Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Reading Room SENSATION MYSTERY COMICS "Last Dream"

Wonder Woman lost her cover feature in Sensation Comics as of this issue (#107)...
...when the book was retitled Sensation Mystery, and featured "mysteries" like this one!
In 1952, horror comics became the "hot" genre, with most comics publishers going "all in" to see who could be the goriest!
DC, though, tried to stay relatively innocuous, refusing to go for the gore.
While their sales didn't skyrocket as many other publishers' did, they managed to stay below the radar during the whole "Seduction of the Innocent" mania.
And, it certainly made reprinting any of the material produced during this period a breeze after the Comics Code was imposed!
This John Broome-written, Carmine Infantino-penciled, and Frank Giacoia-inked tale was typical of DC's output during this period.
(Some say Sy Barry inked it, but expert art identifier Martin O'Hearn thinks it's Giacoia, and I agree with him.)
Straightforward, logical, and effectively-told, it's almost a template for the various stories the anthology would carry until the book's cancellation a year later with #116.
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(which features this story...but in black and white!)

Monday, May 7, 2018

Reading Room FANTASTIC COMICS "Space Smith and the Headless Men of the Gold Comet"

Newspaper comics had Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Brick Bradford...
...but comic books had the even wilder exploits of adventurers like Space Smith!
Wow!
Dianna's no mere helpless female sidekick, as this tale from Fox's Fantastic Comics #4 (1940) proves!
Fletcher Hanks was no stranger to visualizing assertive women.
His Fantomah strip in Fiction House's Jungle Comics presented a jungle heroine with super-powers on a par with Wonder Woman (whom she pre-dated by a year)!
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Sunday, May 6, 2018

FLYING SAUCERS Cover Gallery

Here's the cover art by Gene Fawcette...
...to the story we've been running the past few days.
Oddly, when the issue was reprinted a couple of years later, the art was altered...
...and I've never heard an explanation as to why!
For the record, I like the original cover better!
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Saturday, May 5, 2018

Reading Room FLYING SAUCERS "Final Objective"

Art by Wally Wood
...he was rescued by the aliens from foreign spies who wanted the secret of alien technology!
Inspired by the flying saucer craze of the late 1940s-early 1950s, this 1950 Wally Wood-illustrated book was one of many one-shot titles from Avon Comics during their short, but prolific existence.
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and

Friday, May 4, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER "Giant of the Cone Planet"

Who do you call when something weird (like a non-globe-shaped planet) appears?
Why, Rex Dexter of Mars, of course!
Boy, people are fickle!
Just because a giant monster you bring back from another planet tears up the city, everybody forgets all the good stuff you did before that!
Talk about "what have you done for us lately?"
OTOH, it does free up the character to wander the universe in search of adventure...
This 6-pager from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #3 (1939) has enough wild concepts and action from Dick Briefer's fertile imagination to fill an entire issue (if not a mini-series) today!
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