Monday, December 8, 2014

Holiday Reading Room HUMBUG "Humbug Award: Fake Santa Clauses"

Remember yesterday's cute tale of multiple Santa Clauses by Walt Kelly?
...well, here's a far more cynical take on the matter, courtesy of artist Will Elder from the appropriately-titled Humbug #6 (1958)!
The writer is probably Elder or editorial staffers Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, or Arnold Roth.
Any guesses?

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "There's a Santa..."

Here's a kool one pager...
...written and illustrated by Walt (Pogo) Kelly from Dell's Four Color Comics #91 (1945) aka "Santa Claus Funnies"!
For the rest of the month, we'll be presenting various holiday-related items, some one or two-pagers like this, some longer stories.
Have a seat, get a mug of hot chocolate, and enjoy!

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Put a Super Green Beret under Your Evergreen this Christmas!

Never failing to capitalize on a pop culture trend, several comics publishers, noticing the 60s popularity of the hit single Ballad of the Green Berets (by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler & Robin Moore) quickly launched series featuring the elite Army unit.
Most were standard war comics, but one stood out from the rest for sheer weirdness...
What do you get when you combine...
1) Green Berets (and the VietNam War) with...
2) Teenagers...
and 3) SuperHeroes?
Why, SUPER GREEN BERET, of course!

Green Beret Roger Wilson saves a Vietnamese monk from a wild boar, and in return the grateful priest attaches a pin to his beret which makes it glow.
Home on leave, Roger gives the glowing beret to his teenage nephew Tod Holton, who discovers that, when he puts it on and salutes, he's transformed into a super-powered adult dressed in a soldier's uniform!
Using his new-found powers of teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, transmutation, time travel, invulnerability, and super-strength, Tod decides to fight Enemies of Our Country, mostly in present-day Asia, but also the American Revolution and World War II, during his two-issue run!
Yes, it's as hokey as it sounds!

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ felt that we couldn't let such an outrageous character and concept be forgotten, so, as part of our War: Past, Present, & Future™ line, we incorporated Super Green Beret as a light-hearted example of 1960s funkiness to contrast with the seriousness of the World War II and Korean Police Action material (plus we wanted an excuse to make some kool SGB collectibles for ourselves)!

So stick Super Green Beret under the tree or in a stocking for your loved one! It's the next best thing to an original 11.5" GI Joe! (And I should know, since I received one of the first Joes at Christmas, many years ago!)

FREE BONUS: An early Christmas present for you: a link to the never-reprinted origin of Super Green Beret!

Friday, December 5, 2014

It's GOOD to be BAD at Christimastime!

Well, the Christmas shopping season is more-or-less underway (Remember when it didn't begin until after Thanksgiving?), so we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ are going to offer you a daily guide to reasonably-priced pop culture collectibles that would make great gifts for the hard-to-please person in your life!
First off is a kool, retro, 1950s comic cover image from our Seducton of the Innocent™ section.
Quick side note: Seduction of the Innocent was a book written in the 1950s by Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who postulated that, because juvenile delinquents read comic books, comics caused juvenile delinquency!
(Psychiatrists today claim the same thing about video games, in the '80s and '90s about horror movies, in the '60s and '70s about tv shows, etc.)
So our collection's title is tongue-in-cheek and somewhat snarky, not prurient!
As we put it..."Proudly show the stuff your grandparents didn't want your parents to see!"
This particular image is a cutting commentary on the belief that New York City is a den of sin, a modern Sodom (if not Gomorrah), and that only MidWestern small-town values are the RIGHT values!
It's available on a variety of items including mugs, messenger bags, t-shirts, tops, and other goodies along with eleven other comics covers and almost TWO DOZEN naughty movie posters!
So, let's put the "X" back in Xmas! ;-)
Shop now!
Avoid the Christmas rush!
It's good to be BAD at Christmastime!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Holiday Reading Room: SNOW QUEEN "What Happened at the Snow Queen's Palace and What Happened Afterwards"


...the reunion of Gerda and Kay, the boy spirited away by the Snow Queen and taken to her icy palace in the Arctic!
Now, the conclusion...
THE END

Written by Gaylord Du Bois and illustrated by Lea Bing, this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Fairy Tale Parade #9 (1943) is the only comic book adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that serves as the (very loose) basis of the wildly-popular Disney movie Frozen!

Adaptation writer Gaylord DuBois was one of the most prolfic (yet unknown) scribes in comics history with over 3,000 tales to his credit.

Artist Lea Bing was one of the few women working as a creative (instead of an editorial or production staffer) during the Golden Age.
From 1940 to 1954, she rendered several stories a year, usually adaptations of classic novels or fairy tales, with an occasional funny animal story.
Regrettably, nothing is known of her pre or post-comics career.