Reading Room: LOST WORLDS "Space Race"

After yesterday's entry about civilians in space...

...we thought we'd take a look at what people over 50 years ago thought it would be like!

This is the sort of story that proves the trope that most sci-fi of the Golden Age was just re-written Western stories.

Replace the horse or stagecoach with a spaceship, six-shooters with ray blasters, and Indians with aliens, and voila, a sci-fi story!

This never-reprinted tale from Lost Worlds #6 (1954) was penciled by John Celardo and inked by Bernard Sachs.
The writer is unknown.

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NY Times gets sloppy with their graphics

When I picked up the Sunday NY Times this morning...

...I was disappointed that the opening page of the Travel section didn't look like the version seen here on their website.

Instead, the print version looked like there was no Black ink at all in the illustration!

No contrast in the darker areas, and the blue lettering all but merged into the background!

Pick up a copy to see for yourself.

(I took a digital picture of the front page to show for comparison, but any attempt to color-correct for the true value of the newsprint itself actually improved the image beyond the printed version!)

That sort of thing tends to occur when "webheads" (as I call web-only designers) fail to even do a simple color proof to check how their "optimized for web" RGB images will look as CMYK printed pieces.

It's the sort of sloppiness that's becoming way too common these days.

I e-mailed the NY Times with my concerns, and am awaiting a response.

The Shadow and Ghost star in a RetroBlogs™ Crossover Event!

To celebrate the return of both The Shadow and Dark Horse Comics' Ghost...

...to thrill current readers, RetroBlogs™ has re-presented the never-reprinted crossover tale starring the deadly duo in our own kool crossover!

Part 1 is at Crime & Punishment™, and the conclusion can be found on Heroines™!

The Shadow can be found in his own title from Dynamite Entertainment!

Details HERE!

Ghost has been appearing in the anthology Dark Horse Presents, and returns in her own title later this month!

Details HERE!

Buy them at your local comic shop!

Reading Room: STRANGE GALAXY "The Unknown"

What if everything you knew about outer space was wrong?

Perhaps this never-reprinted tale from Eerie Publications' Strange Galaxy #V1N8 (1971) has the answer!

Cue Twilight Zone theme music...

Judging from the script and art (including some of the obviously-altered word balloons) this was a 1950s story reprinted with a different title and minor rewriting.

Unfortunately, there are no credits for the story in Strange Galaxy, and even the definitive reference work about Eerie Publications, Weird World of Eerie Publications, has no listing for it!

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Reading Room: LAND OF THE FHRE aka SAVAGE WORLD 2.0

If you enjoyed the short story "Savage World" yesterday...

...you'll find this version, using the same art, but a different script, a fascinating read!

Noted Bronze Age writer/artist Bruce Jones was heavily-influenced by the Fleagle Gang and the EC Comics line in general.

Since the previously-published version of this tale in Witzend #1 (1966) was a rewrite of an unknown writer's script by Wally Wood, Bruce was given the opportunity to do a similar re-write, also without altering the art, for this publication in Pacific Comics' Alien Worlds #4 (1983).

Jones' version places the tale further into the future and makes the second half a dream sequence

The story also appeared in color for the first time, using the blueline/greyline method of hand-colored artwork with a black-line overlay, trying to simulate the traditional flat-color separations.

That's why the black linework isn't as crisp and sharp as in the b/w version.

The coloring was done by fantasy painter Joe Chiodo, another illustrator inspired by the work of 1950s comic artists.

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