Steve Reeves IS Hercules in HERCULES & HERCULES UNCHAINED

Skip the pablum and have some peplum today with...

at
Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™ 
as we go to sunny Italy for a solid six days of posts featuring the comic adaptations of two sword and sandal (with a hint of sorcery) sagas starring the one-and-only Steve Reeves!
HERCULES

...featuring the manly art of John Buscema
and...
HERCULES UNCHAINED

 ...with muscular renderings by Reed Crandall and George Evans!

The testosterone will be oozing off your screen!
(which could be kind of messy...)

PLUS: You can see and compare the actual movies to the comic adaptations!

Reading Room: JUMPIN' JUPITER "In Space, No One Can Hear You Laugh"

If you thought Jumpin' Jupiter's first story was weird...

..his third appearance from Weird Tales of the Future #4 (1953) is gonna make you plotz!

Whether it's his ongoing SpaceHawk strip or any of the numerous one-shot tales he did, Wolverton's Golden Age output was always instantly-recognizable!

This humor strip ran in #2 thru #5 of Key Publications' Weird Tales of the Future, along with several sci-fi/horror stories also written and illustrated by the amazing Basil!

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Reading Room: SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN "Jet-Men of Zurko"

Last time, Speed battled beings from the center of the Earth...

...now he battles self-propelled aliens from an unnamed star in this tale from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #4 (1954).

According to Marvel's writers, aliens are idiots who can be tricked by everything from photos of ancient ruins to comic book panels showing monsters or high-tech weaponry that doesn't really exist!
Remember the end of Fantastic Four #2 (1961) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby?

Reed Richards showed cut-out comic book panels from Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales to the Skrull fleet commander stating the creatures and super-science weapons shown were real and ready to use against alien invaders!
(Of course, the idea that Jack Kirby could draw stuff that could scare the pants off hostile aliens does have a real appeal...)
And, I remember at least a couple of other pre-Silver Age Marvel stories with a similar concept, including one where movie special effects techs frightened aliens with fake robots from a sci-fi film they were shooting on location...

Written (as are all the Speed Carter stories) by Hank Chapman and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky, Don Heck, and Jack Abel.

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Telling the T-Man Tale Twice...with Tweaks!

The Comics Code Authority was supposed to "clean up" comics after the Seduction of the Innocent scare of the 1950s, but sometimes they took it to ridiculous levels!
Over at our brother blog, Crime & Punishment™, we presented a tale of a secret agent in Iran as shown HERE.
Pretty standard stuff, nothing too violent or sexy.
No blood, gore, or gratuitous "headlights".
We noted it had been reprinted a couple of years later, so we checked the reprint to see if the printing was cleaner on that version.

Imagine our surprise to discover numerous alterations to both text and art in the reprint (as well as a nifty new cover)!
The original had been published in Quality Comics' T-Man # 3 (1952), the reprint in T-Man #31 (1956).
The original was pre-Code, the reprint was post-Code.
So we decided to present both versions, albeit a week apart due to an already-scheduled Sherlock Holmes story.
HERE's the annotated reprint.
Contrast and compare for yourself!

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Preview: THE SHADOW #7 Cover by Francesco Francavilla

Who Knows What Evil...?

Francesco Francavilla does, as this cover for #7 of Dynamite's new Shadow comic book shows!
Check out his blog entry about it and his first poster, The Creature from the Black Lagoon...

...for the noted MONDO Posters Collection HERE!

BTW, if you want more The Shadow stuff, have a look at...

The Shadow: the never-reprinted 1994 Alec Baldwin movie adaptation HERE!

The Shadow's never-reprinted Bronze Age adventures with The Batman and The Avenger as well as never-reprinted Frank Robbins-illustrated stories HERE!

The Shadow's never-reprinted, campy costumed Silver Age adventures HERE!