Reading Room: CAPTAIN SCIENCE COMICS "World War III with the Ants"

I'm Having Serious Problems with Ant Infestation...

...but never anything like this ant-ageddon (or ant-pocalypse) from Youthful's Captain Science #6 (1953)!

As for who was responsible for writing and illustrating this cult comic classic, theories run from Harry Harrison (who became a major sci-fi novelist and editor), to Dick Ayers to Lou Cameron, but nobody knows for certain.

BTW, this story came out over a year before the classic giant-ant film THEM!

Reading Room CAPTAIN SCIENCE COMICS "Spawn of Saturn"

Welcome to the Cover Featured Tale from Captain Science #1 (1950)...

...except it's not about Captain Science!

In fact, the story's title isn't mentioned on the cover at all!

(You can find the actual Captain Science stories from #1 HERE and HERE.)

It's interesting to see a sci-fi tale where a handsome starship captain doesn't go on a landing party to a potentially-dangerous locale!

The writer is unknown, but the art is by Walter Johnson, who not only penciled and inked his own work, but ran a studio that supplied material to a number of comics companies, so some of his "signed" jobs (like this one) show elements of several artists' styles.

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Taylor Illustrated History

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Reading Room BLAST-OFF "Little Earth"

This is a classic example of an unheralded gem by two graphic-story masters...

...that has been reprinted only twice...in now OOP limited-run books, so most of you have never seen it!

Oddly, the GCD lists it as penciled by Reed Crandall and inked by Al Williamson, but Teddy I at pencilink.blogspot.com reverses the credits!
Personally, I think both artists, in typical Fleagle Gang-style worked at both tasks in various panels.

The writer is Larry Ivie, who scripted several dozen stories for Marvel, DC, Tower, King, and Warren in the 1960s, and also published Monsters and Heroes, a competitor to Famous Monsters of Filmland!

According to the Kirby Museum, this story was intended for Harvey's never-published Race for the Moon #5 in 1958, but remained unused until 1965, when it ran in the Harvey one-shot anthology Blast-Off!

Reading Room WEIRD THRILLERS "Shadow on the Screen!"

For all those whose parents told them "TV is bad for you"...

...and "comics are bad for you", well, they were right, as this comic tale about TV proves!

This tale from Ziff-Davis' Weird Thrillers #3 (1952) was illustrated by Bob Powell.

Powell, besides being a gifted illustrator was also a pioneer in the use of "color holds" in comic books.

The same technique he used on the tv screen was also used in a tale of radio and pulp hero The Shadow HERE, taking artwork that normally would be black-line and making it one of the color plates.

It was a very tricky thing to do back in those days since the interior pages were almost never proofed due to time and cost restraints.

But, Powell does some amazing things with the holds, making them line up exactly almost all the time!

Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown...

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The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics: Volume 2

Bob Powell's

Terror
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Space Hero Saturdays SPURS JACKSON & HIS SPACE VIGILANTES "Sun Masters"

Once more we return to the really weird pages of Space Western Comics...

...where both stagecoaches and spacecraft are accepted forms of transportation!

Written by Walter (The Shadow) Gibson and illustrated by Stan Campbell, this tale from Charlton's Space Western Comics #42 (1953) starts out relatively-accurate to the science of the era, but throws it all away at the conclusion!

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Space Western Comics
Cowboys vs Aliens, Commies, Dinosaurs, and Nazis
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Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "The World Awaits"

We know Steve Ditko as the co-creator of The Amazing Spider-Man...

...but he was equally-adept at visualizing insects as well as arachnids!
(Yes, there is a difference!)

This lovely Ditko-rendered story from Charlton's Out of This World #12 (1959) would really have benefited from some Stan Lee-esque scripting rather than Joe Gill's stilted prose, which renders the ending rather...dull.

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Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Reservation to the Moon!"

Sometimes the heroic Space Mouse ventured into outer space to fight menaces...

...sometimes the menaces commuted to Earth!

And, sometimes, very rarely, there is no menace...just misunderstood alien visitors!

Writer/artist Frank Carin told this never-reprinted tale of misinterpreted Moon-people motives in Avon's Peter Rabbit #31 (1956)!

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Golden Treasury of
Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics
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