Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Reading Room FANTASTIC COMICS "Space Smith in the Battle of the Earth Against the Martian Ogres"

One of the longest story titles ever leads into our "When Last We Left Our Hero" synopsis...
...so buckle up your space-safety belts, 'cause now the action is non-stop!
An epic space battle worthy of feature-film treatment in only six pages!
Try doing that in today's comics!
BTW, isn't it odd how these Martians from Fox's Fantastic Comics #2 (1939) don't resemble the ones seen in Space Smith's previous adventure?
Some call Fletcher Hanks the "Ed Wood of comics", but there's no mistaking the sheer imagination behind the primitive art.
When comic books featuring new material (they were initially comic strip reprints) first appeared in the late 1930s, it was an "anything goes" market as publishers would run whatever they could lay their hands on from both comic strip and pulp magazine professionals and talented (read "cheap") amateurs.
Some, like Siegel & Shuster, Simon & Kirby, and Finger & Kane created what would become American icons.
Others. like Hanks, were like mayflies, briefly appearing...then disappearing, leaving little behind.
Even comics geeks had forgotten about Hanks' material, which sat un-reprinted for over half a century, until Fantagraphics produced a couple of books collecting his work from the various anthologies it appeared in!
We'll be running the entire Space Smith series over the next year, including both Hanks'  work and the later, more conventional tales by others.
Watch for them...
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Monday, June 19, 2017

Reading Room WEIRD WORLDS "Space Vampires"

...end up being used (almost verbatim) in Eerie Publications' Weird Worlds #V1N10 (1970)?
Eerie Publications had been using photostats and negatives from defunct comics companies as the source material for their b/w magazine line.
About a year in, they started using South American artists eager to break into the comics market and American artists like Dick Ayers and Chic Stone who were losing work as the Silver Age ended and comics companies cut back their lines, to re-do old stories with a more contemporary style.
Some illustrators totally-redid the art, using new "camera angles" and clothing/technology designs reflecting contemporary tastes.
In this particular case, artist Cirilo Munoz just lightboxed and re-inked the existing Wally Wood/Joe Orlando artwork!
Editor Carl (Golden Age Human Torch) Burgos rewrote the opening captions and changed the hero's name, but otherwise left Gardner Fox's original script intact.
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Sunday, June 18, 2017

Happy Birthday...ME!

Taking the day off to celebrate...
See you tomorrow...

Oh, yeah, it's Father's Day, too...

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Upcoming 2017 RetroBlogs Summer Mini-Blogathons

This summer, each RetroBlog will be presenting a different mini-Blogathon, with some crossing-over between blogs...
The biggest Blogathon will be the complete presentation of what many consider to be the first true graphic novel... the 132-page St John's digest-sized b/w one-shot It Rhymes with Lust by writers Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller and illustrator Matt Baker!
This is so cross-genre, it'll be appearing in Seduction of the Innocent, Crime & Punishment, True Love Comics Tales, Heroines, here in Atomic Kommie Comics, and in our newest RetroBlog; Not Safe for Work Comics!
PLUS...
Hero Histories will present two of the never-reprinted adventures of the Silver Age Plastic Man...his (sorta) origin
and his team-up with Daddy (the Golden Age Plas) and sidekick Woozy Winks!
(BTW, the gorilla doesn't appear anywhere in the issue!)

Western Comics Adventures will be spotlighting the never-reprinted adventures of a band of diverse wanderers united by tragedy known as The Bravados!

How the Comics Code altered reprints in sometimes ridiculous ways is the basis of the blogathon at Seduction of the Innocent!
Before the Comics Code...
After the Comics Code...

War: Past, Present and Future covers the short-lived series Lone Tiger...
..and its' companion strip Dollar Bill Ca$h!
 
And Secret Sanctum of Captain Video looks at the never-reprinted adventures of Captain Justice...based on the lost TV series Once a Hero...
...along with the secret Stan Lee connection that links the two!
 
The fun begins after the 4th of July, so come back here where we'll link to the various blogathons!

Friday, June 16, 2017

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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