Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Reading Room: JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Pardon My Power!"

It's January 1st, 2013, so it's time for FOOTBALL!
...or football as shown in the "future" (our present), as presented in 1952!
If the art style of this tale from Standard's Jetta of the 21st Century #6 (1953) looks familiar, it's the work of Dan DeCarlo, who helped establish the iconic "look" of Archie Comics!
Dan actually started at Atlas Comics (the 1940s-50s predecessor to Marvel Comics) doing a variety of humor strips before beginning a long-term run on various Archie titles in 1951.
Even then, he continued to work for a number of other publishers, including Standard Comics, who asked him to create, write, and illustrate a teen-humor series.
(Every publisher had at least one of them!)
Exactly whose idea it was to set it in the "far future" of the 21st Century is unknown, but the resultant strip, though extremely derivative of Archie, was unique in the teen-humor genre for it's Jetsons-style setting and "futuristic" slang.
To see more of Jetta go HERE!

Support Small Business

Sunday, December 30, 2012

The Power Themes 90 Vids featuring Gerry Anderson

The remix album Power Themes 90 featured a lot of Gerry Anderson shows...
...as you can see from the following videos:
Thunderbirds Are Go!
(which features other Anderson shows' music)
Stingray MegaMix

Mysterons Rap (Captain Scarlet)

Gerry Anderson's UFO

Enjoy, and remember the guy behind the curtain!

Saturday, December 29, 2012

25% Off Calendars for New Year!

From now until Jan 2, 2013, all calendars are discounted from $19.99 to $14.99!
Here are the  
Atomic Kommie Comics
2013 12-Month Calendars 
by genre

Mystery / Crime
Sherlock Holmes: the Greatest Sleuth of All! 
Basil Rathbone IS Sherlock Holmes!
Mr District Attorney


Horror
WereWolves & Vampires
Horror Comics of the 1950s
Vampires of Pulps & Comics
Werewolves of the Comics & Pulps
Zombies of Comics & Pulps
(shown above)

Camp / Kitsch
3-D Movies
3-D Comic Books
Seduction of the Innocent!!
Jungle Girls
Good Girl / Bad Grrrl


Romance
True Love Comics Tales


Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Martians, Martians, Martians!
Art of Barsoom 
Thrilling Science-Fiction Tales 
Bugs & Creepy Crawlies of Comics & Pulps
Dinosaurs of the Comics & Pulps™ 

SuperHeroes
Captains of the Comics
Heroines!
Classic Phantom Lady

Lost Heroes of the Silver Age of Comics
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics Team-Ups
1st Appearance Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics
Flag-Waving Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics

Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics vs HITLER
Classic Captain Future

Classic Green Hornet
Classic Monster of Frankenstein 

Classic SuperSnipe

Western
Western Comics Adventures
Real-Life Western Comics
The Cisco Kid and Pancho



Military
Captain MidNight
Aviators of the Golden Age of Comics
WAR: Past, Present & Future
Classic Korean War Comics

NOT available in stores, only on-line! Order now...before time runs out! ;-)

Friday, December 28, 2012

Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE "Dark of the Moon"

He was Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Thun'da!
(And he would've been a helluva Doc Savage, if they had done a feature or serial in the 1940s!)
He was Larry "Buster" Crabbe, the first (and many say, the greatest) cinema action hero.
A two-time Olympian (with a swimming gold medal to his credit), Buster didn't even have to audition for Flash Gordon. (He came to support a friend who was auditioning, and the director, who had seen Crabbe's earlier work as Tarzan offered him the role on the spot!)
Art by Alex Toth
Like many other action-movie actors of the 1930s-1950s, Crabbe had his own comic book where he's shown as Buster Crabbe, not "Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon" or somesuch in the tale, and it's assumed that he's actually able to do anything he's been shown doing in his films.
Unlike most of the other matinee idols, Crabbe's comic adventures covered a variety of genres from Western to sci-fi, and even some cross-genre mashups as shown HERE and HERE.
(The others, except for John Wayne, were purely Western-themed series.
Wayne, because of his extensive war film work also had Korean War and present-day adventure comic stories in his comic series.)
Though the writer for this wild, never-reprinted tale from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #2 (1954) is unknown, the artists are Alex Toth (pencils), Mike Peppe (inks) and John Celardo (retouching on Buster's face in several panels).