100 Years Ago Today...

...The Great War began!

Read this never-reprinted tale from 1964 (the 50th Anniversary) to discover how (and why) the entire planet was plunged into conflict for the first time!

Reading Room: LARS OF MARS "Terror from the Sky"

Commies and atomic weapons!

As the Frank Sinatra song says, "They go together like Love and Marriage..."

 ...as the guy who doesn't just portray a Martian on TV, but is a Martian playing an actor playing a Martian on TV while fighting crime in real life (got that?) discovers...

Could this be an attempt to set up an ongoing Lex Luthor-esque arch-enemy (but with lots of hair) for our hero in this tale from Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #10 (1951)?

The duo who created this short-lived series had a lot of collective experience with the Last Son of Krypton! Writer/editor Jerry (Superman) Siegel and and artist Murphy (Buck Rogers) Anderson (who did a lot of work on Superman during the Silver and Bronze Ages) incorporated a lot of Man of Steel-style story elements.
BTW, Raskov returns next issue with even more super-scientific weapons.
And, yes, the irony of a guy from the "Red Planet" battling the"Red Menace" of Communism doesn't escape us...

Trivia:

The cover paintings for both issues of Lars of Mars were painted by Allen Anderson, who was not related to interior artist Murphy Anderson!

Here's a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"-style factoid (done in only four degrees)...

1) Ziff-Davis also published a short-lived adaptation of an actual sci-fi tv series, Space Patrol, illustrated by Bernie Krigstein.

2) Krigstein illustrated the first issue of another Ziff-Davis sci-fi series: Space Busters!

3) Bernie was replaced on interior art for the second (and final) issue of Space Busters by...Murphy Anderson!

4) Allen Anderson did the painted cover for the Space Busters issue illustrated by Murphy! (Norm Saunders had painted the first issue's cover!)

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Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Spymaster"

With a cover by Dick Giordano...

...and interiors by Matt Baker, this never-reprinted tale from 1959 has a moral that'll be lost on most of the readers of 2014!

If retold in the cynical, dog-eat-dog world of 2014, the "big chain" drugstore would be welcomed with open arms since its' prices would be lower, the little drugstore would be driven out of business, and the Earth would fall under alien control...

An ironic lesson in lost morality originally-published in Charlton's Out of This World #14 (1959) by writer Joe Gill, penciler Matt Baker and inker Vince Colletta.

Reading Room BLAZE BARTON "Bat Men of Venus"

The World of the Future ain't exactly a fun place...

...but will the Venusians be friends...or foes?

Oddly, Earth seems to have moved backwards in time since the previous story was set in 50,017, not 3000!

The writer of this tale from Quality's Hit Comics #2 (1940) is unknown (and may not even be the first story's scripter), but the artist was Henry Kiefer, a craftsman with over 400 comics stories and covers from 1935 to 1954 including numerous Classics Illustrated adaptations.

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Antique Collectors"

What's "antique" really depends on your point of view...

...as this tiny tale (from 1959) demonstrates!

Cars from 1959 are extremely collectible now, and it's only 55 years later!

Both the writer and artist of this story from Charlton's Out of This World #13 (1959) are, sadly, unknown.