Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Invasion"

We wind up our week of "lost" stories with...

...a pencil and ink job by Silver Age legend Don Heck!

Heck had an undeserved reputation as a hack artist, mostly due to poor inking by actual hacks like Vince Colletta, who was notorious for leaving out pencilers' linework.

When he had a good inker or inked himself, his work was on a par with any of the other acknowledged greats of the field.

But since he was almost as fast a penciler as Jack Kirby, publishers didn't utilize his inking talents as often as they could've.

This tale hasn't been seen since it appeared in the back of DC's Adventure Comics #424 (1972).

We're pleased to present it (and the other stories we've featured this week) to an audience that was probably unaware of their existence.

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Sword of the Dead"

Here's a never-reprinted Adventure Comics tale of "HIGH adventure"...

...written and illustrated by Gil Kane during the same period he was producing his landmark graphic novel BlackMark!

Simple.

Visceral.

Effective.

Now, THAT'S the way to tell a story!

This tale appeared in DC's Adventure Comics #425 (1972-73) along with our earlier never-reprinted story "Prior Warning".

BTW, like "Prior Warning", Friday's "lost" Adventure Comics tale also concerns an alien invasion!

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Is a Snerl Human?"

A parable is defined as "a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson".

Writers love to tell them, and we love to read them (especially ones with sci-fi elements).

Written by Shelly Mayer and beautifully-illustrated by Alex Toth, this never-reprinted story from DC's Adventure Comics #431 (1974) came out during the era when Jack Kirby's Kamandi was being published, which might explain why it's set on the planet "Teyton" rather than a future Earth, despite the fact all the animals, except the Snerls, are obviously Earth creatures!

(Kamandi was set on a near-future Earth where intelligent animals [most in humanoid form] rule the planet.)

Tomorrow...another "lost" story!

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Prior Warning"

Some "people" are just too smart for their own good...

...as this never-reprinted short story proves!

Carl Sagan postulated in his novel, Contact, that aliens could receive our radio and tv broadcasts which were travelling at light-speed from Earth since the 1920s, literally broadcasting our presence to the rest of the universe.

Without context, what would they make of those images...and how might they make use of them?

This story from DC's Adventure Comics #425 (1972-73), illustrated by Frank Redondo, offers one outcome.

BTW, the writer is unknown.

Another "lost" tale tomorrow...

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "These are the Star Men"

This week, a look at some never-reprinted stories from a surprising source...

...beginning with a cautionary tale about taking what's not yours!

The Bronze Age run of DC's Adventure Comics began by moving the long-running Legion of Super-Heroes feature to back-up Action Comics, while Action's back-up Supergirl, was moved to take over Adventure.
When Adventure's page count (along with all DC titles) went up as the line's price increased from 15 to 25 cents in 1971, the book featured a variety of back-ups including Zatanna, classic Supergirl reprints, and inventory sci-fi tales by noted artists.
Here's the first of those never-reprinted tales, from Adventure Comics #420 (1972), written and pencilled by Howard Purcell, an artist/writer whose work on over 600 stories and covers spanned the Golden and Silver Ages, and inked by George Roussos.
Be here tomorrow for another "lost" tale!