Is This Our Future?

With Russia making moves into the Ukraine. maybe we should look at how it was...

...during the Cold War by looking at what they thought (in the 1950s) would happen in the near-future (the 1960s onward)!

Turns out it wasn't so great, as you'll see when you click on the links to our "brother" RetroBlog War: Past, Present & Future...and read about...

Atomic War

&

World War III

(which were two different series with two different plotlines and histories from the same publisher!)

Reading Room STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES "Inexplicable"

Here's a bonus Matt Baker story featuring the subject he's most famous for...

...a beautiful woman.

But is she a femme with a fuzzy fetish or something far more sinister?

Written by Joe Gill, penciled by Matt Baker, and inked by VInce Colletta, this never-reprinted story about Nature outsmarting Man appeared in Charlton's Strange Suspense Stories #44 (1959).

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.