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

Sunday, October 5, 2025

Halloween Reading Room PHANTOM WITCH DOCTOR "Out of the Deep!"

 Avon's Phantom Witch Doctor (1952) was a unique one-shot...
...with a lead story featuring the title character and a trio of totally-unrelated tales (including this one) backing it up!

Whether the creature is a Lovecraftian-type Elder-God, a stranded alien, or just a sentient life-force is never really explained.
Another unsolved puzzle is who the writer and artist(s) for this short story were.
But what's life without a few mysteries, eh?
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Saturday, September 20, 2025

Space Force Saturdays PERIMETER PATROL SERVICE "Space Pirates on Xarpot"

Space police/military organizations were ubiquitous in 1950s sci-fi...

...and this story was the second one featuring the short-lived Perimeter Patrol Service.
You can read their premiere tale HERE!
BTW, note the painted cover is by the story's illustrator, Bernie Krigstein...who rarely did painted covers!
Considering the three tales were done by the artists who also did SpaceBusters, we wonder if this was intended as a backup series for that title.
This never-reprinted story from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #6 (1952) is a superb example of pulp/comic space opera of the era with all the classic elements:
Scantly-clad women!
Square-jawed heroes!
Rockets & ray-guns!
And, instead of bug-eyed monsters...space pirates!
Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...
(either for yourself, or as a gift for a con friend/relative)

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out of date in an early 1970s magazine?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!
Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

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?
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Buy...
Vol 3
Paid Link

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...
Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Buy...
Paid Link

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!
Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...