TIME WARP WEEK "Man Who Could See Yesterday"

Welcome to Time Warp Week...

...as we take a week-long look at DC's short-lived 1979-1980 sci-fi anthology, one issue per day.

Using both established pros and talented newcomers, this oversized anthology (68 pages for $1 when the standard comic was 36 pages for 40¢) presented all-new material, almost all of which (including this story) has never been reprinted!

Mike Kaluta, definitive artist for the comic version of The Shadow, provided pulp-style covers for the entire run.

While they had no relation to any of the stories in the book, they were spectacular!

Be here tomorrow as we sample issue #2!

Design of the Week: EASTER SURPRISE!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!

Since Easter is coming, we thought we'd present an absolutely adorable piece by the legendary Walt (Pogo) Kelly featuring a kid, bunny, mouse, and chick as the Easter Egg in their basket hatches, producing yet another cutie...a baby duck!

You just don't see stuff like this anymore!
So, why not order some kidswear, or even holiday greeting cards with this one-week-only graphic?
Everyone who sees it will go "Awwww."

Reading Room BLAST-OFF "Little Earth"

A classic example of an unheralded gem by two graphic-story masters...

...that has been reprinted only once, and in a limited-edition trade paperback, so most of you have never seen it!

Oddly, the GCD lists it as penciled by Reed Crandall and inked by Al Williamson, but Teddy I at pencilink.blogspot reverses the credits!

The writer is unknown.
According to the Kirby Museum, it was intended for the never-published Race for the Moon #5 in 1958, but remained unused until 1965, when it was published in the one-shot Blast-Off!

Reading Room DO YOU BELIEVE IN NIGHTMARES? "Man Who Crashed into Another Era"

Let's wind up the week with a rarely-seen short story...

...featuring dinosaurs, and illustrated by Steve Ditko before his stint on Gorgo!

Ok, so it was the old "It's only a dream" scenario.

You got to admit, it's well-done!

From St John's Do You Believe in Nightmares? #1 (1957), a short-lived anthology produced just before St John went out of business.

Reading Room BUCCANEERS "Black Roger: Power of Lightning!"

Let's return to one of the first Muslim (or Moslem, as they were known then) fighters...

...with a story featuring the least-Muslim pirate you'll ever see!

This tale from Quality's Buccaneers #21 (1950) explains this particular group of pirates, including the scantly-clad Kahena, are from the Eastern city of Khob, so their Asian, rather than Arabic, appearance is, for a change, explained.
When superheroes' popularity waned at the end of World War II, comics looked for other genres to fill the gap.

Taking their cue from movie box office sales, several publishers either premiered new books featuring swashbuckling scoundrels or converted ongoing titles from superheroes to pirates.

While most of the strips were pretty blatant copies of various Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power pirate characters, this strip recombined elements of Captain Blood (Educated professional wrongly-convicted) and Zorro (masked avenger) along with our hero concentrating on a particular class of pirate...Moslems along the Barbary Coast of Africa!

Regrettably, both writer and artist(s) are unknown.

Black Roger appeared in every issue of Buccaneers during its' 9-issue run, never once making the cover (That was reserved for an Errol Flynn/Sea Hawk clone named "Captain Daring".

But you'll be seeing them all on this blog over the next few months.

Watch for them!