Reading Room CLIFF HANGER "Chapter Six: Blazing End"

When Last We Left Our Hero...

...It's the big finale!

All will be explained as we go!

Get your popcorn and soda and ride along...

Don't ya love a happy ending?

Writer Bruce Jones and artist Al Williamson end their tribute to 1930s-50s movie serials in Eclipse's Somerset Holmes #6 (1984) in grand style with the hero getting the girl, the villain's base destroyed (with the chance the villain might have escaped), and the possibility of a sequel, which unfortunately, never appeared!

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "To Build a Robot!"

Does this tale take place in the present...or the future?

Or has it already happened, and we don't know it?

Considering the way industry has thwarted the introduction of the electric car, is it that far-fetched someone for their own ulterior motives is trying to supress mobile artificial intelligence?

Or have we just seen the Teminator and Matrix films too many times?

Plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Christopher Rule had their own take in Atlas' World of Fantasy #18 (1959), decades before James Cameron or the Wachowskis, and it didn't take multiple films to tell it!

Reading Room: FLASH GORDON "Chapter 3.1: the Secret Origin of Flash Gordon!"

It's all been building up to this...

The wraparound inside cover for #2 by Al Williamson

...the untold story of Flash Gordon's first encounter with the inhabitants of Mongo!

Wow!

Writer Mark Schultz and artist Al Williamson pulled off what many these days would consider to be impossible...a retcon that doesn't contradict any of the previous stories, nor requires a reboot of the character's entire history!

I thought only Rascally Roy Thomas was capable of such a feat!

Not only that, but it includes visual Easter Eggs relating to various past versions of Flash, including the Clay People from Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, a spaceship from the 1979 animated series, and Flash's father looking remarkably like Buster Crabbe, the actor who played Flash in all three serials!

Be here next week as Flash returns to Azura's capital in Syk!

Trump Reading Room aka the OutHouse HILLBILLY COMICS "Gumbo Galahad and Davee Crockhead"

Continuing our look at the comics Don the Con's audience probably likes...

...with this never-reprinted story from Charlton's Hillbilly Comics #1 (1955)!

Written and illustrated by Charlton mainstay Art Gates, this story (and the other strips in Hillbilly Comics) were clearly-based on Al Capp's then-immensely popular Li'l Abner newspaper strip which had been running as a musical on Broadway and was in preparation as a feature film!
In addition, it references the Walt Disney Davy Crockett multi-media juggernaut that also dominated kids' attention during this period!

Reading Room CAPTAIN JOHNER AND THE ALIENS "Talk-Down"

We Leave the Combined Human/Alien Crew on the Alien Homeworld to See...

Houston, we have a problem...

A couple of questions...

How can any gas penetrate the hull of an airtight ship?

Why didn't Johner simply head for the areas not covered by the gas belt (which is clearly shown covering the Equator and temperate zones, but not the polar regions)?

Robert Shaefer & Eric Freiwald return as writers for this tale from Gold Key's Magus, Robot Fighter #9 (1965), while creator/illustrator Russ Manning continues on the art.