Fill Your Easter Basket...with Atomic Kommie Comics' Goodies!

It's Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, so it's time to talk about...Easter! (It's only 40 days away!)

Back in the 1940s and 50s, comic book companies produced a prodigious number of holiday-oriented 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 a number of publishers also did Easter-oriented books?
And, that noted comics illustrators, including Walt (Pogo) Kelly, contributed art to them?

Believing that there's always room for more classic comics collectibles, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ added a new 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!
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!

Oceanic Airlines In-Flight Magazine for Kids from 1954!

An old friend of mine wanted to enter a contest for LOST-related designs at a PoD we both use and asked me for a copy of my digital file for Mystery Tales #40 plus a couple of fonts from my extensive collection, saying she was going to do "the ultimate in-joke".

The Oceanic Airlines In-Flight Magazine for Kids is the result!
Using the cover of the comic young John Locke didn't choose in the ep "Cabin Fever", she created a new, retro-style logo, dated it as September, 1954, exactly 50 years before the Flight 815 crash (in September, 2004), and replaced the existing captions with new, LOST storyline-based text!

I pointed out a couple of anachronisms / inaccuracies...
1) The actual comic was from 1956, two years later!
2) According to several websites, Oceanic Airlines didn't start operating until the mid-1970s (though I'm not sure if that's "canon" or not.)
She responded...
1) The Oceanic Airlines Mag usage was the art's "first use".
It was "reused" as the cover of Mystery Tales #40 (which may also explain why the art doesn't really match the comics story it's supposed to represent)!
2) Oceanic Airlines had actually been founded shortly after World War II, gone bankrupt in the early 1970s, then another company bought the assets and re-established the airline in the mid-70s!
Since there's nothing to contradict those ideas, I had to concede them as viable plot points...

Anyway, the end result is KOOL, so take a look, and maybe buy an item! (She's disabled and can use the cash.)

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!