Holiday Reading Room: SANTA CLAUS FUNNIES "Christmas Comes to Mars"

A decade before Santa Claus Conquers the Martians...

...this short story about little (non-green) Martians meeting Saint Nick showed the Christmas Spirit could be universal...

Illustrated by workhorse Dan Gormley, this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color #666 (1955) jumped on the then-popular flying saucer craze.
Gormley began in 1940 by doing super-hero, sci-fi, and horror strips, then transitioned after several years to humor and funny animal, spending the bulk of his career doing lighter fare.
He had a real knack for matching various animation styles and illustrated many tales and covers based on animated films and TV shows from the Walter Lantz, Walt Disney, UPA, and Warner Brothers studios until he retired from comics in 1965!

The story is part of the annual Santa Claus Funnies anthology which ran in Four Color every Christmas from 1942 to 1961, and most of the tales have never been reprinted!

So we're going to correct that omission this year, running a number of these stories along with Walt Kelly's Christmas with Mother Goose tales.

Watch for them.

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics at Christmastime!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

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 a fan of 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!

Holiday Reading Room: CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Animals' Christmas"

Now that I have a whole slew of Walt Kelly Christmas-themed tales...

...I'm going to post them (interspersed with some by other writers and artists) until Christmas!

A never-reprinted Walt Kelly tale from Dell's Four Color #90 (1945), the first of the annual anthologies that ran from 1945 to 1949.

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics at Christmastime!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

The clock striking "12" signals the appearance of Santa and...

...Captain Midnight!

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ are big fans of retro pop culture.
And in the 1940s-1950s one of the biggest pop cult phenomenons was Captain Midnight!
Books, Comics, Movies, Radio, TV...He was EVERYWHERE!

Created for radio in 1938, the patriotic aviator ran the Secret Squadron, what we today would call a "black ops" team, supported by the government but functioning outside of legal rules in dealing with spies, saboteurs, and (after the war) criminals!
Trivia note: the Secret Squadron originally used the code "SS" on their messages, decoders, and uniform patches, but changed it to "SQ" after World War II began to avoid reference to the notorious Nazi SS stormtroopers!
Cap replaced Little Orphan Annie as the flagship show for Ovaltine, carrying on the tradition of issuing mail-in collectible premiums in return for Ovaltine labels and jar seals, taking it to far greater levels than any other radio series in history! (The phrase "Captain Midnight Decoder" became synonymous with mail-in premiums.)
The show ran Monday thru Friday in 15-minute segments, with storylines running for several months at a time, ending each episode with a coded message which required a Captain Midnight Decoder to translate.
A series of Big Little Books, a newspaper comic strip, and two different comic book series quickly followed, as well as a 15-chapter movie serial.
You can read a couple of stories from the 1940s comic book HERE.
The radio show ended with a bang in 1949, as Cap's archenemy Ivan Shark (an evil aviator) was killed in the final episode! Talk about "closure"!

Ovaltine revived Cap (but not Ivan Shark) in 1954 as a weekly tv series with a heavier science fiction emphasis.
Midnight was now a civilian adventurer operating out of a mountaintop base in the SouthWest US, battling criminals and the occasional Communist spy.
Though it only ran for 39 episodes, the show reran continuously until the mid 1960s.
Trivia note: the syndicated version was retitled Jet Jackson: Flying Commando because Ovaltine owned the "Captain Midnight" trademark and didn't sponsor the reruns!
One actor redubbed "Jet Jackson" over everybody (men, women, children) when they said "Captain Midnight", producing some rather surreal moments in the syndicated reruns!

Ovaltine continued to use "Captain Midnight" on advertising and occasional tie-in premiums until the late 1990s, when they finally abandoned the trademark.
He's now part of our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics group with six different vintage designs including five classic covers and his stylish logo!
As a unique Xmas gift for collectors of pop culture kitch, you can't go wrong with one of our klassy and kool kollectibles as a stocking stuffer!

Our FREE Early Christmas Present to you: downloadable mp3s of the Captain Midnight radio show!
BONUS FREE Early Christmas Present: downloadable episode of the Captain Midnight tv show, complete with commercials!
EXTRA FREE BONUS Early Christmas Present: Another downloadable episode of the Captain Midnight TV show, complete with commercials!

Please support Atomic Kommie Comics this Christmas!

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Captain Midnight

the Movie Serial!

(which would make a great present with one of our Captain Midnight collectibles!)

Holiday Reading Room: CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Jeminy's Christmas"

From the fertile mind of Walt (Pogo) Kelly...

...a Christmas tale featuring several fairy tale characters and some Kelly originals!

Published in Dell's Four Color Comics #253 (1949), this Walt Kelly-written and illustrated story was part of the Christmas with Mother Goose anthologies that appeared annually in the Four Color series from 1945 to 1949.

Before his comic strip Pogo took off, Kelly did a prodigious amount of work for Dell in their humor and holiday titles, most of which has never been reprinted.

His work has a gentle whimsy perfect for reading to little children before bedtime.

We've run almost a dozen of his stories (mostly holiday stuff) which you can read by clicking HERE!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics at Christmastime!

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories