Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "I Found the Things from Nowhere"

"Not only is Jolly Jack Kirby the undisputed king of superhero artwork..."

"...from The Fantastic Four to long-haired Thor, but he is equally without peer in almost every type of imaginative, far-out fantasy!" --Stan Lee

This tale from Marvel's Fantasy Masterpieces #1 (1965) originally-appeared in Journey into Mystery #60 (1960), and was reprinted, again, in Where Monsters Dwell #9 (1971), but hasn't appeared anywhere in the last 44 years.

That's a pity, since this Jack Kirby-penciled/Steve Ditko-inked story predates both the Kirby-rendered "The Man in the Ant Hill" (Tales to Astonish #27) which introduced Henry Pym who would become...

...aw, you guessed...ANT-MAN...

(Wonder what ever became of him?)

...and Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring Steve Ditko's most famous co-creation...

..your friendly, neighborhood SPIDER-MAN!

BTW, has anyone ever noticed that Ant-Man's and Spider-Man's costumes have opposite/reversed red/blue color schemes?

As for who wrote this tale, the experts believe it's a Stan Lee-plotted, Larry Lieber-scripted story, but I think Lee scripted it as well.

Tomorrow: Another Silver Age artist struts his stuff in a long-unseen short!

Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Beware!! The Ghosts Surround Me!"

"This great yarn, which might have taken place today..."

"...gives concrete evidence to the claim that Dashin' Donnie Heck is perhaps our most sophisticated artist!" --Stan Lee

The odd choice of panels to illustrate the story on the bottom left of the cover...

...does give away a crucial plot point, that the "ghosts" are nothing of the kind!

(I would've used a cropped version of the splash page which gives more of a "ghostly" feel than obviously-alien interdimensional beings.)

Penciled and inked by Don Heck, this appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1 (1965) was the tale's second reprinting since its' debut in Strange Tales #76 (1960)!

The first was in Strange Tales Annual #1 (1962).

It appeared one more time, in Vault of Evil #19 (1975), which still makes it 40 years since the story's last publication, and many readers of this blog have never seen it.

As for who wrote it, the consensus is that Stan Lee plotted it, but his brother Larry Lieber (Stan's real name was "Stanley Lieber"*) wrote the captions and dialogue.

Tomorrow, another sci-fi/fantasy tale by one of the artists who defined the Marvel Age of Comics!

*Stan had his name legally changed to "Stan Lee".

50 Years Ago...FANTASY MASTERPIECES!

Face Front, True Believer...

Beginning tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, we'll be presenting the tantalizing tales Smilin' Stan described lurking behind this colorful cover 50 years ago.
(And dig those MadMan-era threads!)

The anthology proved popular enough to keep going for several years, adding Golden Age superhero reprints, and, eventually, becoming a launch platform for both Captain Marvel (The third one, aka Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree) and the Guardians of the Galaxy!

But it was these sci-fi tales by the guys who were doing the Marvel super-heroes, that grabbed my attention!

(Not to mention the sheer chutzpah and showmanship of Stan the Man, linking the tales to the artists who were already becoming the first nerd culture celebrities!)

Be here tomorrow to discover (or re-discover) the magic!

Happy Mother's Day

Design of the Week USA IS READY!

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

This week: As hawks beat the drums of war against everyone from Iran to North Korea, we offer a kool cover from a one-shot comic produced just before we entered World War II...U.S.A. is Ready!
The book itself was re-presented on our "brother" RetroBlog War: Past, Present & Future several years ago.
You can read those posts HERE.
Besides being the basis of the perfect kitschy Memorial Day gift for the veteran in your life, it's a symbol of a time when we were ready to fight because we were the Good Guys and we had to oppose the Bad Guys simply because they were Bad and we were Good.
Unfortunately, since WWII, our military efforts have not always been for the right reasons.
And now, the same conservatives who created the current power vacuum in the Mid-East want us to go back and screw things up further.
But, let's look back on a simpler time when Good and Evil were clearly defined, and we knew that, eventually, we would have to enter a war we had no part in creating.