Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Master Mind" & "Believe It or Not"

This short-lived, but entertaining, series was uneven...

...with some stories, like this one from the back cover of Avon's Space Mouse #1 (1953) featuring the heroic character as a thief, obviously adapted from a different strip...

...and this one, from the inside cover of Avon's Space Mouse #3 (1953) showing him both in "hero mode" and cleverly breaking the "fourth wall"!

Writer/artist Frank Carin was an experienced pro who started as an animator the Fleischer Brothers and TerryToons, then moved over to comics in the early, writing and/or illustrating several hundred stories and covers for everybody from Timely/Atlas to Magazine Enterprises, to Nation-Wide, to Harvey, to, of course, Avon, and finally, to Gold Key!

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Fleischer Story

A history of the Cartoon Studio in the Golden Age of Film Animation

(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)

Reading Room I'LL BE DAMNED "Nest Egg"

Here's a sci-fi strip meant for Major Publications' Web of Horror #4...

...but, since that magazine ended with #3, it found a home in Mark Feldman's I'll be Damned #2, a year later!

Note the word balloon coming out of the big black hole in the title lettering where a photostat of "Webster" the monstrous spider host of Web of Horror would have been pasted-up.

Instead it's a word balloon coming out of a literal black hole!

Written by Alan Simons, penciled by Steve Hickman, inked by Robert L Kline (1-3) & Dan Adkins (4-6), this never-reprinted tale is an example of the high-quality material in fanzines of the late 1960s-early 1970s, much of which (sadly) has never been seen since the mags were limited to mail order and comics convention sales!

(There were no comics shops, and no such thing as the internet at that time...hard to conceive, I know!)

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Sense of Wonder

My Life in Comic Fandom

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder ZANGAR "Lost Beyond the Bog of Darkness!"

We Have Already Seen...

...read through the synopsis on the title page below and see if you follow the rather confused narrative which mentions characters like Narcor whom we haven't seen previously!

Plus, who is...Koalrack?

Was this never-reprinted Bronze Age tale from Skywald's Jungle Adventures #3 (1971), penciled by Jack Katz, and inked by Frank Giacoia, a lead-in to an unexpected change in direction?
Conan the Barbarian had been introduced by Marvel less than a year earlier, and was selling amazingly-well!
Was Zangar going to go the barbarian-adventurer route, instead of staying a jungle lord?
And what of Tellana?
Was she going to be an ongoing villainess/love interest?
The writing is confusing, so it's unlikely co-creator Gardner Fox, noted for his precise, logical storylines, scripted this tale.
Sadly, this was the final issue of Jungle Adventures as Skywald phased out the color comics line to concentrate on their better-selling b/w horror magazines!

Next Week: the High Adventure Tales of a Different, Rarely-Seen Character Begin!

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Skywald

The Complete Illustrated History of the Horror-Mood!

(which covers the company's b/w magazines and color comics!)

IT'S ELECTION DAY AND...

And there came a day unlike any other day, when heroes banded together to battle a menace so overwhelming no single hero could stand against it...

,,,unless not enough of those heroes actually go to vote!

Here's a handy (very) basic guide...

Illustrated by Warren Kremer and Al Avision, this one-shot published by Harvey Comics in 1952 (66 years ago) was offered for only a couple of pennies a copy to anyone who wanted to utilize it to get out the vote!

Amazing how it's both generic and pertinent even decades later!
Note: Out gratitude to the ever-amazing Kracalactaka for the scans of this ultra-rare comic!

Now, unless you want things to stay as they are...or get worse...if you're over 18 and under 110...

...GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND

VOTE! 

Monday Madness ALICE "Lost Rag Doll"

When Walt Disney's animated Alice in Wonderland debuted in 1951...

...several comics publishers tried to take advantgage of the source book being in public domain by doing their own versions!
(Note that the Allen Anderson cover has Alice in a blue dress, like the animated character, but the stories show her wearing red!)

Writer/artist Dave Berg, who created this never-reprinted tale from Ziff-Davis' Alice #10 (1951), later achieved his greatest and longest-lasting success as the auteur behind MAD Magazine's "The Lighter Side of..." feature where his cranky self-portrait, Roger Kaputnik often appeared!

Note: Alice #10 was actually the first issue of the series, but there's no indication of a Ziff-Davis book that ended with #9 and was then retitled "Alice"...madness indeed!

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Dave Berg

Five Decades of "The Lighter Side of..."