Reading Room SPACE SQUADRON "Blast Revere: Solo to the Moon!"

Set in the then-distant year 2000, Space Squadron also had an ongoing strip set in the "past"...

...1960 (which was still "the future" in 1951)!

As shown in many military-themed strips, most overly-cautious senior officers were brain-dead maniacs when they were just cadets.

This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Space Squadron #2 (1951) just transposed it to the near future!

Neither the writer nor artist are known.

Blast Revere ran in all six issues of Space Squadron. and it's one-issue "sequel", Space Worlds.

When Speed Carter: SpaceMan came along a couple of years later, series writer/co-creator Hank Chapman ignored everything done in Space Squadron, producing stories that often contradicted "future history" established in the earlier series.
See the other Captain Jet Dixon of the Space Squadron tales we've presented HERE!

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Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr

by Isaac Asimov
(under the pen-name "Paul French")
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

Holiday Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "House!"

Here's a Halloween treat...

...one last haunted house tale to wrap up our Holiday Reading Room series!

And a never-reprinted one at that!

In 1971, the Comics Code loosened restrictions on many of the banned horror comics tropes that caused the "Seduction of the Innocent" witchhunt of the mid-1950s that almost destroyed the comics industry.

Vampires, werewolves, maniac killers, and their ilk, limited to b/w magazines for the last couple of decades, returned to four-color comics...along with adaptations of classic horror stories and new tales by enthusiastic writers and artists who were big EC Comics fans and never thought they'd have a chance to create similar color comics again!

Marvel jumped back into the horror comic business with a slew of new titles like Tomb of Dracula, Monster of Frankenstein,  Marvel Spotlight, which featured Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider, and Son of Satan, all of whom got their own books,  Man-Thing in Advenutres into Fear and then his own title, a revival of Strange Tales with The Golem, and Brother Voodoo, and a trio of anthologies, Chamber of Chills (a title used by Harvey Comics in the 1950s), Supernatural Thrillers, and a revival of Journey into Mystery!

Quite a bit of the new material from these anthologies (all of which went reprint in a year or so) has never been reprinted, so when we searched through the archives for rare haunted house-themed stories, this long-unseen tale from Marvel's Journey into Mystery V2#1 (1972) all but jumped up at us!

Enjoy this 45-year old bit of long-lost comics history!

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Horror Comics of the 1950s

Holiday Reading Room TALES OF SUSPENSE "I Speak of the Haunted House!"

Our final haunted house tale features two Silver Age greats...

...taking a twice-told tale, and proving "third time's the charm!"

Since it was backing up an Invincible Iron Man story in Atlas/Marvel's Tales of Suspense #42 (1963), this tale remained unseen for almost 50 years (unless you had this issue) until finally reprinted in the book available below!

You'll note the comic book fanboys of the previous two versions (HERE and HERE) are replaced with adults, one of whom looks amazingly-like a middle-aged Peter Parker!

Not suprising, since writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko co-created Peter and his costumed alter-ego, The Amazing Spider-Man!

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Atlas-Era Marvel Masterworks
Tales of Suspense
Volume 4

Thanks for Your Halloween Orders BoyFiends and GhoulFriends!

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ wanted to say 'thank you" to all who ordered our ghoulish goodies!
It's nice to see so many like-minded ghouls and creatures out there! ;-)

Happy Halloween

Why DRACULA VS ZORRO?

In 1992, Topps Comics adapted the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula...

...illustrated by the movie's production illustrator and noted comic artist Mike (Hellboy) Mignola!

Both the movie and the adaptation, perhaps the most faithful version of a movie ever, were hits!

With vampires in general a hot commodity in movies, tv, novels, and comics, Topps quickly followed-up with several projects including...

...Dracula: Vlad the Impaler...

...The Frankenstein-Dracula War

(Note: Topps had also adapted the movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)...

and Dracula vs Zorro...

Topps had acquired the rights to Zorro and apparently thought a good way to re-introduce the character to the comics audience would be to tie-in with the trendy lord of vampires.

After all, the graphic novel Red Rain, featuring The Batman and Dracula had sold amazingly-well, and Batman was a similar "dark heroic" character to Zorro, so writer Don McGregor and artist Tom Yeates came up with a story that could fit into both characters' continuity with a minimum of fuss.

Both Dracula (in flashback), and his victim, Carmelita, would turn up in the Zorro series (which ran 12 issues) once more.

(We'll present that story next week.)

Carmelita would become a regular in the Zorro spin-off series Lady Rawhide.