Reading Room JIM SOLAR: SPACE SHERIFF "Defeats the Moon Missile Men" Part 1

From the 1950s comes this weirdly-formatted, never-reprinted strip...

...that was available only as a giveaway inside various products!

Be here tomorrow for the thrillling conclusion!

Created by writer Walter (The Shadow) Gibson and artist E.C. Stoner (Blue Beetle), this 7" x 3.5" comic was part of the Vital Publications line of promotional giveaways distributed by a variety of merchants inside their products' packaging.

This particular one was included in packages of Rodeo All-Meat Wieners...

Back cover

There were apparently eight other Jim Solar comics, but they're very HTF since they were "self-covered (fragile newsprint covers, like the inside pages, instead of the heavy slick magazine paper most comics use for covers) and included with food products, whose juices would damage the paper!

How Hawks in Congress Think We Can Fight the Russians in the Ukraine...

I'd say they read these comics as kids...

#2 (1953) Art by Jim McLaughlin

...presuming they could actually read!

#3 (1953) Art by an unknown illustrator

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!)

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!