Best of Reading Room KENTON OF THE STAR PATROL "Alien Raiders"

When interstellar crime occurs, there's only one man to call...

...as this exciting tale from Avon's Strange Planets #3 (1951) demonstrates!

This second Kenton story is Joe Orlando and Wally Wood's first work on the strip (Joe Kubert illustrated the character's first appearance).

Orlando and Wood would subsequently do all but the last Kenton tale, despite a very hectic schedule in 1951, including other Avon Comics work, illustrating the ongoing Captain Science strip plus miscellaneous short stories for Youthful Publishing, and numerous EC Comics assignments in various genres, before going exclusively to EC for a couple of years.

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Best of Reading Room KENTON OF THE STAR PATROL "Corsairs from the Coalsack!"

Space Squadron, Space Patrol, Star Rangers, Space Sentinels...

...with all those law-enforcement organizations prowling the spaceways of 1950s sci-fi, it's surprising there were any villains who dared commit crimes in the Milky Way!

This premiere appearance (but second printing) of Kenton of the Star Patrol is from Avon's Strange Worlds #1 (1950) is written by Gardner Fox, and illustrated by Joe Kubert.
It first appeared in Avon Publishing's Out of This World Adventures #2 (1950), a weird half-comic/half pulp magazine experiment that lasted only two issues.
Kenton was one of only two ongoing strips in Strange Worlds, an anthology for both sci-fi/fantasy and the occasional horror tale.
(The other one was Crom the Barbarian.)
You'll be seeing Kenton's entire short-lived series here this week and next, as deadlines on a paying gig will keep me from doing all-new posts from now until after Thanksgiving.

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Design of the Week! SANTA'S ELVES ON STRIKE

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!

This week...Go back 79 years ago, to November 1938 and see...when elves were part of the 99%!
(You'll note that the cover is dated January, 1939. But it was actually on sale in November, 1938! Publishers used to cover-date comics and pulps two to three months ahead of the actual on-sale date to keep the books on the stands for as long as possible!)
And it looks like the elves aren't going to settle for sweatshop wages and conditions at the North Pole anymore!
Why not pick up this kool design on mugs, greeting cards, and other Christmas collectibles NOW!
Christmas will be here before you know it!

Salute to the Veterans!

A sincere Thank You for your service, men and women of our Armed Forces, past and present, for your dedication and sacrifice!

Friday Fun MIDNIGHT MYSTERIES "Cry of the Dire Wolf"

In the early 1970s, writer Don Glut created several characters in a new "shared" universe...

...including Doctor Spektor, the host of this Gold Key anthology, and later the protaganist of his own title.

Some of those creations were inadvertant, much like the way the Atlas' Tales to Astonish stand-alone story "The Man in the Ant Hill" lead to the creation of Marvel's Ant-Man...

Originally-appearing in Gold Key's Mystery Comics Digest #3 (1972), this tale was reprinted as the cover feature in Gold Key's Dr Spektor Presents Spine Tingling Tales #1 (1975), which featured the already-active mystical crimefighter Dr Spektor as a host introducing reprints of stories.

The story was meant to establish a scientific explanation for werewolves in the Glut "universe",

But, it appears either Glut or his editor had bigger plans for the characters!
The early 1970s were the era of Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods books, ostensibly offering proof that Earth was visited centuries earlier by aliens who influenced human development!

Marvel took a shot at it with "Man-Gods from Beyond the Stars", which was meant to become a series, but didn't sell well enough to warrant continuing past the first story!
Meanwhile, the legendary Jack Kirby presented his own "takes" on the subject with his sequel series to the movie 2001: a Space Odyssey and The Eternals (which was supposed to be called Return of the Gods)!
So somebody at Gold Key thought...let's take this existing tale by Don Glut and Jesse Santos about an alien spacecraft crashing on prehistoric Earth and expand on it from the humans' point of view...with the result being the never-reprinted series Tragg and the Sky Gods, the basis for our next cycle of Friday Fun tales!

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Chariots of the Gods

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