Monday, October 17, 2016

Reading Room: ROBOTMEN OF THE LOST PLANET "Chapter One: Massacre of Mankind!"

...now you'll see the original from the 1950s!
The art for this 1952 one-shot title from Avon Comics is by Gene Fawcette, an Avon mainstay who did everything from horror to Westerns to romance.
If you compare the two tales, you'll see the robots are totally different in this version.
They're based on a still-popular toy first marketed in the early 1950s... Obie the Popping Martian/Panic Pete/Bug-Out Bob!
Who came up with the idea is unknown, and there was no attempt at an actual tie-in between the toy and the comic...
But the most unusual aspect of this tale is the scripter...Walter Gibson, aka "Maxwell Grant", the primary writer of the legendary pulp character, The Shadow!
Gibson, a trained magician-turned writer did very little "hard" sci-fi during his long career...except in 1951-54, where he edited (and wrote under several pseudonoms) most of the contents of Charlton's short-lived (2 issues) Fantastic Science Fiction pulp magazine, editing Charlton's Space Adventures comic for it's first 11 issues, as well as scripting several other one-shots for Avon Comics.
For the record, Gibson also wrote two volumes of adaptations of Twilight Zone TV episodes (with a couple of original tales mixed in), but none of those were sci-fi.
BTW, while this was the only tale adapted into b/w in the 1970s, there were two more chapters of the man vs funky robot saga!
You'll see them next Monday and the Monday after that...
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Saturday, October 15, 2016

Design of the EEK Redux! ZOMBIE!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another (unless it's selling really-well, like this one!)
Once more...It's an amazingly-detailed graphic of a half-eaten zombie, making the perfect Halloween gift for that loved (or loathed) one in your life!
Grab it now..before it grabs you!

Friday, October 14, 2016

Reading Room NIGHTMARE "Massacre of Mankind!"

Look at this tale and tell us, if you can...when was it created?
Was it the 1940s? 1950s? 1960s? or 1970s?
The answer will surprise you!
It was written and laid-out in the 1950s, but penciled and inked in the 1970s!
Scripted by Walter (The Shadow) Gibson and laid-out by Gene Fawcette back in 1952, the tale was fully-penciled and inked by Bill (Sub-Mariner) Everett for Skywald's b/w anthology Nightmare #2 (1971)!
To learn why it was done, you'll have to return Monday...
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Heroic Tales

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Frankenstein in the Swinging Sixties: ZIK! THWOCK! ARRGH!

The story we showed you HERE was not the Frankenstein Monster's only 1960s comic appearance...
...though some would like to forget this version!
After publishing a very loose adaptation of Universal Pictures' 1931 movie (as seen HERE), Dell decided to ride the "Pop Art" wave and do superhero versions of the various Universal Monsters!
For whatever reason, Universal didn't approve of the concept, but Dell went ahead anyway, removing any visual or story reference to Universal's versions of the characters to avoid trademark and copyright conflicts, utilizing only elements from the original (public domain) novels.
The end results were...unique.
Read them for yourself...if you dare...
(Issue #1 was the movie adaptation!
The superhero version started with #2)
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