Sunday, September 1, 2019

Design of the Week SPACE ACE!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days!
This Week...

Before Don Bluth appropriated the name for his video game, there were a couple of totally different Space Aces in the Golden Age of Comics!
This particular one was a Flash Gordon-type set in the then-distant future year of 2000, complete with one-man spacecraft, moving sidewalks, flying cars, mile-high skyscrapers, human colonies on other worlds, etc.! (You remember all that stuff, don't you?)
And, of course, aliens!
LOTS of aliens!

One of the interesting things about this image is that it doesn't feature a scantily-clad woman being held captive by the tentacled alien, making it particularly age-appropriate (but still retro-kool) for under-10 year-old kids' (pre-K / 4th Grade) back-to-school stuff!
Enjoy!

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Doorway to the Future!"

Is this a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s?
Read this never-reprinted tale from Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The figure poses, faces, machinery, even the futuristic buildings all but scream "KIRBY"!
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's artist as Marvin Stein with a "?", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, and the fact Stein worked primarily for their studio, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material pagecount came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown, but it might also be Kirby...

Friday, August 30, 2019

Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Hunter"

The Dreaded Deadline Doom caught up with us this week...
...so we're re-presenting the first Space Mouse story we ran last year, right after a slew of Martian related posts celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which explains the following caption...
Thought the Martian invasion stuff was over for the year?
Guess again, Earthling!
Even funny animals battled Martians!
Not a Dream!
Not a Hoax!
Not an Imaginary Story!
(though it is the ending of the movie Invaders from Mars, which came out the year before this never-reprinted tale from Avon's Space Comics #4 [1954] appeared!)
If I were a cynical sort, I'd say writer/artist Frank Carin copped that finale...
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(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Reading Room LARS OF MARS "Terror Weapon" Part 1

...they just return in the next issue, as the guy who doesn't just play a Martian on TV, but is a Martian playing an actor playing a Martian on TV while fighting crime in real life (got that?) discovers...
What Next?
Will Lars Stop Raskov?
Will Raskov Stop (and/or Kill) Lars?
You'll note the Communist Chinese were illustrated in a non-cartoony manner, unlike the Japanese in most World War II comics and animated cartoons!
(The unfortunate lemon-yellow skin-tone wasn't artist Murphy Anderson's choice, I'm sure.)
Written by Jerry Siegel, illustrated by Murphy Anderson, this was the cover-featured tale from Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #11 (1951), the second (and last issue) of the series!
featuring the covers of both issues of Lars of Mars!

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder "Secrets of SEEKER 3000!"

Before we continue our re-presentation of the time-lost Seeker 3000! series...
...here's some background on both "classic" and "next gen" versions of the series..
First, the original plans for the proposed series by co-creators Doug Moench and Tom Sutton from Marvel's FOOM Magazine #21 (1978)...
Sadly, 'twas not to be, as the series didn't make it beyond the "pilot" stage...until 21 years later!
The only reprinting it had before this was a serialized version in the Marvel British weekly Future Tense...
Now we'll have a look at the "next gen" version from 1998...

Be here next week as we begin the first re-presentation of the follow-up series, which has never been collected in TPB form or reprinted in any way!
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(the first appearance of the series)