Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charlton. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charlton. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, April 1, 2016

Charlton Fools Day in the Reading Room UNLIKELY TALES "Time Machine"

When two Steves, a long-established pro and eager young up-and-comer, collaborate...
...you get this time-travel tale with a twist, set only 21 years from now!
It's amazing what the comics creators of 1967 thought 70 years later would look like.
Considering that we Baby Boomers thought by 2000 we'd have bases on the Moon and flying cars, it's not unreasonable...
Written by up-and-comer Steve Skeates and illustrated by Spider-Man and Dr Strange co-creator Steve Ditko, this never-reprinted story from the Unlikely Tales anthology collection in Charlton Premiere #4 (1968) offers a surprise twist on the usual "time-traveler from the future may change history" concept.
Two notes:
Skeates wrote all the stories in this issue, a rarity for someone just starting out in the industry.
All the stories were both penciled and inked by their respective artists, also a rarity in a business where, in order to meet deadlines, creators usually either penciled or inked, but not both.
And the list of creators in this issue included Ditko, as well as Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, and Charlton mainstay Rocke Mastroserio.

This post is part of an informal blogathon entitled
Charlton Fools Day
conceived and organized by Kracalactaka to bring attention to Charlton Comics, often considered the "runt" of the comic book litter.
Visit his blog HERE and see a list of other participants as well as his own contributions
Also check out
ComicBook+
 a website featuring thousands (and I do mean thousands) of free, downloadable, public domain Golden Age and Silver Age comics with a HUGE Charlton Comics section!

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...
...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!
It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!
The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.
Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.
Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.
Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.
You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.
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Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Reading Room: SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

I was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...
...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!
It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!
The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.
Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.
Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.
Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.
You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder / CoronaVirus Comics SPACE ADVENTURES "U.F.O.: Secret of the Saucer"

 ...now he's encountered an apparent alien who saved him (and the town) from a biological weapon stolen by a Communist spy.
Mann is taken into a flying saucer where he's about to (as we said in the 60s) "blow his mind"...
The finale of this book-length tale from Charlton's Space Adventures #60 (1967) was deliberately left open-ended.
A sequel, also using the artist "round-robin" concept, and also written by Denny O'Neil using his "Sergius O'Shaughnessy" pseudonym, appeared almost a year later.
Luckily for you, it'll be here...
Next Wednesday!
The art for this chapter was by up-and-comer Jim Aparo, who started at Charlton and went to DC when editor Dick Giordano moved there and offered him, Pat Boyette, Steve Ditko, and writers Denny O'Neil and Steve Skeates work after Charlton cancelled all their super hero and adventure/sci-fi titles in 1968!
Aparo became DC's primary Batman artist during the 70s and 80s as well as handling other series like Aquaman and Phantom Stranger.
One last note, this art from the reprint in Charlton's Ghost Manor #77 (1984) left out the "Chapter 3" header seen here...
...because the reprint left out the entire first chapter, though the events in it were referenced in the remaining two parts!
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(which shares a number of plot elements with this story)

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Holiday Reading Room YOUNG DOCTORS "Dr Tom Brent: Christmas Comes in August!"

You have no idea how few medical-themed Yuletide comic stories there are...

...until you try to find one...and end up with a tale that's the victim of terrible printing!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Young Doctors #6 (1963) unfortunately shows off the terrible printing Charlton Comics was famous for!
The publisher didn't utilize the printing companies literally every other comics publisher used.
Instead, to save money, they printed on old, second-hand printing presses.
But those presses had been constructed to handle cardboard and plastic packaging, not the much-thinner newsprint paper used for comics!
As a result, their comics had an amazing amount of smearing and off-register color, as you can see from the first page.
It's a shame, because the art by penciler Joe Sinnott and inker Vince Colletta deserves a better presentation!
BTW, Young Doctors was an anthology title featuring tales of all the MDs who had their own Charlton books at the time, including, of course, Dr Tom Brent, Young Intern!
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Thursday, November 9, 2023

Reading Room: THIS IS SUSPENSE "Choice!"

Occasionally you come across something that makes you scratch your head and go "wha?"...

This odd little piece by Dick Giordano was the opener for Charlton's This is Suspense #23 (1955)...which was actually the first issue using that name, as Charlton had bought the series (including unpublished material) from Fawcett under the name Strange Suspense Stories. after Fawcett cancelled their comics line!

(With the Comics Code about to take effect, Charlton apparently decided to make their carryover from the "bad old days" as inoffensive as possible by changing the title.)
BTW, to see how the Code mutilated a story in the very next issue of This is Suspense, check out the original Strange Suspense Stories version HERE and the revised This is Suspense version HERE!

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Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Reading Room BLUE BEETLE "Lost City"

Before Steve Ditko revamped the Blue Beetle at Charlton...
...there was a short-lived, never-reprinted, campy version in his own book, which also featured 3-page sci-fi/fantasy backups like this one!
"What is this singular pronoun that you use? 'I', you say...not 'we'!"
The writer is unknown, but clearly not Charlton mainstay Joe Gill, who penned far more naturalistic dialogue than that!
Who drew this never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Blue Beetle V2#2 (1964)?
The Grand Comics DataBase speculates it was Bill Montes, Jon D'Agastino and/or Vince Alascia.
But I can also see some Matt Baker, Joe Sinnott and/or Vince Colletta stylings on these pages!
We may never know the answer...
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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Look into the Future"

One of Charlton Comics' defining traits was...
...using montages of interior art as their covers.
Usually, the cover would utilize several different stories' art, but in this case, they played up the final story in the issue!
A morality play in a sci-fi/fantasy context.
Rod Serling was a master of this concept, as he displayed weekly on the original Twilight Zone.
This never-reprinted story from Charlton's Unusual Tales #27 (1961) illustrated by Steve Ditko and probably written by Charlton mainstay Joe Gill follows the concept to a "T", within the limitations established by the Comics Code Authority.
If it had been done pre-Code, Simms would've come to a horrific (and graphic) end...