SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

He's the Jolly Old Elf in a red suit!
They are BIG Green Men from Mars with an even BIGGER robot!
Before Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, they were the ingredients for the weirdest Christmas movie ever!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was filmed in 1964 in that bastion of the cinema, Long Island (in an unused aircraft hangar).

Starring a host of tv and b-movie actors including handsome-but-stiff Leonard Hicks as the Martian Leader (and kids' father) Kimar, 60s villain/voiceover artist Vincent Beck (who did lots of work for Irwin Allen's sci-fi shows) as the film's mustache-twirling villain, Voldar, and John Call as a pretty damn convincing Santa Claus, the flick is touted as the debut of future talentless chantuse Pia Zadora as Martian Kid Girmar. Thankfully, she has rather limited screen time.

As an example of low-budget filmmaking, it's actually pretty effective.

Every penny (what few of them they had) is up on the screen.

They make good use of stock footage (from Dr. Strangelove, no less).

And the use of then-popular Wham-O Air Blaster toy guns as the Martian weapons was either a stroke of marketing genius or clever use of limited funds. Either way, sales of the guns shot thru the roof after the film hit the kiddie matinee circuit!

If you're between 3-9 years old, the flick's a lot of fun.

If you're between 10 and whatever the local drinking age is, it'll drive you nuts, especially the theme song!

If you're over the local drinking age, do so before watching! It's available on a host of public domain dvds as well as one of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 snarkfests.

BTW: The image above is from the comic book tie-in, which you can read in three parts...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

There was also a single of the theme, a spoken-word LP album of the movie's dialogue, and a novelization!

Now I can't get that damn theme our of my head..."Hoo-ray for Santy Claus..." AARRRGGGHHH!

An early Christmas gift from us to you:
The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the film (don't tell Dr Forrester)...

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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Blu-Ray from Something Weird

Loaded with Kool Extras!

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Monday Mecha Madness WORLD OF FANTASY "To Build a Robot!"

Does this tale take place in the present...or the future?

Or has it already happened, and we don't know it?

Considering the way industry tried to slow the introduction of the electric car, is it that far-fetched someone for their own ulterior motives is trying to suppress mobile artificial intelligence?

Or have we just seen the Teminator and Matrix films too many times?

Plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Christopher Rule had their own take in Atlas' World of Fantasy #18 (1959), decades before James Cameron or the Wachowskis...and it didn't take multiple films to tell it, just four pages!

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Science Fiction

Simon & Kirby Library
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The RetroBlog Thanksgiving Turkey for 2025 Is...

Wait!
WHAT???
Where is that damn intern???
WTF is going on???
"You said "pull the poster for yadda-yadda-Man-yadda-Flint-yadda-sitting in a chair surrounded by women!"
That's not what I meant!
This is what I meant!

(and yes, the poster was deliberately-designed to mimic Bob Peake's iconic art!)
Now that is a turkey worth roasting...although what we're presenting is the HTF comic book adaptation...which is quite different from the film!

(With the long lead-in time to write, draw, and print the comic, I suspect they only had the early drafts of the script to adapt.)
At any rate,
Part 1 will run on Thanksgiving!
Part 2 will appear on Black Friday!
And, here's a kool early Christmas present for you...
On Saturday, the original, uncut theatrical print (including the pre-credits sequence with Wilma instead of Lady Liberty holding the Columbia torch aloft!) will be seen for the first time in decades, so you can compare it with the comic!
So Visit Secret Sanctum of Captain Video on Thanksgiving...or wander over on Saturday (after shopping on Black Friday) if you want to binge everything at once!

Reading Room COMIC READER "Invasion!"

Here's a single image that conveys an entire story...

...a, sadly, never-completed tale meant for one of the Charlton sci-fi anthologies of the late Silver Age.

Probably abandoned when Jim Aparo joined editor Dick Giordano when he moved over to DC, it's typical of the detailed work Aparo produced for them, despite the awful printing that would obscure a lot of the time-intensive rendering.

The Comic Reader was a late 1960s-early 1970s newszine/fanzine, available at comic conventions and by subscription.

The covers were almost always exclusives, either pieces done to promote current projects (a Manhunter cover by Walt Simonson during the character's revival in Detective Comics) or unpublished work like this one that editor-publisher Paul Levitz felt deserved exposure to an appreciative audience!

