Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Man Who Could Paint on Air"

With an intruging cover like this...

...how could I resist running this rarely-seen tale by writer Joe Gill and artist Steve Ditko!

This story of artistic alien assassins and poisonous pigments appeared in Charlton's Unusual Tales #7 (1957) during one of Steve Ditko's most prolfic periods as he freelanced for several companies including Atlas (later Marvel), Charlton, and St John doing a little in every genre, even romance!

Reading Room UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION "Occupation Force"

A never-reprinted adaptation of a startling short story by Frank (Dune) Herbert...

...from Marvel's short-lived 1970s b/w sci-fi anthology Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.

Written by Gerry Conway with pencils by George Perez (along with modifications by Rich Buckler) and inks by Klaus Janson, the adaptation from Unknown Worlds' third issue (1975) is extremely-faithful to the original tale, taking a lot of dialogue verbatim from the prose story.

Anti-Valentine's Day Gifts!

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been suggesting Valentine's Day kool kollectibles for those with True Love in their hearts!
But what of those of you who don't look forward to this Day for Lovers?
Don't worry! We haven't left you out!
Today, Atomic Kommie Comics™ offers "Wrong Way Wedding" from the Weddings section of True Love Comics Tales™! on a host of items including greeting cards, mens' and womens' garb, even teddy bears!

Tomorrow...a 1950s horror comics romance classic! (We're NOT kidding!)

Now THIS is a Super Bowl...

Art by Jack Kirby...as if you couldn't tell!

You got your "Super Bowl", we got ours!
I'll pop in and out to catch a little bit of action, and see the commercials, but our "Super Nerd Bowl" is a beer and nacho-fueled marathon of cheesy space sci-fi including Gorath, Wild Wild Planet, Green Slime, Angry Red Planet, and (when we're all good and sloshed)...the 1980 Flash Gordon!
"Ah-ahhhh! Savior of the Universe!"
Hey, it's got a football player as the hero!

Captain Blood...by the creator of Flash Gordon!

How many of you have seen this classic movie poster...

...and knew it was the work of Alex Raymond, of Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, and Secret Agent X-9 fame?

Yep!

Since Captain Blood and Arabella Bishop do not look like Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, it's a reasonable bet that this was done as an advance promo piece before casting, but it was so good, the studio still used it as their half-sheet poster for both the initial release and re-releases!

If you look at the original Flash Gordon strip, you'll see Raymond incorporated a lot of pirate/swashbuckler costume, weapon, and design motifs into Flash's adventures on other worlds!

We hope you've enjoyed our celebration of the new pirate/adventure series Black Sails with earlier pop culture appearances of buccaneers both real and reel.

Be here next week for MORE pop-culture fun!