Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told WEIRD WORLDS "Terror on Station One!"

Here's an early 1970s sci-fi space opera tale...
...that reads and "feels" like a 1950s sci-fi space opera story!
And there's a good reason for that!
Wonder why this Cirillo Munoz-rendered tale from Eerie Publications' Weird Worlds V1N10 (1970) feels so...out of date in an early 1970s magazine?
Perhaps because it's almost a line-for-line, panel for panel, re-do of a 1950s story!
Be here Thursday to see the original four-color version by a different artist!
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Monday, September 8, 2025

Monday Mecha Madness ROCKET SHIP X "Robot Rebellion"

We're DOOMED, do you hear me?
DOOMED, because 2035 will bring a...
...as shown in this never-reprinted tale from Fox's one-shot sci-fi anthology Rocket Ship X (1951)!
It's actually a decent little tale whose creators, regrettably, are anonymous.
Think James Cameron read it as a kid?
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Sunday, September 7, 2025

Sunday Sports Special LARS OF MARS "Crucial Game"

Even a Martian pretending to be a TV actor playing a Martian reveres the Great American Pastime...

...and won't allow anybody to sully or demean the sport's image...even if it means cheating to do so!

The ends justify the means even if it involves alien manipulation of peoples' minds, eh?
Great lesson for kids!
Written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, illustrated by noted DC Comics artist Murphy Anderson, this tale appeared in Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #11 (1951), the second (and last issue) of the series!
Considering the moral lessons the series apparently taught, perhaps it was for the best...
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Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Why Won't They Believe Me?"

Stan (the Man) Lee felt a good story...
...such as this one from Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #7 (1961), was worth repeating...
Scripted by Lee and illustrated by his Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, the tale was typical of the "gotcha" snap-ending stories made popular in mass culture by Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone, but done a decade earlier in comics by the EC Comics horror and sci-fi/fantasy books (though usually with more gore).
Lee re-used (and expanded) the plot almost a decade later when he re-did it with another Silver Age legend, as you'll see Thursday...

Monday, September 1, 2025

Monday Mecha Madness CRAZY "Robert the Robot!"

Here's a long-lost tale from the era when MAD comic clones filled America's newsstands!
(Which bring up the question...does anybody under 30 even know what a "newsstand" is?)
While the story's not a classic, it's not bad, either!
The amazingly versatile Joe Maneely handled the art for this never-reprinted tale from this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Crazy V1N7 (1954), but the script is not by Stan Lee...who would've had his name on it if he had penned the story!
Maneely could do anything; sci-fi, horror, war, romance, western, even humor, as this story demonstrates!
If not for his tragic death falling from a New York suburban commuter train, he would have been one of the major talents of Marvel Comics in the 1960s.
Atlas had no less than three MAD clones going at once; CrazyWild, and Riot!
MAD themselves commented on the proliferation of clones, not only from Atlas, but virtually every other publisher with this opener for their spoof of the 1950s movie Julius Ceasar by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood...
When MAD converted to a b/w magazine, Atlas dropped the three color comics and launched the b/w Snafu,which only lasted three issues!
Atlas/Marvel would revive Crazy twice more!
First, in early 1973 as a reprint book of Not Brand Echh stories.
Then, in late 1973 as a b/w magazine going head-to-head with MAD, and surviving until 1983 for 96 issues!
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Thursday, August 28, 2025

Reading Room STRANGE WORLDS "Invasion from the Abyss!"

Alien Invasions of Earth are a Popular Story Concept...
...even when the "aliens" are from inside the Earth, rather than outer space!
This story from Avon's Strange Worlds #3 (1951) was a "Fleagle Gang" production.
The "Fleagles" were a group of artists including Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, and George Woodbridge who would help each other out on tight deadlines by doing a "jam" with individuals penciling and inking different pages and even different panels on a single page, producing some absolutely-amazing visuals!
Trivia: the group was named by EC Comics editor/writer/artist Harvey Kurtzman.

The idea of advanced beings living inside the Earth and invading/reconquering the surface was very popular in the early 1950s.
Richard Shaver and 1930s-40s pulp magazine editor Raymond A Palmer caused a media firestorm with a series of stories presenting a theory that combined the "civilization inside the Earth" concept with another pop culture phenomenon...flying saucers!
Numerous readers wrote in, claiming that they had actually seen creatures and vehicles exactly as described in the stories!
The "Shaver Hoax" (as it came to be known) influenced 1930s-50s sci-fi/fantasy ranging from the two-part pilot episode of the TV's Adventures of Superman "Superman and the Mole Men" to movie serials like The Phantom Empire and movies like Brain Eaters!
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Saturday, August 9, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays ALIEN WORLDS "Few and the Far"

In space, things aren't always as they seem to appear...
...as this never-reprinted tale from Pacific's Alien Worlds #1 (1982) demonstrates not once, but twice...
Admit it.
Writer Bruce Jones and artist Al Williamson fooled you!
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Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WEIRD THRILLERS "Cycle of Time"

With the revived popularity of dinosaurs due to the new movie Jurassic World: Rebirth...
...we're re-presenting one of our favorite stories; a sci-fi triple-treat: time travel, aliens, and dinosaurs!
Illustrated by Murphy Anderson, who was doing quite a bit of work for ZD including the second issue of Space Busters and both issues of Lars of Mars as well as various one-shots like this one from the HTF Ziff-Davis' anthology Weird Thrillers #2 (1951)!.
We don't know who wrote this tale, but it might be series editor Jerry (Superman) Siegel.