Monday Monster Madness MONSTERS UNLIMITED "Best of #4"

As of #4, Monsters to Laugh With  changed it's title...

...to Monsters Unlimited!

But the Stan Lee-scripted word balloons on old (even in 1965) movie and TV horror/sci-fi pix remained as corny as ever!

Remember the caption-writing contest Stan ran last issue?

Well, here's the (as Stan put it) WEINER...

You'll Have to Wait Until Next Halloween Season To See That Pic!

Next Monday...

Shogun Warriors are Back as Monday Mecha Madness Returns!

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Monsters Unlimited #4

The Original Magazine...NOT a Reprint!
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Monday Madness MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH "Best of #3"

What Did the Late, Great, Stan Lee Find Funny?

Why, taking old horror/sci-fi movie and TV show pix and adding silly word balloons to them!

And Stan wanted you, the reader to participate in the fun...

Did they publish the winners?

You'll hve to be here Next Monday to find out, True Believer!

BTW, this back cover pic is from The Man Who Laughs, starring Conrad Veidt...the visual inspiration for writer/artist Jerry Robinson's creation of The Batman's arch-enemy The Joker!

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Monsters to Laugh With #3

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Monday Madness MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH "Best of #2"

Continuing our look at Stan Lee's obsession...

...with captioning old monster/horror/sci-fi movie and tv show pix with silly word balloons!

..but there's even more next week, boys and ghouls!

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Monsters to Laugh With #2

(Not a reprint! The original magazine!)
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Reading Room EVERY DAY IS A HOLLY DAY "Columbus Day"

It used to be October 12th (today, AAMOF)...

...but now it's the second Monday in October, to allow people a three-day holiday!

Interestingly, this page from Brevity Inc's one-shot giveaway Every Day is a Holly Day (1956) acknowledges Christopher Columbus didn't discover America, a rarity in that era!

Why is this comic entitled "Every Day is a Holly Day" instead of "Every Day is a Holiday"?

Because it was given away to kids by grocers who sold Holly Sugar!

Illustrated by John Rosenberger, it's a unique pamphlet covering a number of American holidays, including both Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays (before they were combined into "Presidents' Day"), Mothers' Day (though not Fathers' Day), Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a couple of holidays we've largely abandoned...Pan-American Day and American Indian Day!

We'll be presenting the other chapters on the dates they fall upon.

Watch for them!

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Cartoon History of the Modern World

Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution
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Monday Monster Madness MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH "Best of #1"

Let's see how funny the legendary Stan Lee could be...

Now who could argue with that?

And so this issue's parade of classic monster pix ends with...

...but there's more next week, boy fiends and ghoul friends!

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Monsters to Laugh With #1

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Monday Monster Madness MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH / MONSTERS UNLIMITED & MONSTER MADNESS

Besides comic books, Marvel made occasional forays into the b/w magazine market...

..with this seven-issue 1965-66 title being their longest-lasting Silver Age series!
(Note: with the second issue, Stan Lee's name was added to the cover as a selling point!)

Other mags had used the gimmick of captioning old movie and tv photos for a feature in a magazine...but never an entire magazine!

At this point, the book changed it's title...

...nobody's really sure why, but it seemed to work!

One of the koolest aspects was that Stan Lee wrote the captions...

...bringing the same kitchy vaudville-level humor that he used for decades in Marvel's humor comics!

I'm not sure if declining sales or Stan Lee's increasing workload caused the cancellation!
(Besides his writing/editing duties, he was now the public face of Marvel, giving interviews, making appearances on tv, even touring college campuses where Marvel Comics were the "in" thing!)
In 1973, when Marvel unleashed an entire line of b/w magazines, ranging from horror to kung fu to Planet of the Apes...

...they revived the concept, still written by Stan Lee!

...but this time, the book was the least-successful of the b/w line!
It was re-tooled into a Famous Monsters of Filmland/Castle of Frankenstein format, adding features about both old and current films and tv shows...

...but the alteration didn't help and the book was cancelled.

Marvel tried again, later that year with a Famous Monsters of Filmland/Castle of Frankenstein clone called Monsters of the Movies, which lasted for eight regular issues and an Annual.

Starting next Monday, through the rest of October, you'll be seeing the best (IMHO) of Monsters to Laugh With and Monsters Unlimited!

Don't Miss It!