Sunday, November 11, 2018

100 Years Ago Today...

...the "War to End All Wars" (we hoped) came to a conclusion.
In those pre-Internet (even pre-radio) days, print media played a vital role!
When France presented the United States with the great Statue of Liberty, which stands at our gates, she little thought how powerful that symbol of her friendship would some day prove!
By its shining light we now march to her aid!
...a book of the New York Herald newspaper's editorial cartoons, entitled America's Black & White Book: One Hundred Pictured Reasons WHY WE ARE AT WAR, hit bookstores like a bombshell!
Editorial illustrator's W.A. Rogers' visceral renderings, previously seen only by NYC readers, reached a national audience already enraged by atrocities like the sinking of the Lusitania and ready to kick the Central Powers' collective ass!
The illustration above is the final piece in the book.
You can read (and/or download) the entire book from the Smithsonian's website HERE!

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Make This a STAR WARS Christmas...

...with the
...available from Amazon,  if you're a little old-fashioned, as a CD, LP, or audio cassette!
Strangely, it's not available as a Digital Download!
But at least, it's available, unlike the Stars Wars Holiday Special!

Friday, November 9, 2018

Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Master Mind" & "Believe It or Not"

This short-lived, but entertaining, series was uneven...
...with some stories, like this one from the back cover of Avon's Space Mouse #1 (1953) featuring the heroic character as a thief, obviously adapted from a different strip...
...and this one, from the inside cover of Avon's Space Mouse #3 (1953) showing him both in "hero mode" and cleverly breaking the "fourth wall"!
Writer/artist Frank Carin was an experienced pro who started as an animator the Fleischer Brothers and TerryToons, then moved over to comics in the early, writing and/or illustrating several hundred stories and covers for everybody from Timely/Atlas to Magazine Enterprises, to Nation-Wide, to Harvey, to, of course, Avon, and finally, to Gold Key!
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(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Reading Room I'LL BE DAMNED "Nest Egg"

Here's a sci-fi strip meant for Major Publications' Web of Horror #4...
...but, since that magazine ended with #3, it found a home in Mark Feldman's I'll be Damned #2, a year later!
Note the word balloon coming out of the big black hole in the title lettering where a photostat of "Webster" the monstrous spider host of Web of Horror would have been pasted-up.
Instead it's a word balloon coming out of a literal black hole!
Written by Alan Simons, penciled by Steve Hickman, inked by Robert L Kline (1-3) & Dan Adkins (4-6), this never-reprinted tale is an example of the high-quality material in fanzines of the late 1960s-early 1970s, much of which (sadly) has never been seen since the mags were limited to mail order and comics convention sales!
(There were no comics shops, and no such thing as the internet at that time...hard to conceive, I know!)
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder ZANGAR "Lost Beyond the Bog of Darkness!"

...read through the synopsis on the title page below and see if you follow the rather confused narrative which mentions characters like Narcor whom we haven't seen previously!
Plus, who is...Koalrack?
Was this never-reprinted Bronze Age tale from Skywald's Jungle Adventures #3 (1971), penciled by Jack Katz, and inked by Frank Giacoia, a lead-in to an unexpected change in direction?
Conan the Barbarian had been introduced by Marvel less than a year earlier, and was selling amazingly-well!
Was Zangar going to go the barbarian-adventurer route, instead of staying a jungle lord?
And what of Tellana?
Was she going to be an ongoing villainess/love interest?
The writing is confusing, so it's unlikely co-creator Gardner Fox, noted for his precise, logical storylines, scripted this tale.
Sadly, this was the final issue of Jungle Adventures as Skywald phased out the color comics line to concentrate on their better-selling b/w horror magazines!
Next Week: the High Adventure Tales of a Different, Rarely-Seen Character Begin!
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(which covers the company's b/w magazines and color comics!)