Gettysburg in Comic Books

With the 150th Anniversary under way...

...our "brother" RetroBlog War: Past, Present & Future™ is running a couple of never-reprinted tales about the battle that decided the course of the Civil War HERE and HERE.

Reading Room: OUT OF THIS WORLD "Pallas Rebellion"

And we do mean Reading Room, today...

Art by Gene Fawcette

In the dark days before comic shops,  comic books were sold at newsstands, drugstores, lunchenette/soda fountains, etc. on racks along with magazines and newspapers.

To qualify as magazines/periodicals and receive special 2nd class (periodical) mailing discounts, comics had to include at least one text page per issue.

From the mid-1950s on, the quota was filled with a letters page.

But before that, the text page was often a short story.

In some cases, the story was based on the cover art, like this one from Avon's 1950 one-shot Out of This World...

The cover is by Gene Fawcette.

The story is by "W Malcolm White", a pen-name for Donald A Wollheim, a noted genre author who was the sci-fi/fantasy editor for Avon Magazines at this time.

Shortly after this, he moved to Ace Books, where he conceived the Ace Doubles paperback series and spearheaded the returns of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard to the pop culture spotlight.

He also introduced JRR Tolkien to American audiences with an unauthorized (but legal) reprinting of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Later, Wollheim and his wife would found DAW Books, the first mass-market genre publisher!

(Today it's an imprint of Penguin Books.)

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The Future WAS Fantastic!

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Reading Room: SPACE ACTION "Dangerous Migration of the Baalites"

Where did they come up with some of these weird titles?

Perhaps this never-reprinted tale from Ace's Space Action #2 (1952) will clear up some of the mystery...

The "migration" is a minor plot point.
Personally, I would've gone with something like "The Outlaw Who Saved the Earth" or "Seek Treasure, Find Death!"
But that's just me.

Art is by Bill Molno, the writer is unknown.

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The Future WAS Fantastic!

Comics Collectibles Store!

No Post Today Due to Google / Picasa Problems Redux

Due to problems with Picasa, we'll be unable to do our scheduled post for today.
Whenever we try to access Picasa, a popup forcing us to join Google+ or we can't access our albums "pops-up"!
We hope to resolve the problem (or figure out a workaround) by Monday.
Thank you for your patience.

It's Lone Ranger & Tonto Month at Western Comics Adventures!

With a new (and somewhat controversial) Lone Ranger (and Tonto) movie opening next Wednesday, our brother blog, Western Comics Adventures™ will be dedicating July to entries about the most famous Western duo in fiction (whom we've covered a number of times previously).

This Monday, you'll see a classic feature on Tonto; his biography, cultural background, and skills & abilities, that was consistent through the various versions in radio, tv, comics, pulps (yes, pulps) and movies up to the late 1990s!

There'll also be entries about the incarnations of the duo in various media with lots of hard-to-find stuff to link to and/or download.

And maybe an explanation for the bird on Johnny Depp's head...