Reading Room CAPTAIN JOHNER AND THE ALIENS "Matter of Judgement"

When Last We Left Our Astronauts...

With half his crew on an alien ship and half the alien crew on his, Johner heads home to Earth...

Written by Eric Freiwald & Robert Schaefer and illustrated by Russ Manning, this morality tale from Gold Key's Magnus, Robot Fighter #3 (1963) also sets up a potential menace in another group of aliens who are, in fact, hostile!
There's more space opera action to come, next week!

Happy Mother's Day!

Memorial Day is Coming...

Comic books played a major part in shaping the public's impression of both our troops and our enemies during World War II.
Among the classiest were these three beautiful covers for Contact Comics, an aviation-oriented title. Spectacular, intense, eye-catching color highlights these poster-style pieces of art.
Each one paid honor to the aviation division of one of the three armed forces branches. (The Air Force as a separate branch didn't come about until after WWII)

Tribute to the Navy Air Corps featuring F6F Hellcat fighters.

Tribute to the Army Air Force featuring B-24 Liberator heavy bombers.

Tribute to the Marine Air Corps featuring F4U Corsair fighters.

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ have digitally-restored and remastered them on a line of kool kollectibles which would make perfect Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day,  Flag Day, or 4th of July gifts for the WWII veteran in your life.
Choose from t-shirts, mugs, magnets, BBQ aprons, and many other goodies.
(And have a look at the other World War II collectibles we offer at War: Past, Present & Future™ while you're at it!)

Reading Room TALOS OF THE WILDERNESS SEA "...to the Wilderness Sea!" Part 3

When Last We Left Our Post-Nuclear Armageddon Barbarian Prince...

(Bet you thought George RR Martin invented "warging" for Game of Thrones...)

Next Friday: Reunion!

Riding high on the success of the Sword of the Atom mini-series and follow-up annuals which re-imagined the hard sci-fi superhero in a barbarian adventure setting, Gil Kane (along with collaborator Jan Strnad) was given the go-ahead for another high-adventure series, this time based on a new character.

Planned as a 12-issue mini-series, cutbacks at DC dictated that the already-penciled and scripted first two issues be combined into a one-shot whose sales would determine if the project would continue.

Unfortunately, the unfamiliar character didn't attract a large enough audience (as The Atom had), and only the single, open-ended issue came about.
It's never been reprinted since its' publication in 1987.

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Brain Destroyer"

This title reminded me of Donald Trump...

...even though the story itself has nothing to connect it to the Republicans' hilarious "candidate" for President!

No matter whether you agree for my reason for running the story, it's still a long-lost, never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #19 (1959) you probably would never have seen otherwise.
Plotted by Stan Lee, written by Larry Lieber, and illustrated by Carl Burgos, it's typical of the sort of stuff Atlas was running as it transitioned into what we would know as Marvel only a couple of years later.