Sunday, August 30, 2009

Captain V aka the Puppeteer

OK, see if you can follow this one...
Alan Hale is a professional puppeteer. He's also a direct descendant of Nathan Hale.
Alan has a pet bald eagle named "Raven"
Raven can talk.
Raven can also play a pipe organ (with his claws, obviously).
Whenever Raven senses danger, he plays the opening chords of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. (FYI, the chords match the dot-dot-dot-dash pacing of the Morse Code letter "V" [for "Victory"]. It was an extremely popular musical motif in movies and dramatic radio shows of the 1940s to denote particularly patriotic events. I'm not going to explain Morse Code. Google it...)
This magically transforms Alan into the red-white-blue garbed superhero Captain V who then goes forth to battle saboteurs and spies with super-strength and the ability to emanate energy in the form of red-white-blue "V-Beams" which he travels upon!
The good Captain ran thru All-Top Comics for it's entire super-hero run, but never made the cover.
He finally made the cover for the one-shot Book of Comics, after which he moved to Bomber Comics, where he shared the covers (but not interior stories) with Wonder Boy. Curiously, he was renamed The Puppeteer, but kept the patriotic costume and abilities. (And, one of the Bomber Comics covers showed both him and Wonder Boy manipulating criminals like puppets!)
He also appeared in several other one-shots like All-Good Comics, but never made the cover again.

He is NOT, as some have speculated, V-Man, another patriotic character with a similar costume, but a different identity, powers, and origin!

While Alex Ross has given V-Man a rather prominent role in Project SuperPowers, Captain V has been given rather short shrift so far, being confined to flashbacks, and implied to be one of the heroes who make up The American Spirit, a composite of the souls of deceased super-heroes!

No matter what his name, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ have also restored Captain V to the ranks of flag-draped super-heroes by digitally-restoring and remastering his lone Golden Age cover appearance as part of our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ line of kool kollectibles!
So, we're running Captain V up the flagpole to see if anyone will salute!

And, just a gentle reminder to pick up the Project SuperPowers comics, on sale now!
They're the best Golden Age revival books out there!

Saturday, August 29, 2009

PixPost--Whitney Houston from 1985 to 2005

1985
Portrait 1985
American Music Association 1987
1988
Grammy 1988
1990
1993
1995
1996
Grammy 2000
2005
To celebrate the return of Fantastic Femme Whitney Houston and the debut of her new album I Look to You on Monday, August 31, we present our very first PixPost (a selection of pix covering a certain event or person)
Enjoy!

Friday, August 28, 2009

"...there are pictures for children who know how to look..."

--Fredric Wertham, M.D.
Seduction of the Innocent
...and it turns out, the whole controversy was a FAKE...from 2004!
Nothing EVER dies on the Internet, especially a lie!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Design of the Week--Space Ace

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!
This week...
Before Don Bluth appropriated the name for his video game, there were a couple of totally different Space Aces in the Golden Age of Comics!
This particular one was a Flash Gordon-type set in the then-distant future year of 2000, complete with one-man spacecraft, moving sidewalks, flying cars, mile-high skyscrapers, human colonies on other worlds, etc.! (You remember all that stuff, don't you?)
And, of course, aliens!
LOTS of aliens!

One of the interesting things about this image is that it doesn't feature a scantily-clad woman being held captive by the tentacled alien, making it particularly age-appropriate (but still retro-kool) for under-10 year-old kids' (pre-K / 4th Grade) back-to-school stuff!
Enjoy!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Monster of Frankenstein LogoWear

I walked into a Dollar Store today and noticed that they had a Halloween display up!
On August 26th!

Considering the lead-in time needed to get some of my products produced, perhaps it'd be wise to start reminding you NOW about the kool-ghoul kollectibles we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ offer to enhance your Halloween experience!

First up, a brand new line of items utilizing the classic Monster of Frankenstein logo from the Golden Age comic book by Dick Briefer.
T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies (light & dark), mugs, reusable trick-or-treat bags, and other grotesque goodies for the young or old monster in your life!

We also have lots of other Monster of Frankenstein stuff as part of our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ collectibles line, including a nifty Monster of Frankenstein Icon line with a startling silhouetted close-up image of the Monster sans lettering!

It's never too soon to prepare for the horrors of October!
Order NOW...before it's too late!