Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Invasion of the Snowmads"

If you're staying in during this cold wave, get some hot cocoa (with marshmallows) and read...

...in this never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #15 (1941).

Interesting how the "Snomads" are similar to the much-later Marvin the Martian...

Illustrated by Al Walker, who spent his entire comics career at Fiction House, this tale introduces more protagonists for Norge Benson and his crew to deal with besides evil penguins.

Reading Room TALES OF HORROR "It Came from the Bottom of the World"

A new movie, The DUFF, is opening on Friday...

...and one of the stars of the flick. Mae Whitman as Bianca, wears a shirt with a classic 1950s horror comic on it!

Art by Jack Sparling

Here's the story behind the cover...

This never-reprinted tale from Toby/Minoan's Tales of Horror #9 (1954) was illustrated by longtime journeyman artist Jack Sparling.

The writer is unknown.

Now, here's a kool treat:

While it's not the t-shirt seen in the movie (which has a home-made "look" that can be achieved with a color laser or inkjet printer and heat-transfer paper), we took our copy of the comic, scanned and digitally-remastered the cover, then put it on an assortment of kool kollectibles including this large tote bag...

..plus phone and e-reader cases, pajamas, magnets, and, of course, t-shirts, all at inexpensive prices.

(The t-shirts start at $14.95)

Click HERE to see them.

Plus, we have an extensive assortment of other horror comic collectibles (including a different Tales of Horror cover HERE.

Reading Room LIFE STORIES OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS "George Washington"

Yesterday's and today's posts got transposed...

...but this never-reprinted tale of our first President is well-worth waiting for!

Dell's never-reprinted Life Stories of American Presidents (1957) was both sold on newsstands and distributed to bookstores (where I found my copy in 1963), a rarity in those days.

Though the author is unknown, the artist who penciled and inked the entire 100-page cavalcade of Presidents from Washington to Eisenhower was John Buscema!

Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Happy Boithday to Frosting"

As cold creeps once more over North America...

...let's be glad it's not as cold as Pluto, where stranded Earthman Norge Benson lives near turtlenecked penguins who sound and act like the Bowery Boys...

Illustrated by Al Walker, who spent his entire comics career at Fiction House, this tale from Planet Comics #14 (1941) takes the idea of "silly" up a notch as it presents a somewhat less snarky (though no less humorous) version of the "Earthman on Pluto" concept shown in the earlier Cosmo Corrigan strip, mixing alien versions of both Arctic and Antarctic animals with total disregard to anything even remotely resembling exobiology!

But it is fun, and that's all that matters!

RIP Gary Owens (1934-2015)

He was Space Ghost, Roger Ramjet, and the announcer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...

You may not know his face, but you cetatinly knew his booming voice!

Now he's gone...but his voice will live on...