprinted version of the feature film-length pilot, from the magazine-sized Marvel Super-Special #8 (1978).

...and thus we pause to catch our breath...until tomorrow...and the cataclysmic conclusion.

The Cylons were conceived and built by a long-dead alien race..also called Cylons.
It's unknown whether the robots killed their masters or the aliens went extinct due to a plague or other natural disaster.
The Imperious Leader, a robot itself, was built in the image of those reptilian aliens.
It's implied that Count Iblis and some of his near-godlike fellow aliens manipulated the Cylons and human Colonials into the Thousand-Year War.
(Actor Patrick Macnee played Iblis and provided the voice of the Imperious Leader robot, leading human traitor Baltar, the only human who ever met the Imperious Leader and lived, to piece the puzzle together!)
Note: the juvenile spin-off series Galactica: 1980, introduced Cylons indistinguishable from human beings in the episode "Night the Cylons Landed".

This first half of the movie version of Battlestar Galactica was presented by writer Roger McKenzie and artist/colorist/painter Ernie Colon.

We'll have the story behind the change from magazine to tabloid format next time...

Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Battlestar Galactica: the Definitive Collection
The Original Series
Galactica: 1980
Original Feature Film
Paid Link