Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Best of Reading Room: GULLIVAR JONES "Wasteland on a Weirdling World"

Art by Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott
...but who could fill you in better than our currently-helpless hero himself?
Ross Andru, right before beginning his stint on Doc Savage, came on for Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #18 (1972), the third chapter of the short-lived, never-reprinted, comic adaptation, replacing Gil Kane, who continued to do covers.Gerry Conway and science fiction writer George Alec Effinger take over the scripting from Roy Thomas, who plotted the story arc and remained as editor.
One of the major problems this series faced was only having 10 pages every two months to tell the story.
And, because it was a bi-monthly, the writers felt compelled to recap not only the previous issue, but the entire story, which ate into the page count for a given issue's tale!
Had Marvel given the series a 15-page or full-book page count to work with (or 10 pages in a monthly title), the series might have gained more of an audience.
But only ten pages of story every two months was, apparently, too little to hold the audience's interest.
As it is, we're already midway thru the too-brief color comics run.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Best of Reading Room: GULLIVAR JONES "River of the Dead"

Art by Gil Kane and unknown inker
Meanwhile, we're continuing the adventures of his swashbuckling predecessor on Mars, Gullivar Jones, as we present the second, never-reprinted chapter of the short-lived comic adaptation from Creatures on the Loose #17 (1972)...
You'll note that Sam Grainger has replaced Bill Everett as the inker on this never-reprinted story from Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #17 (1972).
Unfortunately, Everett's health was declining and he had to cut back on the volume of work he was doing, preferring to devote what time he had to working on his greatest creation, Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner.
He passed away a little over a year later.
Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gil Kane.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Best of Reading Room: GULLIVAR JONES "Warrior of Mars"

The Dreaded Deadline Doom caught up with us this week...
Art by Gil Kane and Bill Everett
...so we're re-presenting the never-reprinted adventures of the first Earthman on Mars, whose adventures predated Edgar Rice Burroughs' tales of John Carter of Mars by half a decade back at the beginning of the 20th Century.
 A bit of background: with the surprise success of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, comics went pulp-mad, looking for other properties that were doing well in paperback reprints to adapt into the four-color format.
DC latched onto The Shadow, The Avenger, and Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser well as the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs library including Tarzan, Carson of Venus, and John Carter.
Marvel grabbed Doc Savage, added Kull (also a Robert E Howard character), and looked for another barbarian/swashbuckling hero.
They ended up adding two, Gullivar Jones and Lin Carter's Thongor, neither of whom ran more than eight issues.
Gullivar Jones had the advantage of only one novel to adapt, then the door was open to totally-new adventures.
Art by Frank Frazetta
This tale from Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #16 (1972) was Part 1, written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Bill Everett.
We'll be presenting the remaining chapters through this week, so be here tomorrow.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Goodies for YOUR Easter basket...

Back in the 1940s and 50s, comic book companies produced a prodigious number of holiday annuals and one-shots.
For example, a multitude of Christmas-themed comic books flooded America's magazine racks every November and December!
(In fact, a large part of our popular Cool Christmas collection is based on them.)
But, did you know that several publishers also did Easter-oriented books?
And, that noted comics illustrators including Walt Kelly (Pogo) and Harrison Cady (Peter Rabbit) contributed art to them?
Believing that there's always room for more classic comics collectibles, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ added a line of goodies to our Happy Holidays section entitled Exciting Easter!
Yes, it's eggs, bunnies, chicks, and other fuzzy animals galore digitally-restored and remastered from Baby Boomer-era classic comics covers on baby bibs, infant creepers / onesies, toddler and kid t-shirts, greeting cards, mugs, and a plethora of kool kollectibles including organic clothing from American Apparel!
They make great Easter basket stuffers! (And they won't rot your kids' teeth like marshmallow chicks or chocolate bunnies!)
So click over and see what's in our basket!

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Reading Room CALVIN

We ran the cover and main feature of this "lost" Marvel character's never-reprinted premiere HERE...
...and now we present the one-pagers that filled out the issue.
Written and penciled by Kevin Banks and inked by "NT", these never-reprinted one-page gags from Marvel's Li'l Kids #10 (1972) began a brief, 3-issue run that seemed recycled from vaudeville routines and 1940s-50s animated cartoons.
What makes the strip somewhat more fascinating is the identity of the little-known writer-artist behind it.
"Kevin Banks" was not a pseudonym, but a staffer at Marvel in the early 1970s!
Even the ever-amazing comics researcher Nick Caputo could find little about the mysterious Mr Banks, as seen HERE.
What Banks did after working at Marvel is unknown.
Did he work in advertising?
Become an art instructor?
Switch careers and become an accountant or fireman?
We may never know the answer...