ROGER CORMAN 1926-2024

Roger Corman and Vincent Price

One of the most influential filmmakers from the 1950s onward, Roger was one of the greatest "hyphenates" (writer/director/producer/occasional actor/etc) in history.

He gave career-starting jobs to numerous future cinema icons from Francis Ford Coppola to Pam Grier to James Cameron to Jack Nicholson to Martin Scorsese to Peter Bogdanovitch.

He revived the slowing careers of numerous 1920s-1950s performers, and made some of them (like Vincent Price and Joan Crawford) pop culture icons!
Plus, Corman brought numerous foreign movies to America that no other US studio wanted to invest in, like Fantastic Planet, The Tin Drum, and Cries and Whispers.

Roger's works are a major part of the entertainment side of my life...and always will be.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go rewatch Gas-s-s-Or-It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, Corman's final film for AIP!

You'd be surprised how timely it still is!

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How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
(Roger Corman's Autobiography)

What Do Trumpettes Talk About When They Wait in Line to Get Into a Rally?

Likely something like this...

...and this!

Both these two-page spreads are from Charlton's Hee Haw comics derived from the syndicated TV series.

These examples of the show's humor were written and illustrated by Frank Roberge and based on an ongoing skit featuring the entire cast (plus guest stars) in a cornfield popping up and doing jokes and one-liners!

The TV show ran a surprising twenty-six seasons from 1969 to 1995, though the comic only lasted for seven (never-reprinted) issues!

Friday Fun CRAZY "Hollywood Extra"

With the movie industry retrenching as audiences continue to not return to theaters...

...let's take a satirical look at how the film industry reacted the first time that phenomenon happened!

Writer Stan Lee and illustrator Russ Heath show, in this never-reprinted story from Atlas' MAD comic clone Crazy V1N7 (1954), that the movie business was losing customers to the then-new entertainment technology of television...and that was with TVs that had 15 inch (or less) screens and had only black-and-white transmissions (even when they broadcast color movies)!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Space Force Saturdays SPACE PATROL "Outlaws of Vesta"

Continuing the (sadly) short-lived cosmic comic adventures of Buzz Corry and the members of 1950's TV/radio Space Patrol...

...with another tale from Ziff-Davis' Space Patrol #1 (1952)!

Yes, Tonga was still a "bad" girl at this point in the series.
Though the art is clearly Bernie Krigstein, there's debate as to whether the scripter is prolific comic writer Paul S Newman or Drift Marlo creator/writer Phillip Evans.

There's more Space Patrol excitement to come as we present every tale from its' two-issue run!

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Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television

Space Patrol

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Friday Fun THIS MAGAZINE IS CRAZY "Fact Realism vs TV is 'em Real"

Old West humor, illustrated by the legendary Jack Davis...

...but NOT from MAD!

It's from Charlton's This Magazine is CRAZY! V4N8, a MAD imitator which lasted only seven issues!

Both as a color comic and a b/w magazine, MAD inspired many imitators.

Some, like Cracked, are going even today (albeit on-line, not in print).
Others, like This Magazine is CRAZY, were short-lived, but able, from time to time, to get work from MAD's regular contributors, almost all of whom were freelancers.
This particular piece from 1959 apparently was a satirical response to TV's sanitizing the images of both cowboys and Indians in ongoing series.
Westerns were the most popular scripted genre at the time, dominating almost half of both the prime time and syndicated schedules.
The writer is, regrettably, unknown but it could be Davis himself, who utilized this format in both issues of his own short-lived color comic humor anthology Yak Yak, as seen HERE and HERE!

The writer is, regrettably, unknown.

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Friday Fun THE VIDEO VERSIONS OF "ARENA"

"Arena" by Fredric Brown (See HERE and HERE) was adapted (sort of) twice for TV...

...first, in 1964, on The Outer Limits as "Fun and Games", starring Nick Adams.

There are a number of differences between the story and the episode, including a pair of new characters, a woman with a hidden past who works with the hero and a mate for the alien...whom the alien himself kills!
(Talk about "battle of the sexes)!

A year later the story was reused, on Classic Star Trek as "Arena"...

...except it wasn't...exactly.

Gene Roddenberry's right hand man, producer Gene Coon, had submitted a story about Capt. Kirk fighting an alien starship's commander in hand-to-claw combat to see whose ship would survive.

When the story was fact-checked, it was discovered that Coon had inadvertently-used numerous elements from Brown's story, which Gene had probably read years earlier!
Since the episode was already in the production cycle, "Arena" author Fredric Brown was contacted, and he agreed to allow "Arena" to be adapted again...not knowing the episode was already written.
Since the OL and ST episodes are sufficiently-different (and titled differently), many in the 1960s never realized...or noticed...the "Based on a story by Fredric Brown" credit!

