Space Force Saturdays PERIMETER PATROL SERVICE "Space Pirates on Xarpot"

Space police/military organizations were ubiquitous in 1950s sci-fi...

...and this story was the second one featuring the short-lived Perimeter Patrol Service.

You can read their premiere tale HERE!

BTW, note the painted cover is by the story's illustrator, Bernie Krigstein...who rarely did painted covers!

Considering the three tales were done by the artists who also did SpaceBusters, we wonder if this was intended as a backup series for that title.

This never-reprinted story from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #6 (1952) is a superb example of pulp/comic space opera of the era with all the classic elements:

Scantly-clad women!

Square-jawed heroes!

Rockets & ray-guns!

And, instead of bug-eyed monsters...space pirates!

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Trump's Space Force

(either for yourself, or as a gift for a con friend/relative)

Mort Drucker's "Disguised Humor" and the DC Comic YOU DIDN'T KNOW EXISTED!

Can you name what DC Comic this never-reprinted page appeared in?

Hints:
It was during the period Drucker was also working for MAD!
It was during the Silver Age of Comics!

(I didn't say they were great hints!)

Obvious Trivia: Mort would go on to illustrate a number of the Man of Steel's media incarnations in MAD, including Christopher Reeve's movie version and the tv series Smallville.

The answer is...

DC's Teen Beam #2 (1968)!

Yeah, it doesn't look like a comic, but it was comic-sized, and DC produced it!

From '66-'69 several comics companies took a shot at doing mixed-format comics/teen mag titles...

Tower's Teen-In

Charlton's Go-Go

Harvey's Pop Comics

Warren also tried their hand with two b/w mag titles...

Freak Out, U.S.A.
and

Teen Love Stories!

Oddly, Marvel, once noted for their tendency to jump on trends, didn't do one of these!

DC advertised their attempt with this...odd...ad...

...featuring the comic/mag's mascot character Teeny and, presuming it would appeal to the target teenage girl audience, a grungy hippie!

The first issue featured Teeny introducing articles about various heart-throbs...

...but no other comics-type material!

The incredibly-popular mag they based the title on...

...immediately threatened a trademark infringement lawsuit!

So, DC hastily-altered the title in their ads and the book's logo to Teen Beam...

...and added comic pages along with the articles!

It didn't help, since distributors, unwilling to anger the insanely-hot Tiger Beat, refused to rack the title!

(as the ad points out, you had to ask for it, since it was now, as they used to say "under the counter" along with porn magazines!)

The second issue was the last!

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MEOW!

My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols!

and/or...

Mort Drucker

Five Decades of His Finest Works
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Kirby Reading Room / Tales Twice Told BLACK MAGIC "A Beast is In the Streets!"

We Showed You the 1970s Redrawn for Extra Goriness Version On Tuesday...

...now here's the original by...do we really have to tell you?

Penciled and inked by Jack Kirby, this story from Prize's Black Magic #25 (1953) may have been scripted by Kirby as well.

Unfortunately, records are incomplete, and we will likely never know!

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Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!

(which includes this story)
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Best of Wednesday Worlds of Wonder TALOS OF THE WILDERNESS SEA

It was Going to be an Epic 12-Issue Mini-Series...

...but cutbacks at DC dictated that the already-penciled and scripted first two issues Jan Strnad & Gil Kane (the guys who had revamped The Atom into a high-adventure/barbarian hero in two Sword of the Atom mini-series) be combined into a double-length one-shot whose sales would determine if the project would continue.

Unfortunately, despite the genre pedigree both creatives had, the unknown character didn't attract a large enough audience (as The Atom had), and only the single, open-ended, never-reprinted issue exists!

Here are links to the almost 40-year old "lost" project!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told TERROR TALES "Flesh Ripper"

We Present Another Pair of Stories with the Same Script...

...drawn two decades apart, this time with the re-worked, gorier, version first!

Taking the script almost verbatim from the original 1953 four-color comic book, Argentinian artist Martha Barnes totally-redrew the story, using different "camera angles" and lighting effects as well as re-imagining the visuals for the creature in Eerie Publication's Terror Tales V6N6 (1974)!
It's damn near impossible to figure out where the tale was derived from!
But you'll see the original version...by one of the "Big Names" in the field...on Thursday!
Note: Martha Barnes was the premier female horror/crime/war illustrator in the Argentinian comics industry from the late 1940s to the late 1970s.
Besides Eerie Publications, she also did work for another American publisher, DC Comics, on G.I Combat!

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The Worst of Eerie Publications
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