Holiday Reading Room SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "Toy Trouble"

We'll wind up the week with a never-reprinted, silent one-pager...

...by Walt (Pogo) Kelly from Dell's Four Color Comics: Santa Claus Funnies #91 (1945).

Simple.

Effective.

Cute.

Cowboys + Dinosaurs = CHRISTMAS FUN!

Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

They just don't make comics like this anymore!

Masked cowboy hero vs gunslinger riding a pterodactyl...and a bright magenta pterodactyl at that!
It's the sort of concept a nine-year old would come up with while playing with his (or her) newly-unwrapped action figures under the Christmas tree, mixing the dinosaurs with superheroes and cowboys!

Why not?
That's what makes it so KOOL!
It's so darn silly, yet fun, you just have to look at it and think "what the--?"

That's exactly the sense of wonder we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ still feel!
We want to live in a world where anything can, and does, happen!
In pop culture, we call this sort of tale "cross-genre", where a story draws elements from disparate categories of fiction.

Sometimes there's a certain logic to it.
One of my favorite books involves fiction's greatest detective dealing with the first alien invasion!
Since he lived in London at the time the invasion took place, it seems only (dare I say it) elementary, that Sherlock Holmes would witness and analyze the Martian invasion of 1898!
That's the basis of the superb pastiche, Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds by Manly Wade Wellman & Wade Wellman!
That novel, to me, defines KOOL!
(The fact the story also includes another of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic characters; Professor Challenger from The Lost World and other sci-fi novels, is a cross-genre bonus!)
Track down a copy.
If you're a Holmes, Challenger, and/or War of the Worlds fan (I'm all three), it's well worth the effort!

Sometimes there's no real logic to it except--"why not?"
That's the category where something like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians goes!
And that's where the cover shown above goes.
This particular design was so cross-genre we put it in two wildly-different sections--Dinosaurs!, and Masked Western Heroes, because, hey, it fits both categories, so--"why not?"

Keep the Sense of Wonder alive!
Give a Christmas gift that keeps inspiring the imaginations of both the young and the young-at-heart!

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "Man Who Stepped Out of a Cloud"

Let's have a look at a Steve Ditko story...

...that shows both his storytelling and rendering talents at their best.

Written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #5 (1957) is a great example of how to tell a complete story in just five pages.

While the script isn't the greatest, Ditko tells the story effectively with both "talking heads" (and very distinctive, individualistic talking heads, at that), and kool graphics showing things impossible to portray convincingly with the sfx technology of the 1950s.

Make it a FURY-ous Christmas!

She wasn't the first superheroine, but she was the first to be created by a woman!
Conceived, written, and illustrated by cartoonist Tarpe Mills (who dropped her first name "June" from her published credit), Miss Fury started life in 1941 as a newspaper comic strip called "Black Fury".

Wealthy socialite Marla Drake was preparing for a costume ball when she discovered a friend was going to wear the same costume as her!
Horrors! Social ruin!
Francine, her maid, hastily suggested an alternative--she instead wear a black panther skin sent to her by her uncle, which had previously been used as a ceremonial robe by an African witch doctor.
Strangely enough, it fit Marla perfectly!
En route to the party, Marla encountered an escaped criminal and kicked his, well, you know...
Police and reporters initially referred to her as "Black Fury", but she called herself "Miss Fury" in notes attached to crooks she caught. (The name "CatWoman" was already in use! ;-) )

Two items of note:
1) The panther hide didn't give her any super-powers, as such items tend to do in comics*!
Marla was a gifted athlete, and, that combined with the visual shock value of the costume, enabled her to defeat foes. (ask another wealthy socialite, Bruce Wayne, about his similar, equally effective, strategy!)
2) Unlike most Golden Age heroines (Wonder Woman, Black Cat, Phantom Lady, et al), who seemed to wear skimpy swimsuits to battle evil, Miss Fury's costume totally covered her (but extremely tightly)!

The series spun off into comic books in 1942 published by Timely (Marvel's Golden-Age predecessor), but only as reprints of the newspaper strips (albeit with new covers by Mills).
Sadly, unlike most other newspaper adventure strips, there were no other spin-offs like movie serials, radio shows, or even a Big Little Book or two!
The book ended after 8 issues.
The newspaper strip ended in 1952, but Tarpe Mills continued to work as a comic illustrator for various publishers, including Marvel Comics! Her last published work was a new cover for a graphic novel reprint of Miss Fury in 1979. She passed away in 1988.
Miss Fury is one of numerous Golden Age characters revived by Dynamite Entertainment, both as a solo book, and as part of the ensemble of Noir (featuring her with Black Sparrow) and both Masks and Masks 2, (which features a host of well-known characters including The Shadow, Green Hornet & Kato,  The Spider, and Zorro).

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ felt such a unique character would make a great, empowered role model for today's girls, so we gave her a section of her own in Heroines!™, where the so-called "weaker" sex RULES!
She'd make a cool pop-culture Christmas gift under the tree or in a stocking for your sister, daughter, or girlfriend!
Perhaps it'll inspire them to create a character of their own...

*Another Golden Age character, Cat-Man, whom Tarpe occasionally illustrated, did receive powers including agility, night vision and the gift of nine lives from his first cat-costume!
Villains would kill him, but he'd return to life by the story's end to avenge himself.
Someone figured out the "nine lives" idea would only work for nine issues, and it was dropped, but the other super-human abilities remained.

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Adventurers' Club: 'Scortch' Jordan's Tommy Gun"

The first ongoing feature during Adventure Comics' short-lived 1970s return to an anthology format...

...was this strip with a Boris Karloff-lookalike host.

It's unclear whether writer John Albano (who had been scripting Supergirl until it left Adventure) or Adventure Comics editor Joe Orlando conceived the series.

This never-reprinted tale clearly shows the "ghost" to be of non-supernatural origin, but later stories lean towards supernatural elements.

When The Spectre was reintroduced in Adventure, for a memorable run by Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo, the cover title (though not indicia) became Weird Adventure Comics.

I mentioned the visual of the host, Nelson Strong, was "Karloff-esque".

Here's Karloff in his short lived-1950s tv series Colonel March of Scotland Yard.

Does he look like the inspiration for Nelson Strong?