Friday Fun Extra: Kirk (William Shatner) and the Gorn (not the stuntman from the 1960s!) meet again in hand-to-claw combat...

...to promote a video game based on the reboot Kelvin Universe Star Trek!

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Outer Limits

Complete Original Series DVDs

and/or

Star Trek

Complete Original Series BluRays

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THEY'RE Here! THE GREEN HORNET! Yes, That Sentence Actually Makes Sense...

...because over 30 years ago, NOW Comics produced a Green Hornet comic series...

...featuring a multi-generational plotline encompassing the various versions of the character, from 1930s radio to 1940s comics and movie serials to the 1960s TV series.

The primary creatives, writer Ron Fortier and illustrator Jeff Butler, did an amazing job both of tying the original versions together, then adding to the storyline with descendants based in the then-present (1990s)!
Sadly, though Dynamite Comics has reprinted some of the Golden Age Green Hornet books, they've shown no interest in repackaging this particular series, which introduced some of the concepts Dynamite's creatives have used since, such as how the 1930s Britt Reid and Kato met and a contemporary female Kato!
We believe that this now all-but-forgotten series deserves to be seen by present-day fans, so we're running the unseen-for-decades series in weekly chapters on our "brother" RetroBlog Crime & Punishment!

Click HERE to enjoy!

Let's Roll, Kato!
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The Green Hornet
(Limited-edition, HTF hardcover produced in 1990 reprinting the initial storyline)
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Space Force Saturdays SPACE PATROL "Lady of Diamonds"

It's not the Basil Wolverton series we previously presented...

...but a comic based on a saga about those who protect the 30th Century space-lanes in both the video and audio realms!

Tonga later reformed and ended up as the Assistant Security Chief for the entire Space Patrol organization!

Space Patrol ran Monday thru Friday on tv and semi-weekly on radio from 1950 to 1955, using the same performers for both media.

For a more extensive look at the tv and radio shows go HERE.

This comic book adaptation from Ziff-Davis Publishing ran for only two issues in 1952, was written by Philip Evans (who did a lot of movie and tv tie-ins and co-created Drift Marlo, which we presented HERE and HERE), and illustrated by Bernie Krigstein (who also did SpaceBusters, a comic series about intergalactic Marines, before moving on to EC Comics, where he achieved his greatest fame).
The book ended, not due to poor sales, but because Ziff-Davis left the comic book business during the "comics cause juvenile delinquency" controversy of the early 1950s, deciding to concentrate on publishing slick magazines instead, and still continuing to this day as seen HERE.

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Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television

Space Patrol

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Monday Madness: Presidental Sex, Lies, and Movies!

Press Secretary Jerry Ross (Martin Short) sneaks the Martian “girl” (Lisa Marie) into the White House in 1996’s Mars Attacks!

He lifts a lever, under a bust of JFK, which opens the door to a secret assignation space.
Was this scene a tribute to JFK's phallic prowess?

Want to see how pop culture presents real-life Presidents' antics in reel-life?

Check out this blog post...

HERE!

(Full disclosure: I do the image reserch/selection/editing for the blog, but have no control over the editorial material.)

Space Force Saturdays TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET "Spaceship of Doom!"

Here's the only major 1950s multi-media space hero we haven't covered...

...so we're intoducing him to you with his first appearance in his second comic series!

So, let's join Tom and the crew of the Space Academy ship Polaris...

Besides being the longest-running tv/radio show of the genre (six years), Tom Corbett had the longest run of any of the tv series comics adaptations...fifteen issues with two different publishers!

The second series was published by Prize Comics and packaged (as were a number of Prize titles of the period) by the Simon & Kirby studio.

The series' primary artist was Mort Meskin, but there are apparently other artists doing layouts and inking including Jack Kirby himself, and Steve Ditko (who was just starting out).

This tale from Prize Comics' V2N1 (1955) was penciled by Meskin and inked by several different artists.
Trivia: the TV series is one of only a half-dozen shows to have appeared on all four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and DuMont) during its' first run!

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Pre-Code Classics

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

Volume One

The First 7 Issues

Space Hero Saturdays CAPTAIN VIDEO "Dark Side of the Moon" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Aliens operating on the Dark Side of the Moon plan to attack Earth, and only Captain Video (with the Video Ranger) can stop them...

You may ask, "What's so special about this? It's typical sci-fi."
And you'd be right.
Except, due to their extremely low-budget nature, the Captain Video TV show and movie serial showed aliens who looked like this...

The "alien invasion force" from Captain Video; the Serial.
Note Captain Video (Judd Holdren) and the Ranger on the left in "clever" disguises.

Only in the comic, unencumbered by financial or special effect restrictions, was the full, unfettered potential of the concept realized.

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Captain Video

Complete Comic Book Series