Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Reading Room JUNGLE JIM "Winged Fury"

In the 1960s, the usually-staid Jungle Jim series jumped into high adventure/fantasy...
...with lost civilizations, mutants, aliens, even mystical menaces, threatening the Don Moore/Alex Raymond-created hero!
Scripted by Bhob Stewart, penciled by Steve Ditko and inked by Wally Wood, this never-reprinted (in color) tale from Charlton's Jungle Jim #27 (1969) was a classic example of how to update a series properly, unlike say, DC's attempt to make the 1940s aviators, the Blackhawks, into super-heroes from that same era!
Trivia: Though the cover looks like just a modification of Ditko/Wood's art on Page 5, panel 1, its actually a redraw by editor Sal Gentile, a pretty good artist in his own right!
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Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Gil Kane's The Flame Horse

One of the visionary projects legendary writer/artist Gil Kane was unable to get off the ground...
...was this graphic novel.
According to one source, shortly after Bantam Books released Kane's Blackmark in 1971, Ariel/MorningStar Press contracted Gil to create and package this project...with logos and graphic design by Jim Steranko!
Since MorningStar Press was an art book publisher, they would've done a hardcover closer to traditional comic book or magazine size, rather than the standard paperback size that doomed Blackmark, which confused retailers who didn't know whether to put it with sci-fi/fantasy novels or comic strip reprints!
Besides this presentation piece, there were pages like this one...
...at various stages of completion.
I wonder if anyone could re-assemble what does exist into a book and title it: Gil Kane's Flame Horse: the Unfinished Opus or somesuch, with profits going to his estate...
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Monday, June 5, 2017

Reading Room SPACE SQUADRON "Armada of Death"

Let's go back to the year 2000...
...when Americans controlled the Solar System, protecting it from aliens...I mean extraterrestrials, not people from other countries on Earth!
This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Space Squadron #2 (1951) is typical of the early 1950s, when sci-fi was dominiated by various military and police organizations patrolling and controlling the universe, much as America was patrolling and controlling the non-Commie-controlled parts of Earth.
Neither the writer nor artist are known.
See the other Captain Jet Dixon of the Space Squadron tales we've presented HERE!
And keep watching, as we finish our re-presentation of the time-lost series this summer!
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by Isaac Asimov
Omnibus of ALL Six Space Opera Sagas!
David Starr: Space Ranger, Pirates of the Asteroids, Oceans of Venus, Big Sun of Mercury, Moons of Jupiter, Rings of Saturn

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Joe Kubert's "So You Want to be a Cartoonist?"

Joe Kubert was one of the greatest multi-talented creatives in comics history...
...editor/writer/artist/letterer, and, most importantly, teacher.
This piece appeared in numerous DC Comics from 1969-1971, probably as the first of a series.
Most likely, due to his enormous workload, no other pages like this ever appeared.
But, the idea of instructing future creatives appealed to Kubert, and he eventually founded The Kubert School, which has superseded The School of Visual Arts (originally Cartoonists and Illustrators School) as the most prolific source of comics/graphic novel talent in America!
Trivia: The founders of both The Kubert School (Joe Kubert) and Cartoonists and Illustrators School (Burne Hogarth) were famed for their work on Tarzan!
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