Reading Room CAPTAIN QUICK & THE SPACE SCOUTS "Hermits of Callisto"

The Space Scouts and their mentor finally leave Mars...

...only to find a mystery on a moon of Jupiter!

A poignant (and ironic) end to a short-lived series nobody remembers!

Though the art for this never-reprinted tale from Prize Comics' Tom Corbett: Space Cadet V2#3 (1955) is credited solely to Marvin Stein at the Grand Comics Database, the layout appears to be by Jack Kirby, which would make sense since Simon & Kirby's studio was packaging the book for Prize.
Beyond being set in the near future, there was no connection to Tom Corbett.

Reading Room KANDI THE CAVE KID "Dinosaur"

Creationists believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old...

...so to them, this could be considered a chapter in a history book!

This never-reprinted story from Dell's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics #15 (1943) was the final appearance of the Walt Kelly-created character.

Besides both print adaptations of theatrical cartoons and new tales of existing Warner Brothers characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Dell introduced a number of new characters to fill out the pages of the comic anthology, including Kandi and Pat, Patsy & Pete.

Kandi was one of the shorter-lived ones, with only a half-dozen short tales from #3 to #15.

Reading Room HILLBILLY COMICS "Man Who Hated the Moon"

Here's a tale of the good ol' boys who former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee calls "Bubbas"...

...from a short-lived 1950s title telling their stories!

Yep, these are the people Huckabee and other Republicans play to while decrying the "educated elites".

"Bubbleville', according to Mike, represents the big cities of New York, Washington and Hollywood where the educated (but not smart) people live.

"Bubbaville", I guess, is everywhere else in the good ol' USA.

And that's where the real people are.

The ones who are smart...without all that fancy book-learnin'. 

Written and illustrated by the highly-underrated Art Gates, this never-reprinted piece from Charlton's Hillbilly Comics #1 (1955) shows the "wisdom" Huckabee's bubbas are famous for!

Ghost of the Polar Vortex!

The media build-up for the "Blizzard of '15" reminded me of this tale...

...I ran during the Polar Vortex last year!

But the reality was disappointing, not even equal to the impact of the Vortex!

(Though seeing NYC brought to a total standstill, without even the subways running, was eerie!)

BTW, you can check out all the Polar Vortex-themed posts from this blog HERE.

And, there are Vortex-related posts on almost all the other RetroBlogs as well...

Crime & Punishment

Hero Histories

Heroines

True Love Comics Tales

Secret Sanctum of Captain Video

Seduction of the Innocent

War: Past, Present & Future

Western Comics Adventures

Reading Room JUNGLE JIM "Wizard of Dark Mountain"

Dynamite isn't the first comic publisher to inject sci-fi/fantasy elements...

...into this usually "realistic" high adventure strip!

Written and laid-out by Bhob Stewart, pencilled by Steve Ditko, and inked by Wally Wood. this cover-featured story from Charlton's Jungle Jim #22 (1969) was prepared for the character's previous publisher, King Comics, but ended up at Charlton when King Features Syndicate dropped in-house comic book publishing.

You can read Bhob's account of how this story was produced HERE.