Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Imagination"

What is more powerful than a little kid's...

...where anything and everything can happen?

Written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #8 (1958) is simple. but hangs together beautifully.

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Dripping With Fear
Steve Ditko Archives Volume #5
(which reprints this tale) 

Friday Fun REX DEXTER "Three Suns of Doom"

Though Rex Dexter was heading home to Mars from Earth...

...he seems to have somehow detoured into interstellar space!

You have to admire the sheer imagination Dick Briefer packed into tales like this one from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #5 (1939).
There's enough here for at least a book-length story in today's "decompressed" titles...if not a two-parter!
And considering what movie special effects tech was like in 1939, the only way you'd see creatures like those monsters on page 14 back then was in newspaper comic strips, pulp magazines, or comic books!
Amazing stuff!

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Comics About Cartoonists

Stories About the World's Oddest Profession

Reading Room RAVENS AND RAINBOWS "Explored"

Jeffrey Catherine Jones was an amazing artistic talent who left our moral coil far too soon...

...but while Jeff was here, we got to enjoy some fascinating work, like this tale!

This story appeared (with color by the amazing Steve Oliff) in Pacific Comics' one-shot Ravens and Rainbows (1983), which consisted entirely of Jones' work which had previously appeared in b/w!

Problem is, I can't figure out where it first appeared!

Anybody know?

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Jeffrey Jones

A Life in Art

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CARSON OF VENUS "Catastrophe"

When Last We Left the First EarthMan on Venus...

...ah, the "I hate you...I love you...I hate you!" trope so popular in fiction (and, as I discovered, in real life, too)!

The adaptation of Pirates on Venus sort-of concludes on a semi-cliffhanger with this action-packed chapter from DC's Korak: Son of Tarzan #53 (1973).
(The actual conclusion of the novel takes place in the first couple of pages of the next chapter, when Kaluta (who takes over the scripting for the remainder of the strip's run) knits it and the beginning of the next novel, Lost on Venus, together!

Be here next week as we begin the adaptation of Lost on Venus!

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Pirates of Venus & Lost on Venus

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tom Wolfe (1931-2018) and Doctor Strange

The late "New Journalism" pioneer Tom Wolfe referenced Marvel's Doctor Strange in...

...a non-fiction book about the cross-country adventures of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in passages like

“Kesey is young, serene and his face is lineless and round and smooth as a baby’s as he sits for hours on end reading comic books, absorbed in the plunging purple Steve Ditko shadows of Doctor Strange.”

(BTW, dig that psychedelic cover by graphic design legend Milton Glaser!)

Several years later, writer Roy Thomas (a former English teacher and big fan of Wolfe), penciler Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer returned the favor in Doctor Strange #180 (1969)...

You can read the whole story HERE.

Strange's "...an old friend of mine...haven't seen him since '64..." line is a reference to the year Electric Kool Aid Acid Test was published.

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Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe