Reading Room: SPACE SQUADRON "Star Smasher"

Do you remember how, in 1952, we sent men into space in flying saucers?

What?

You don't?

But, it's ancient history, as this tale from the year 2000 reveals in flashback...

Ah, the days when we actually believed in "American Exceptionalism"...

This story from Atlas' Space Squadron #1 (1951) was illustrated by George Tuska who later became the final artist on the original Buck Rogers comic strip (1959-67) and then assumed the art duties for almost a decade on Marvel's Invincible Iron Man!

The writer is unknown, but the scripting is clearly more simplistic and juvenile-oriented than the relatively more-sophisticated Speed Carter series written by Hank Chapman several years later.

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Reading Room: SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN "Famous Explorers: Jupiter"

Ah, the good ol' days of 2007, when a spaceport sat outside New York City...

...funny, I don't remember the skyline looking like that in 2007!

I guess I developed amnesia after I hit my head falling out of my flying car...

I'm wondering what Joe's gonna do when he runs out of cigarettes!

Nicotine withdrawal is rough enough on Earth.

But on Jupiter, without even nicotine gum...

This story from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #4 (1953) references the previous Famous Explorers tales in its' first paragraph, mentioning the explorations of Venus, Mercury, and Mars.
Written by Hank Chapman, and illustrated by Joe Maneely, in his final Speed Carter interior art job.
Joe would later do the cover for #6, the final issue of the series.

Note: the astronauts in this story, which takes place three generations in the "past" of Speed Carter, have different uniforms and lower-end technology than what's shown in the Maneely-rendered Speed Carter tales.
But since Mike Sekowsky, who illustrated the rest of this issue, redesigned both the uniforms and tech, that whole aspect now falls by the wayside for the remainder of the series' run.

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This Week: a Daily Dose of Horror at Seduction of the Innocent...

This week's Retroblogs™ marathon is...

Seduction of the Innocent™ 

where your mind will be warped by pre-Code horror tales, many never-reprinted!

Click HERE to see stuff your grandparents didn't want your parents to see!

MASKS: the Ultimate Mystery-Man Team-Up

We've shown you a team-up between The Shadow and The Avenger....

We'll be showing you a team-up between The Shadow and Doc Savage soon...

But there's a marathon team-up mini-series coming in November that'll make history for the sheer amount of pulp and media heroes from various companies combined in one story!

It's called, appropriately enough, MASKS, and features...

The Shadow!

Zorro!

The Spider!

The Green Hornet & Kato!

Plus other heroes like Miss Fury, The Black Bat, and The Black Terror are mentioned as appearing later on in the series!

Watch for it!
Plus see a sneak preview of the latest (#8) cover for The Shadow's solo title!

13 Ghosts and Illusion-O!

The 1960 William Castle movie 13 Ghosts used red/blue 3-D style glasses, but not for 3-D!

While most of the movie was black and white, certain sequences had red and blue tinting.
To see the ghosts, you looked thru the red "lens".
To not see the specters, you looked thru the blue "lens".
For years, you could only see the totally-b/w version on tv (including TCM), and the VHS release was b/w only.

When they finally issued a DVD edition, the initial one included the version with the color Illusion-O segments and red/blue viewers based on the ones given out in theatres.

Unfortunately, the "first edition" of the DVD was the only one to have both the Illusion-O version of the movie or the viewers!
The much-more available later pressings/editions are only b/w!
I finally found a copy of the original DVD release (with viewer) for only $4.99 in a used-DVD bin in a local music shop (we used to call them "record shops"), and spent the afternoon getting a real kick out of watching it!
It's an entertaining film, but it's better with Illusion-O!  ;-)

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