Reading Room / Tales Thrice Told STRANGE TALES "A Thouand Years Later..."

Tuesday, we showed you the first of three variations of a theme...

...today we give you the second version, by the legendary team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko!

Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this story from Marvel's Strange Tales #90 (1961) is the second time in two years that Lee produced a story based on the "Adam and Eve on past/future Earth" cliche, this time adding the plot element of an immortal man who didn't fit in with society.
Lee would reuse the "Adam and Eve" concept one more time two years later...as we shall see Tuesday!

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AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE
A MARVELOUS Memoir
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Reading Room / Tales Thrice Told STRANGE WORLDS "I Am the Last Man on Earth!"

One thing Stan Lee was really good at was recycling plots (with minor variations)...

...as demonstrated in this first of three tales based on the same premise!

Plotted (and probably scripted) by Stan Lee, this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Strange Worlds #1 (1958) was illustrated by Silver Age mainstay Don Heck.

Yes, it's the "Adam & Eve begin a new Earth in the future/past" tale, which has become something of a cliche in sci-fi/fantasy.

But, it's some of the details that carry-over from one story to another that make this particular variation's multiple versions interesting.

Be here Thursday to see what I mean...

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EXCELSIOR!
Amazing Life of Stan Lee
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Reading Room SPACE WAR "Comeback"

What's cooler than re-presenting an over six decade-old never-reprinted Steve Ditko story?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

I love what I do!

And, as they say, if you love what you do, it ain't work!

Written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this story from Charlton's Space War #10 (1961) has some weird "echoes" of the origin of Captain Atom II in Charlton's Space Adventures #33 (1960)...by the same creatives!

(We showed it HERE!)

Could this story have been created before "Introducing Captain Atom" and held in inventory until a slot opened up?
We'll never know...

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Unexplored Worlds

Steve Ditko Archives, Vol 2

Friday Fun BLAST-OFF "Danger! Atoms!"

Some stories need little extrapolation...

...such as this never-reprinted short by writer/artist Howard Nostrand from Harvey's Blast-Off! #1 (1965)

Cute, eh?

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Chilling Archives of Horror Comics Volume 7

Howard Nostrand's Nightmares

Reading Room WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE "Survival of the Fittest"

Fiction or prophecy?

This is only 8 years away!

Consider recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and prepare for the possible (if not probable) mechanical Armageddon!

The penciler of this never-reprinted story from Key's Weird Tales of the Future #1 (1952) was a young Ross Andru, but the mediocre inking is clearly not his soon-to-be-partner Mike Esposito!
The identity of the embellisher, as well as the scripter remain a mystery to this day...

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America

Reading Room WEIRD ADVENTURES "Dome of Death"

Reading this blog,  you might think that "sci-fi" just means "space opera" or "futuristic"...

...but it can be set on present-day (meaning when the story was created) Earth, as well!

This never-reprinted tale from the Ziff-Davis one-shot Weird Adventures #10 (1951) reads like a script for an anthology tv show or a b-movie.
It's mostly character interaction and a crime/thriller plot with some easily-done (even for the 1950s) sfx!

Illustrated by John Giunta, whose long career spans both the Golden and Silver Ages with work for literally every company in every genre!
However, Giunta may be best-known to today's audiences as the artist who gave the legendary Frank Frazetta his first job, when he hired the talented teen as a studio assistant!
The writer of this unusual tale is unknown, but could be Giunta himself!

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Mystery in Space

Pulp Fiction Library

(which contains only a couple of stories from this previously-listed volume)

Reading Room SCREAM DOOR "Hey Buddy, Can You Lend Me a..."

This tale, written and illustrated in 1970-71, embodies two problems...

...the "collector mind-set", and extrapolating future technology based on what currently-exists!

Most of this blog's readers, as well as myself, share (to an extent) Gerson's attitude about collectibles, though perhaps not a willingness to die before giving them up!

Overall, this tale, written and illustrated by Michael (The Shadow) Kaluta, holds up well in a Twilight Zone-esque fashion.
However, the idea that a derelict land-line phone would, after a couple of centuries, still be hooked up to a functioning network defies belief in 2024, since few of our still-standing public phones are still operational!
Add to that the fact nobody in the tale carries some sort of personal communication device, as was common in sci-fi/fantasy tales written since the 1930s and set in the near-future, and what was delightfully-ironic in the 1970s seems quaint and improbable from a 21st Century viewpoint!
Notes: Scream Door, the prozine this tale appeared in, consisted mostly of material meant for the legendary magazine Web of Horror.
When Web was cancelled as of #3, almost all of the already-completed stories for later issues ended up in either this one-shot or the three-issue series I'll Be Damned, by the same publisher.
"Buddy..." also appeared in Marvel's b/w magazine Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1 (1975).

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Wings of Twilight

Art of Michael Kaluta

Reading Room CRIME DETECTOR "Ultimate Destiny"

Some comics tales of the 1950s have a real "nightmare" feel...

...such as this rarely-seen story by an underrated master of the genre!

Note: the final page was printed sideways as a single page, but we think it works better as a two-page spread, so...

The writer for this cool comic classic from Timor's Crime Detector #5 (1954) is unknown, but the distinctive art is by Jay Disbrow, who had a long career in comics from 1948 to 2005!

His last new work was the on-line comic Aroc of Zenith, which ran for 312 pages from 2000 to 2005, and you can find HERE.

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EC Horror Library of the 1950s

(It ain't cheap,...but it's GREAT!)

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