Reading Room: TARA QUEEN OF THE SPACE PIRATES in "Key of the Cuchin Van"

Click on the art to enlarge

We continue the space-spanning saga of Tara, Queen of the Space Pirates with this tale from Wonder Comics #18.
There was no origin story, but the splash pages usually gave a brief set-up for new readers.

The Grand Comics DataBase lists Gene Fawcette, who did the two previous stories, as the penciler/inker, but it looks like fellow Wonder Comics artist Jerry Scott, who used a more standardized layout and looser inking style.

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Tara: Queen of the Space Pirates™

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Reading Room: BARBARELLA 2.2

When Last We Left Our Heroine...

With Captain Dildano and the rest of his crew dead, and their ship a derelict, Barbarella is stranded on Lython...

There are more plot elements and characters who ended up in the movie, though at the flick's beginning, rather than midway through, as they do here.
Some characters like "Klill, the horrid little Martian", didn't end up in the film.
The explanation of why the inhabitants are dressed in mid-19th Century Earth fashions was utilized a year later in the Classic Star Trek episode "Squire of Gothos".
However, the "antique-looking" clothing and technology didn't make it into the Barbarella film's version of this sequence.
More Barbarella later...

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Barbarella Collectible Corner

Jeffrey Catherine Jones 1/10/44 ~ 5/19/11

From Esquire Magazine, 1972

Jones' autobiography conveys her life far better than I ever could.

Rest in Peace

Reading Room: BARBARELLA 2.1

When Last We Left Our Heroine...

All you really need to know is that Captain Dildano's spacecraft was forced down by a gigantic jellyfish...ok, plot logic is not the strip's strong suit.

Just enjoy the kool art...

Dildano also dies in the movie, but under vastly different circumstances.
In fact, this particular sequence is not adapted into the 1960s cult classic flick!
More tomorrow!

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Barbarella Collectible Corner

YouTube Wednesday: The FIRST Live-Action THOR!

Thor (Erik Allan Kramer), Stan Lee, and The Hulk (Lou Ferrigno).

Face Front, True Believer!
Though Chris Hemsworth did a smashing job as The Mighty Thor, he wasn't the first choice to personify the God of Thunder in the flesh!
Erik Allan Kramer portrayed a somewhat headstrong Thor in the tv-movie The Incredible Hulk Returns.
Besides the quite-different costume, this version of Thor is two different people, the Thunder God and Don Blake (Steve Levett), a former student of David Banner's (Bill Bixby) who found Mjolnir and can summon Thor from between dimensions by holding the hammer and yelling "ODIN"...

And later the two team-up to...well, you'll get the idea...

Besides being a continuation of The Incredible Hulk tv storyline in a series of tv movies, this was a "backdoor pilot" to promote The Mighty Thor in his own tv series.