Preview: Alternate Cover for "Green Hornet: Year One" #2

Francesco Francavilla's "chase" cover for Green Hornet: Year One #2, detailing the origin of the Golden Age Green Hornet.

Note he's wearing the full-face mask from the two movie serials, 

not the "lower-half of face" mask from the original 1940s comics.

Kato, on the other hand, is wearing a mask like the one worn on the 1960s tv series by Bruce Lee!

In the Golden Age comics and movie serials, Kato wore goggles (and a bow tie)!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Before Percy Jackson was...Nature Boy!

Long before Percy Jackson met the Olympians, there was another teen given amazing powers by ancient gods...
Rich teenager David Crandall was yachting with his parents when a storm sank the boat and David was stranded!
Rescued by "gods" who control various aspects of nature, he is given a portion of each of their powers...
Neptune--water
Gusto--wind
Furo--fire
Eartha--earth
Electra--lightning
Allura--love
Azura--skies
Friga--cold
(Yeah, I know a couple of them overlap, and only one was an actual mythological god, but why quibble?)
David used his new powers to return home and reunite with his still-alive family.
He also decided to battle evil in various forms as Nature Boy, since he controlled the forces of nature, and the gods gave him a spiffy new outfit to show off!

He only had three issues of his own title (which started with #3*) before he disappeared from the comics scene..until now!
But, within those three issues, the seeds were planted for an entire superfamily of Nature-heroes including Nature Man (an adult version of the hero from the future) and female counterpart Nature Girl.
This isn't surprising, since he was created by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) who knew a thing or two about that sort of thing.
To add to his hero cred, Nature Boy was drawn by the great John Buscema who later did Conan, Avengers, Fantastic Four, and damn near everything at Marvel in the 70s thru the 90s, so even if the stories were a bit silly, they looked spectacular!

Technically, Nature Boy should be considered one of the first Silver Age heroes as his premiere was in 1956, just a couple of months before The Flash re-emerged in Showcase #4, but, like Captain Flash, and even the Martian Manhunter, he's thought to be one of the last Golden Age characters instead!
On that basis, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ have revived Nature Boy as part of our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ line, on t-shirts, messenger bags, mugs and other kool kollectibles!
It's unlikely that Alex Ross will include him in Project SuperPowers, but we felt he was worth re-presenting to the comics world, even if it's just on tchochkies!
He was one of the last, but hardly one of the worst...

*To save money on paying for a new second-class mailing permit,  comics publishers would often just rename an existing comic, rather than start a new one!
Today, with #1 issues being such "hot" collector's items, publishers wouldn't dream of doing that sort of thing!

Design of the Week--WereWolf? There, wolf!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!
This week we take a one-liner from Young Frankenstein as our headline as we celebrate (Secret Chic-style) the remake of The Wolf Man!
This vintage cover art by Don Heck from the 1950s, when EC Comics' horror titles like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror dominated the newsstands, features a werewolf (but not Larry Talbot, the WolfMan) lurking in the foliage, blood dripping from his gleaming fangs!
He's available on t-shirts, messenger bags, mugs, and a whole slew of kool kollectibles, but only on-line from us, and only for one week.
So order now, before the full moon rises...

ComicBookMovie.com...Not All I Hoped It Would Be!

I had previously plugged ComicBookMovie.com's fansites here.
It seemed like an ideal place for me to post historical articles and other goodies on a variety of subjects in a fannish way, including The Green Hornet, SuperHeroines, and Golden Age Heroes.
But, I'm afraid I have to change my mind.

I had posted several articles adapted from my blog entries for Green Hornet: Year One, Blue Bolt, Nature Boy, Air Man & RocketMan, and Friday Foster.
Audience response had been good, with a number of positive comments and "thumbs up"!
With great enthusiasm, I was preparing a number of pieces, going above the scope of what I had originally planned to do!

I logged on and was about to post the first of my Fantastic Femmes entries (Zoe Saldana!) on the Heroines fansite I created, when I noticed that my previous articles had...disappeared!
The site has some technical glitches, particularly in the "Articles" section. (I posted articles as "Features" because of their historical content, but they kept reclassifying as "News".) So I thought it was just a glitch that could be corrected, and the stories reloaded.

Not quite.

When I emailed the webmaster, I was told that the articles had been deleted...with no explanation or notification.
If I hadn't checked, I wouldn't have realized that they were gone!

I've communicated via e-mail with Jim Littler, who runs the site.
He sounds like a cool guy, doing his best under extremely trying circumstances, so this is in no way a put-down of him.
The problem, according to Jim, was that one of several new website editors deleted the articles without bothering to contact me with any questions he may have had.
Apparently, ComicBookMovies.com has no in-house log-on/tracking procedures for changes, nor any way to recover deleted material.
(Jim asked the editors and none of them has acknowledged doing the deletions.)

Sadly, I've decided that, until such matters can be corrected, I'll just post picture galleries into the three sites I have up, and won't be adding any more sites (I had planned several more for specific characters.)

While I will try to include info in the pic galleries, I could have done a lot more with the features, but I can't justify the time involved if things will just be deleted.

However, if you're comfortable with working within those parameters, feel free to join the community and participate.
It is fun, and a very responsive audience is there!

Tomorrow: back to business as usual with Design of the Week!