Friday, December 20, 2013

Holiday Reading Room HUMBUG! "A Christmas Carol"

Here's one of the koolest adaptations of Dickens' classic story...
...and most people don't even know it exists!
Note: the interior pages were two-color instead of the usual comic book-style four color.
The next-to-last page of the story is from the one-color inside front cover, while the final page was the four-color back cover of the magazine!
Illustrated by Arnold Roth, it's never been established who wrote this tale from Humbug! #6 (1958)!
It could be Roth, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, or even all of them in a collaboration!
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Thursday, December 19, 2013

HUMBUG!

Not just Scrooge's favorite phrase...
Art by Jack Davis
...for just over a year in 1957-58, it was a kool humor magazine edited by Harvey Kurtzman after the cancellation of TRUMP, a magazine Kutzman intended to be a more adult version of MAD.
For their Christmastime issue, they, of course, adapted A Christmas Carol.
See it here, tomorrow...
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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Holiday Reading Room TREASURE CHEST "Father Kiernan Tells About Christmas Customs in Other Lands"

Here's a rarely-seen Christmas piece...
...from the little-known and never-reprinted comic series Treasure Chest, only available by subscription in Catholic schools.
The Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact was a comic published bi-weekly during the school year (September thru June) and distributed to Catholic churches and schools from 1946 to 1966, featuring wholesome stories about historical, scientific, and sports subjects, adaptations of famous fictional works, and a number of original series.
Many well-known Golden and Silver Age creators contributed work to the title including Joe Sinnott, Reed Crandall, Jim Mooney, Graham Ingels, Bernard Bailey, Bob Powell, Fran Matera, and Frank Borth.
It became a year-round bi-weekly from 1966 to 1968, then reverting to school-year only until it's cancellation in 1972.
This particular story, written by George S Foley and illustrated by an unknown artist appeared in Vol 2 #9 (Dec. 24, 1946).
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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Holiday Reading Room PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE: NEW TESTAMENT "Story of Jesus: Part 1"

...today it's the granddaddy of Bible comics, DC Comics' Picture Stories from the Bible!
The story continues with a caption mentioning that Mary and Joseph escaped and then takes up with Jesus as a 'tween, so we're not running that part yet...

Originally published by All-American Comics under the DC Comics logo in 1942, later editions were done by EC Comics after publisher MC Gaines sold his rights to most of the All-American line to National Allied Publications who combined the two groups into National Periodical Publications.
(National Allied and All-American had been marketing and distributing their books together, usually using the DC Comics logo, which was the result of an earlier buyout of Detective Comics Inc by National!)
Retaining the rights to the Picture Stories series, Gaines used it as the cornerstone of his new EC Comics imprint.
Note: EC Comics, now famous (or infamous) for its horror/sci-fi titles and MAD was originally conceived as Educational Comics with lots of wholesome, young-kid oriented material like Tiny Tots Comics and Land of the Lost!
Don't remember them?
That's why "Educational" Comics became "Entertaining" Comics, though they continued reprinting Picture Stories (but without the EC logo on the front after the whole "Seduction of the Innocent" scare...)

Unlike Atlas' Bible Tales, which used a plethora of artists, the entire Picture Stories series was written by Montgomery Mulford & Edward Wertheim and illustrated by Don Cameron!
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Monday, December 16, 2013

Holiday Reading Room BIBLE TALES FOR YOUNG FOLK "Nativity: the Birth of Jesus"

Over the years, many comics companies did Bible-themed projects...
...such as Atlas Comics' Bible Tales for Young Folk which presented this never-reprinted story in its first issue!
The writer is unknown, but the penciler/inker is the legendary Joe Sinnott, best known for his inking of Jack Kirby and John Buscema on the Fantastic Four during the Silver Age.
(In truth, Joe's done an incredible amount of truly-spectacular work in comics, but that's the first thing most fans think of.)
Joe also did quite a bit of work for Treasure Chest, a comic distributed semi-monthly only to parochial schools during the school year that ran over 500 issues.
Oddly, none of Sinnott's stories were Bible adaptations (which TC did a lot of).
Bible Tales lasted five issues in 1953 and '54, mixing New and Old Testament stories into each issue, illustrated by the cream of the Atlas (later Marvel) Comics crew including; Jerry Robinson, Don Rico, Syd Shores, Fred Kida, Bernie Krigstein, Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, and Gene Colan!
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