Happy 50th, 007!

To celebrate, here's a kool documentary from 1966...

...when BondMania was at its' height and the only 007 was Sean Connery (the first, and still the best, movie Bond)!

Reading Room: KENTON OF THE STAR PATROL "Corsairs of the Coalsack"

Space Squadron, Space Patrol, Star Rangers, Space Sentinels...

...with all those law-enforcement organizations prowling the spaceways of 1950s sci-fi, it's surprising there were any villains who dared commit crimes in the Milky Way!

This premiere appearance (but second printing) of Kenton of the Star Patrol is from Avon's Strange Worlds #1 (1950) is written by Gardner Fox, and illustrated by Joe Kubert.
It first appeared in Avon Publishing's Out of This World Adventures #2 (1950), a weird half-comic/half pulp magazine experiment that lasted only two issues.
Kenton was one of only two ongoing strips in Strange Worlds, an anthology for both sci-fi/fantasy and the occasional horror tale.
(The other one was Crom the Barbarian.)
You'll be seeing Kenton's entire short-lived series here over the next few weeks.

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Don't Say "No" to DOCTOR NO!

October 5th is the 50th Anniversary of the first movie appearance of "Bond, James Bond"...

Inside cover of Showcase #43

...in celebration, our "brother" blog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™ is running the never-reprinted DC Comics adaptation of Doctor No for the next few days.

Before you say "But, that's a reprint of the Classics Illustrated version available only in England!", I'll point out that numerous changes (which are compared in the blog posts) were made by DC in both text and art!

And, while the Classics Illustrated version has been translated and printed all over the world, the DC version has never been reprinted!

Because Showcase #43 came out months before the movie debuted in America, it sold poorly, and DC didn't exercise their 10-year option to do more James Bond tie-ins!

Ironically, in 1972, DC realized they were about to lose the rights to do 007 comics and considered doing an entire series of one-shot movie adaptations up to, and including, the current film, but Sean Connery's announcement that Diamonds are Forever would be his last film in Bondage (ouch) put the kibosh on those plans!

That's why there were no comic adaptations from Gold Key or Dell (who were doing comics based on every movie and TV show they could get their hands on) during the height of '60s Bond-mania!

The next 007 movie adaptation would be For Your Eyes Only from Marvel in 1981.

The Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™ re-presentation will conclude Friday.

Don't miss it!

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

Now, this is one mean-looking robot...

...and he's plastic instead of the traditional metal!

(But wouldn't that make him an android instead of a robot?)

The toothy robot looks a lot like The Phantom mechanoid from the 1930s movie serial The Phantom Creeps...

...which, in 1953, had just been edited into feature film format and syndicated to local tv stations!
Coincidence?
BTW, The design for The Phantom was so unique that, unlike most other robots of the era, he never appeared in another live-action movie, either in new or stock footage!

However, Rob Zombie loved the robot so much he built a duplicate, which has appeared on-stage during his concerts and in the video for his single, "Dragula"
Zombie also "recast" The Phantom as Murray the Robot, transformable cybernetic aide to Susi-X in his animated feature Haunted World of El Superbeasto!

He didn't have that gun in Phantom Creeps!

This story from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #5 (1953) is written (like all the Speed Carter-related tales) by Hank Chapman, and illustrated by Bill Savage, an artist who entered comics during the boom in 1944 and exited in 1954 when comics were almost destroyed by the Fredric Wertham-led witch-hunt blaming comic books for rampant juvenile delinquency.

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Preview: THE SHADOW 8 & 9 Covers by Francesco Francavilla

Who Knows What Evil...?

 Francesco Francavilla does, as this cover for #9 of Dynamite's new Shadow comic book shows!

And, because you may have blinked and missed it, the cover to #8 (which we mentioned in our post about Masks, the mini-series combining all the cape-and-fedora-wearing heroes of the pulps and comics)...

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

The Shadow: the never-reprinted 1994 Alec Baldwin movie adaptation HERE!
(PLUS, a never-reprinted Gene Colan spoof of The Shadow radio show called "The Shadower"!)

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!