Happy Birthday, Mr Bond! Now Die...

It's Sean Connery's 83rd Birthday...

Inside cover of Showcase #43

...so why not celebrate by visiting our "brother" blog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™ where you can read the never-reprinted DC Comics adaptation of Sean's 007 debut in Doctor No!

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!

Reading Room: Space Voyagers "Hot Spot"

Every few years in comics, there's a short-lived never-reprinted sci-fi space adventure series...

In the 1960s it was Gold Key's Explorers in the Unknown.

In the 1970s, it was DC's Space Voyagers, appearing in the back of Rima the Jungle Girl.

Though this is the origin tale, it appeared in Rima the Jungle Girl #3 (1974), after a two-parter (set after the events of this tale) ran in #1 & #2!

(Oddly, the pilot episode of the Classic Star Trek tv series, "Where No Man has Gone Before", aired as the third episode of that series.)

Scripted by Robert Kanigher and illustrated by Alex Nino, the series ran thru the first five issues of Rima before disappearing.

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Reading Room: "Push Button Tyrant"

Ziff-Davis' Space Patrol comic feaured both stories based on the TV series...

...and unrelated one-shot tales, like this never-reprinted "Cold War of the Future" story from #1.

 

Boy, they were obsessed in the 1950s that the Commies would win the Cold War!
The writer and artist are officially unknown, but I see a great deal of Murphy Anderson's style in a number of panels.

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Reading Room: TALES OF HORROR "Beast from the Deep"

Today is Ray Bradbury's Birthday...

...so let's celebrate with the only comic adaptation of one of his stories (albeit uncredited), from Minoan/Toby's Tales of Horror #7 (1953), based on the short story "The FogHorn".

Ironically, the comic tale is a far more faithful adaptation of the story than the movie Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which came out at the same time!

Though the writer of the comic is unknown, the artist was John Rosenberger, who spent the 1950s to late 1970s doing work in every comics genre from romance to superhero to horror for almost every publisher in the field!

This was one of the last comic adaptations of Bradbury's work in the 1950s.

The earlier ones were done by the legendary EC Comics crew, and initially, were also uncredited...until Ray Bradbury found out!

HEREs an article detailing what happened next.

The cover from this story is one of the dozen in the...

Dinosaurs of the Comics and Pulps

2014 12-Month Calendar

Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES "Escape on a Planetoid"

What if the Communusts had won the Cold War?

That's the premise of this never-reprinted tale from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #3 (1951)

Oddly, they never asked Rulak what happened to the second ship...
The writer and artist are officially unknown, but I see a great deal of Murphy Anderson's style in a number of panels.

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