Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Blotting Threat"

Winding up a look at rarely-seen Matt Baker sci-fi/fantasy tales...

...we present the never-reprinted cover story from Charlton's Unusual Tales #19 (1959), about a disillusioned commercial artist involved with...

This story, penciled by Baker and inked by Vince Colletta, was one of the last tales published before his death later in 1959 of a heart attack at the age of 38.

He was so prolific that the inventory of stories he worked on for both Charlton and Atlas (later Marvel) was not exhausted until a year later!

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Xondu the Eternal"

Another never-reprinted 1950s sci-fi tale by legendary good-girl artist Matt Baker...

..with a Twilight Zone-style twist ending!

OK, it's more a "Third from the Sun" than "To Serve Man" ending, but still, it's fairly effective!

(And kudos to those who didn't have to click on the link to understand what I was talking about!)

Penciled by Matt Baker and inked by Vince Colletta, this tale from Out of This World #15 (1959) unfortunately suffers from the poor printing Charlton was notorious for.

(Unlike other comics companies, Charlton had their own printing press, which had been designed for packaging...including breakfast cereal boxes!)

The writer is unknown, but many believe it to be Joe Gill, who was rapidly making a name for himself with an impressive, and varied, body of work.

Reading Room TALES TO ASTONISH "I Fell to the Center of the Earth!"

A sci-fi story by noted good-girl artist Matt Baker...

...without a single beautiful woman (not even a cavewoman), in one of his few assignments for Atlas (later Marvel) Comics!

When this story appeared in Tales to Astonish #2 (1959), Baker was near the end of his run working through Vince Colletta's studio, doing only penciling to increase his productivity.

Vince Colletta inked the pages, and it's possible that, seeing how much detail Colletta tended to leave out during inking, Baker did less-detailed pencils than normal.

The writer is unknown, but it's believed to be Editor Stan Lee.

NIGHTMARE "Princess of the Sea"

Back on Valentine's Day we ran a story about a man and a mermaid...

...and while we presented both the original painted pulp-style cover and a sexy, almost R-rated cover from the 1980s reprint, we totally-missed this cover from the tale's second appearance in St John's Nightmare #13 (1954) by legendary good girl artist Matt Baker!

Now through Friday, we'll be presenting some of Baker's most unusual (and least-seen) material to wind up Black History Month.

Though the material itself doesn't feature any Black characters, the artist, Matt Baker, was Black!

So be here to see what else he could do besides beautiful women...

Reading Room ROCKET SHIP X "Ivy Invasion"

Here's a never-reprinted tale from one of the rarest anthology titles of all...

...Fox's Rocket Ship X (1951)!

(not to be confused with the movie RocketShip X-M, which came out the year before...)

Both writer and artist(s) of this extremely-weird tale are unknown.
Fox, unlike most comics publishers in the 1940s-50s, didn't go whole-hog with sci-fi.

Though they did occasional sci-fi stories that appeared in their other adventure and action anthologies, Rocket Ship X was their lone sci fi-only anthology, and it was just a one-shot.