Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Celebrate the New Year with the Psychedelic Master of the Mystic Arts!

...produced not one...
...but two...
...classic blacklite posters in the early 1970s!
Third Eye Studios produced, using Marvel artwork, a line of fluorescent-ink posters, greeting cards, and puzzles that glowed under ultra-violet ("black") light...
 
(Click to enlarge)
...all of which are now hard-to-find and expensive!
Ironically, the most collectible of the posters are the montage shown above and this one with new art by John Romita Sr...
(Click to enlarge)
...which were not for sale, just display!
There were three Doctor Strange posters, the two Colan/Palmer ones and a Dan Adkins piece.
Note: while all the puzzles repeated art from the posters, some of the greeting cards used art not seen on the posters, so while there are repeats, there are also unique cards that make the set worth collecting!
 Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics This New Year's
Digitally-Restored and Remastered DIRECTLY From an Original Poster!

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Best of Holiday Reading Room DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Conclusion

(A New Year's Eve repost you readers demanded...)
When Last We Left the Sorcerer Supreme...
...it was the end of 1968, New Year's Eve, to be exact.
After seeing a vision of the etherial Eternity changing into his old enemy, NightmareDr Strange takes his alien love, Clea, to Times Square to experience New Year's Eve: New York City Style...where a pterodactyl crashes into the clock as it strikes midnight!
Yep, True Believer, it's another of Marvel's patented "continued stories"!
But our intent here is to present only the New Year's Eve part of the tale, since both parts have been reprinted recently.
So we're going to show you how Marvel itself got out of re-running the entire two-parter when it ran this tale from Doctor Strange #180 (1969) in Marvel Treasury Edition #8: Giant SuperHero Holiday Grab-Bag (1975)!
The editors took the Gene Colan penciled and inked presentation piece showing the finalized design for Doc's "superhero-style" costume that appeared as a pin-up in Doctor Strange #180...
...took out the final panel of the story and used the Doc figure with a new word balloon!

Sneaky, huh?
Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gene Colan, and inked by Tom Palmer, this tale is one of the koolest of the era's Dr Strange stories with pop culture references galore and accurate NYC locales!
The cover, btw is a combination of a Steve Ditko Eternity figure, a new Doctor Strange by Colan and Palmer and a New York City photo background (Marvel did several photo background covers during this period)
Tomorrow:
The Splash Pages that Became BlackLite Posters!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics This New Year's
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...featuring this tale and it's continuation!

Monday, December 30, 2019

Best of Holiday Reading Room DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Part 1

(By popular demand...our most-read New Year's post of all...)
The year was 1968, going into 1969...
...and the wildest New Year's Eve story in comics history is about to begin!
Yeah.
It's a heckuva point to break off our tale until tomorrow, but you'll need an incentive to get out of bed on New Year's Eve Day!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics This New Year's
Digitally-Restored and Remastered DIRECTLY From an Original Poster!

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Holiday Reading Room HUMBUG! "Humbug Award for Fake Santa Clauses"

...well, here's a far more cynical take on the matter, courtesy of artist Will Elder from the appropriately-titled Humbug #6 (1958)!
The writer is probably Elder or editorial staffers Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, or Arnold Roth.
Any guesses?

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Holiday Reading Room ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND "Man Who Didn't Believe in Christmas"

I'm not sure what to make of this story.
It's "A Christmas Carol", yet it's not!
Weird, eh?
This story appeared in Adventures in Wonderland #5 (1956), the Christmas issue, and both writer and artist are unknown.
The editor/publisher was Lev Gleason, who had also published a number of classic comic series including Crime Does Not PayDareDevil Comics, and Silver Streak Comics.
However, this was at the tail end of his career, and being constrained by the newly-implemented Comics Code Authority apparently didn't sit well with him.
Perhaps this tale was his commentary on the sort of bland material he felt the Code was limiting him to?
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