Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Remake Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Alien on Earth!"

...here's an earlier rendition of the oft-used concept, with one of the weirdest-looking Jack Kirby aliens I've ever seen (and that is saying something)!
Penciler Jack Kirby and inker Christopher Rule, who did the cover of the re-do, illustrated this tale from Atlas' Journey into Mystery #51 (1959).
As for who wrote it, the consensus on various sites, including the Grand Comics Database, is that it's the work of Kirby himself.
For those clever readers who noted both this story and the reworking in World of Fantasy were both published in 1959, this one came out six months earlier, and the "job number" for "Alien" (T-165) is earlier than the one on "Gargoyle" (T-345).
Usually, Stan Lee (either as editor or writer) made sure that such similar plots or reworkings were a couple of years apart.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Remake Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Gargoyle From the 5th Galaxy!"

Is this a kool cover, or what?
But, this sandals-wearing Jack Kirby-Christopher Rule scarlet alien isn't inside the comic!
Instead, we get a more humanoid, less "traditional" gargoyle-looking green alien!
To be fair, he does breathe fire, like the guy on the cover...
Plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by Larry Lieber and superbly-rendered by Don Heck, this tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #19 (1959) was actually a re-do of an earlier story (illustrated by Jack Kirby, no less), which we'll present Thursday!
BTW, though the story was reprinted in the 1970s, the cover has never seen the light of day since its' original publication!
Pity...
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Saturday, August 9, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays ALIEN WORLDS "Few and the Far"

In space, things aren't always as they seem to appear...
...as this never-reprinted tale from Pacific's Alien Worlds #1 (1982) demonstrates not once, but twice...
Admit it.
Writer Bruce Jones and artist Al Williamson fooled you!
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Friday, August 1, 2025

Friday Fun MARVIN MOUSE "Not-So-'Honest John' "

The creator of Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett, was an amazing writer/artist...
 ...who could do almost anything he was asked to do.
Unfortunately, funny animals, weren't exactly his "cup of tea"!
This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvin the Mouse #1 (1957) was scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated by the aforementioned Bill Everett.
I believe Everett was instructed to make the characters as different as possible from other cartoon mice such as Mickey and Mighty, which resulted in rodents who looked more like rats than mice!
Bill had shown a knack for humor as shown HERE and HERE, but this was a major disappointment!
A caption at the end of the book read "And remember, every issue Marvin Mouse magazine brings you the best in laughs, adventure, and fun ... don't miss a single issue!"
No problem!
The book ended up a one-shot and the already-completed stories intended for #2 became filler in the backs of other humor titles.
(Editor Stan Lee was very frugal and didn't let anything go to waste!)
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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays FANTASTIC COMICS "Space Smith and the Mummified Meteor Vacuumites"

If that title doesn't lure you into reading this post...
...I'll eat my Cosmic Transtator!
Enjoy this even weirder-than-usual installment of Space Smith by the legendary Fletcher Hanks from Fox's Fantastic Comics #6 (1940)!
Say what you will about Fletcher Hanks' sometimes-iffy technical proficiency, but his stories are never dull!
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Monday, July 14, 2025

Monday Madness RADIO BOY by Chuck Dixon & Jim Engel

In the 1980s, manga finally gained a foothold in the US...
...and American creators began doing their own manga-style material.
Some, like this never-reprinted one-shot title from Eclipse Comics (the first major American company to publish translated manga), were parodies.
This particular spoof was loosely-based on Osamo Tesuka's Astro Boy, which had achieved success in as a translated anime in the early 1960s and opened the door for a flood of Japanese cartoons on American TV that continues to this day.
Note: Though Astro Boy is best-known in the US as a tv cartoon series, it began as a wildly-successful manga in 1954.
The premise of Radio Boy is that the creator himself did the translations for this edition, resulting in a mish-mash of syntax and tenses as well as some literal translations of Japanese phrases.
As a collector of foreign videos (including Japanese and Chinese DVDs and BluRays), I can attest that the English subtitles on them often do read like the captions and copy in this spoof.
BTW, if you don't have a multi-region DVD/BluRay player, get one.
Much of the Asian material released by Dimension (especially their Jackie Chan catalog), Buena Vista, and other mass-market companies is butchered beyond belief, and seeing the originals (even with bad sub-titling) is eye-opening!
I suspect writers Chuck Dixon (yes, that Chuck Dixon) and Jim Engel had also seen some mis-translated films/videos, and wanted to re-create the experience on the printed page.
You'll have the chance to judge for yourself...HERE and HERE!
Next Week
Yep!
They're Back!

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WEIRD THRILLERS "Cycle of Time"

With the revived popularity of dinosaurs due to the new movie Jurassic World: Rebirth...
...we're re-presenting one of our favorite stories; a sci-fi triple-treat: time travel, aliens, and dinosaurs!
Illustrated by Murphy Anderson, who was doing quite a bit of work for ZD including the second issue of Space Busters and both issues of Lars of Mars as well as various one-shots like this one from the HTF Ziff-Davis' anthology Weird Thrillers #2 (1951)!.
We don't know who wrote this tale, but it might be series editor Jerry (Superman) Siegel.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Atomic Reading Room TALES TO ASTONISH "Voice of Fate"

...but with some interesting variations!
This story by plotter Stan Lee, writer Larry Lieber, and artist Don Heck is from Atlas' Tales to Astonish #33 (1962) and is a retelling of "Mister Black", which appeared only a couple of months earlier in Atlas' Strange Tales #93 (1962).
You'll note the protaganist is now American...but still a draft dodger.
Of course, the story omits why the Japanese would even take him in (since he had nothing of value to the government), or how he even got to Japan in the middle of World War II...
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Thursday, June 26, 2025

Atomic Reading Room STRANGE TALES "Mister Black"

 Continuing our look at how American comics portrayed the bombing of Hiroshima...

...with a tale featuring a Japanese protagonist!
Was this story from Atlas' Strange Tales #93 (1962) an inventory tale from the 1950s?
Artist Bob Forgione lost his ongoing freelance work at Atlas when the company cut back in late 1956-early 1957 after losing their newsstand distributor.
When this story was finally published, Forgione was working steadily for DellACG, and DC.
It also appears to have been the last original tale by Bob that Atlas/Marvel published.
(All subsequent stories were reprints of earlier material.)
Also, could it have been reworked from an unpublished Witness tale?
Every comic company had a cloaked mystery man narrating stories about "everyday" people (and occasionally influencing them, as well).
Timely/Atlas' entrant in the Mysterious Traveler/Whistler/Phantom Stranger/Man in Black Called Fate competition was The Witness, who had his own one-shot comic and a number of stories scattered in other titles.
At any rate, an extremely-similar tale appeared only a couple of months later...by one of the now-revived and thriving Atlas/Marvel's hottest artists!
Be Here Sunday For the Final Horrific Hiroshima Tale!
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