Friday Fun BIG APPLE COMIX "Man Without a City!"

To a New Yorker, there's no fate more frightening...

...than to be forever exiled from the Big Apple!

I speak from first-hand experience.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, I went to high school in Manhattan and lived there after graduating college until 1999, when I began commuting between NYC and Chicago, eventually settling in Chi-town full-time in 2006.

Only taking occasional trips back to the Land of My Birth to see clients and family helps me keep my sanity!

Lord knows what condition I'd be in if I were exiled like the story's protaganist!

Written by Marvel's main production person for several decades, Stu Schwartzberg (who was also a Shazam Award-winning scripter of Crazy Magazine), penciled by Stu and the multi-talented Marie Severin and inked by Marie, this never-reprinted tale from Big Apple Comix #1 (1975) perfectly captures the "Noo Yawker" love-hate dichotomy!

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the HTF Comic Classic...

Big Apple Comix

Reading Room STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL "Moving Stairs"

Finding a never-reprinted Steve Ditko tale is exciting...

...especially one with both an atypical illustration style and a Twilight Zone-type "gotcha" ending!

One of the reasons Stan Lee turned the Spider-Man assignment over to Ditko rather than Jack Kirby, was Ditko's knack for rendering individuals as less "idealized" and "heroic" and more "everyman" than Kirby.

Nowhere is that more evident than this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Strange Tales of the Unusual #4 (1956).

The people are more detailed and exaggerated than usual, almost to the point of caricature, but it works in context.

Though the writer is unknown, it's likely editor Stan Lee or his brother, Larry Lieber.

And, to answer an obvious question, no, the book is not Strange Tales, which ended up introducing both Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.!

Strange Tales began in 1951 and ran for 168 issues until 1968 when it became Doctor Strange.

Strange Tales of the Unusual began in 1955 and was cancelled in 1957 after only 11 issues.

Note for the completists among you: Strange Tales was revived in 1973, continuing from #169 onward for another 20 issues...

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Amazing Adult Fantasy Omnibus

...which features nothing but kool Steve Ditko art!

Adam West's Long-Lost FIRST Appearance in Comic Books!

Five years before the late Adam West played comic book character Batman on TV...

...he appeared in a comic book based on a TV show!

His character, Detective Sgt Steve Nelson was added in 1961 to the cast for the third and final season of the police procedural The Detectives, which already featured a pair of actors who would go on to other genre shows during the 1960s...Mark Goddard on Lost in Space and Tige Andrews on The Mod Squad!

See the first, never-reprinted rendering of Adam West in comic books on our "brother" RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video...HERE!

Reading Room VANGUARD ILLUSTRATED "Guest"

I love alien invasion stories...

...but, no matter how well humans prepare or how lucky we Earthlings are, not all of them have a happy ending.

E.T. the Extraterrestrial had come out over a year earlier, creating a new genre of "cute/cuddly/harmless alien visitors" that made unwary humans complacent.

Writer/artist Darren Auck's never-reprinted cautionary tale from Pacific's Vanguard Illustrated #2 (1984) was one of several rather...visceral...responses to it.

Enjoy.

BTW, Darren Auck is best known as a humor artist, writing and illustrating a number of tales for Marvel's What the--? (a humorous version of What if...?) and Ren & Stimpy!

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Vanguard Illustrated #1-6 Set

There's only one set available...and it's at a bargain price!

Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Way Out, Man"

You'd think Dr Strange's creator Steve Ditko would be a bit more sympathetic to the counter-culture...

...but when you consider he was already 34 in 1961 when he drew this tale from Charlton's Unusual Tales #29, you might wonder which side of the Generation Gap he really was on!

Remember that, when Ditko was doing the Dr Strange series in Strange Tales, he was turing 40!
This article from England's The Telegraph delves into the fascinating dichotomy between the artist and what his work portrayed.

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Art of Ditko
...which reprints this tale and many other Ditko short stories!