The sneak attack that changed the course of history, told by one of the greatest graphic novelists of all!
Plus, a tale published before December 7, 1941 that predicted the attack!
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Make your Christmas tree SpaceMan Jet's landing pad!
Flash Gordon!
Buck Rogers!Brick Bradford!
Even...Rocket Kelly!
Have you ever noticed that space-faring heroes almost NEVER have a first name like "Dave" or "Melvin"? (Yeah, there was DAN Dare, but his last name was "Dare" for chissakes!)
It's always something dramatic and/or futuristic!
Makes you wonder what their parents were thinking when they filled out the birth certificate..."Yeah, "Brick"! That's a good name for the kid!"
Jet Powers was one of the last of that breed of high-adventure heroes, a kick-butt, blast-first-and-ask-questions-later kinda guy who crossed space and time like you and I cross the street!
As rendered by Bob Powell, one of the most versatile illustrators of the Golden Age (He did everything, sci-fi, romance, war, horror, etc), Jet was a ruggedly-handsome guy with distinctive white hair and a nose that had been broken and reset! (Think of a combo of Bruce Willis and Peter Graves.)
Besides being good in a fight, Jet was a scientific wiz with his own mountaintop base and spacecraft!
He operated as a freelance agent for the United States, meeting the President himself at least once just to receive orders!
In four issues of his own title Jet battled Mr Sinn, an evil scientist equal to himself, who was colored bright green, but like Ming the Merciless, was an alien variation of the "Yellow Menace" villain stereotype.
Powers also met, rescued, and fell in love with Su Shan, formerly a servant of Sinn. Of course, Sinn wanted her back, so Jet had to keep rescuing her for the entire series!
You can read his exciting adventures by clicking HERE!
Atomic Kommie Comics™ has returned him to interplanetary action as SpaceMan Jet, along with the SpaceBusters, in our The Future WAS Fantastic!™ series, even giving him his own section.where all four of his spectacular star-spanning covers adorn mugs, shirts and a plethora of other goodies!
For the special someone in your life with a taste for retro sci-fi / fantasy, you can't go wrong with one of these items as a Christmas present!
(Heck, if I didn't already have them, I'd want 'em!)
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics at Christmas!
Visit Amazon and Order...
Monday, December 5, 2016
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!
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!
Sunday, December 4, 2016
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!
Saturday, December 3, 2016
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!
Visit Amazon and Order...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)