Monday, February 6, 2017

Reading Room THE UNEXPECTED "Choice"

When DC's 1979-80 sci-fi anthology Time Warp folded, the remaining stories...
...were published in the fantasy/horror anthology The Unexpected!
This tale of questionable "justice" was written by George Kashdan and illustrated by "Vicatan" (Vic Catan, Jr), this never-reprinted tale from DC's The Unexpected #210, (1981) was typical of the output by long-time pro Kashdan, solid, but not really memorable.
The art by Vicatan raises it a notch with effective storytelling and clean linework.
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Super Bowl / SuperPro / Super-Heroes!

In 1991, Marvel and the NFL teamed up to produce...
...a football-themed superhero!
...who, despite meeting a couple of Marvel's best-known heroes...
...lasted only 13 issues, then disappeared into obscurity!
Due to licensing restrictions, NFL SuperPro will never be reprinted or offered as an e-book!
However, when you can find copies, they're usually pretty cheap, like the one below...
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Trump Reading Room aka the OutHouse OZARK IKE "Premiere Appearance"

As SuperBowl Sunday approaches...
...lets see how Jabba the Trump's "deplorables", unconcerned by such things as concussions or brain damage, play football!
The rest of the issue deals with the multi-talented Ike playing baseball, so we'll run it during baseball season.
Yes, the King Features strip was created in the mid-1940s as a competitor to Al Capp's wildly-successful Li'l Abner series!
No, it was nowhere near as successful.
The only known licensed spin-offs were this one-shot reprint collection in Dell's Four Color Comics #180 (1948), a subsequent 1950s comic series for Standard/Better/Nedor. and a couple of reprint paperbacks from Blackthorne Publishing.
Writer/artist Ray Gotto, though not a familar name to comics fans today, achieved sports immortality for designing one of the iconic images of baseball history still in use almost 60 years later: The New York Mets' logo!
Please support
Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and Order...

Friday, February 3, 2017

Reading Room TALES OF SUSPENSE "It Crawls by Night!"

The new issue of Monsters Unleashed is out...
...cover-featuring another retro-kool Kirby Kreature from the Atlas Comics days!
Written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers, the cover-featured story from Atlas' Tales of Suspense #26 (1962) has one of "the silliest premises done well" I've ever seen!
Think of Little Shop of Horrors without the comedic aspects.
It's certainly helped by a kool Kirby/George Klein cover that doesn't betray the creature's humble veggie origins, making him look more like Groot than a rutabaga...
When it was reprinted in Marvel's Fear #8 (1972), a new cover by John Severin downplayed the "conquer the Earth" thrills for a more Gothic/Lovecraftian image...
Monsters Unleashed looks like a lot of fun, so get it at your local comic shop...NOW!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Reading Room PLASM "The Sedition Agenda: Prologue 'The Death of Love' " Part 1

There have been numerous comic companies that lasted only a couple of years...
...with Defiant Comics being one of the examples of a company who had all the right ingredients, but failing to achieve long-term success!
Their first, and longest-running title was Warriors of Plasm, which began with a unique #0 issue...

The Story Continues...Next Wednesday!
Conceived by Jim Shooter, fresh off his success at Valiant Comics, the tale sets up the Defiant Universe (actually a "multiverse" since this dimension and Earth's dimension, which it will soon interact with, are separate) and introduces us to the world of Plasm, where technology is organic and must be "fed" with other organic material in order to continue functioning!
You may ask "what makes this #0 issue so unique?"
Look at the page layouts.
Every page adheres to a grid pattern.
There's a good reason for that.
This entire issue was designed to be printed as trading cards!
So the panels, and most importantly, the captions and word balloons, all had to fit on what would be a "page" composed of nine cards!
No cutting-off titles, captions, or word balloons on seperate cards!
Here's Page 5 as a comic page...
...and here's how the cards that make up Page 5 look when placed in the album...
In addition, the cards were printed two-sided so that the cards of Page 1 had Page 2 on their backs, the cards of Page 3 had Page 4 on their backs, and so on!
Even so, the card set ran 150 cards, including four groups of chase cards which were rarer than the story cards!
And, of course, you had no idea what cards you'd get in a given pack!
You can see the complete set of cards HERE.
Be here next week for the rest of the comic story and more background about Defiant!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics
Visit Amazon and order...