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.

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!

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...

RAUMPATROUILLE "Dance"

While there are many similarities between Space Patrol and Star Trek...

...the one big difference I've seen commented upon over and over again is...

...the dance numbers that occur in almost every episode.

The closest thing I've ever seen on American sci-fi tv was in the pilots for Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979).
However, Raumpatrouille had their own ongoing choreographer, William Milié, to compose the funky dance numbers that appeared in the background of each episode!

Reading Room IMAGINATION "Explored"

In the 1970s, there were a plethora of short-lived fan/pro zines...

...that up-and-coming artists contributed material to for free in order to get their work brought to the attention of magazine and comic art directors, and already-published pros used to promote their own non-DC/Marvel projects.

It was like DeviantArt, but in print.

Imagination Publications' one-shot Imagination (1971) was one such zine.

Besides this Jeff Jones short, there was a cover and frontspiece by Gray Morrow and tales by Berni Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, and Neal Adams (who was promoting his own potential syndicated strip, Tangent.)