Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Man Who Didn't Know Venus"

Nedor/Better/Standard Comics produced several sci-fi anthologies...
...none of which lasted more than three issues.
But it certainly wasn't due to lack of quality.
With a contributor list that included Alex Toth, Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Nick Cardy, and Jack Katz, you're talking some of the great and soon-to-be-great storytellers of comics history!
But, there was one other sci-fi creator who did a story for Lost Worlds, one of only four tales he did for comic books.
Jerome Bixby, novelist and short-story writer, as well as screenwriter whose credits include...
IT! the Terror from Beyond Space!
Fantastic Voyage
Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror"* and "Day of the Dove"
and the short story "It's a Good Life" which was adapted on both the original Twilight Zone tv series (by Rod Serling) and the 1983 feature film (by Richard Matheson).
BTW, around the time he wrote this, Bixby had just left his position as editor of the Planet Stories pulp magazine at Fiction House, where he also contributed a couple of text pieces to Planet Comics and Indians (his only non-genre text story)!
BTW, let me know if the type at this size is readable or not.
*The Mirror Universe created by Bixby in "Mirror, Mirror" has proven to be so popular that the plot has reappeared in over half of the spin-off series spanning almost all of Federation and StarFleet history!
And let's not get into the numerous (and sometimes contradictory) novels and comics about the concept...

Monday, January 18, 2021

Monday Madness THE STAND: NIGHT HAS COME "Finale" Part 1

SPOILERS:
This is the conclusion of the mega-adaptation of Stephen King's mega-novel.

Read no further if you don't want to know how the book ends!
OTOH, if you want to see how it compares to the ending of the CBS All-Access mini-series, jump in!
To Be Continued

Previously, we brought you the opening chapter of the multi-miniseries adaptation HERE!
Now that the TV mini-series is airing, we thought now would be the right time to present the finale so you could contrast-and-compare!
Trivia: Marvel needed six mini-series from 2008 to 2012 to adapt the 1990 revised and expanded edition of the already-massive 1978 novel!
Randall Flagg, a character who appears in many of King's stories, unifying them into one "multiverse", makes his debut in The Stand novel.
But, in comics, he premiered in Marvel's Dark Tower adaptation, which was published before The Stand!

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collecting all six miniseries and the SketchBook plus an exclusive Companion in one huge HTF and OOP two-volume slipcased set!

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Trump Reading Room ARCHIE'S JOKE BOOK MAGAZINE "Profiles in Courage"

Every family has its' "black sheep"...
...even the incredibly-wealthy Lodges!
(From Archie's Joke Book Magazine #73 [1963])
This never-reprinted strip was created during the 100th Anniversary of the Civil War, when Southerners were determined, in fact almost desperate, to rehabilitate their image.
Numerous movies and TV series portrayed the Confederates as noble, but misguided, and in some cases,  objects of humor.
(Hey, if they could make the Nazis funny in Hogan's Heroes...)
The irony is that this was also the era of the creation and implementation of the Civil Rights Act, which brought out the worst in many White Southerners who were terrified at the concept of Black people being on a totally-equal level (socially and politically) with them!
It's also worth noting that, in this era, Republicans...the Party of Abe Lincoln...are the ones defending memorials to the "glory" of the Confederacy!
Truth is stranger than fiction!

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Space Force Saturdays SPEED CARTER "Space Trap!"

"Wow! That's the second biggest robot I've ever seen!"
But, in the 1950s (or the future as seen from the 1950s), giant robots didn't transform into trucks...
This is the sort of story you wish Joe Maneely had ten pages instead of five to play with to allow a couple more pages of kool robot vs spaceship mayhem.
The series continues to play up the Saturnians as the future's equivalent of the Chinese Communists of the 1950s.
This never-reprinted tale from AtlasSpeed Carter, Spaceman #2 (1953) is written (as are all the Speed Carter stories) by Hank Chapman and illustrated by original artist Joe Maneely.
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Friday, January 15, 2021

Friday Fun BLACK ZEPPELIN "The Strip"

Artist Gene Day was best-known for his work on Marvel's Master of Kung Fu and Star Wars books...
...but he had a rarely-seen humorous style as well!
After Gene passed away, his family went through his files and found a wealth of unpublished and uncompleted work, whch served as the basis for the anthology mini-series Black Zeppelin.
His brothers Dan and David, also talented artists, finished the incomplete tales, and his wife Gale served as editor for the project.
In addition, several stories Gene had plotted or scripted, but not drawn, were rendered by friends like Dave Sim and saw publication in the book.
Here's the intro by Gale to this tale...
We ran one of Gene's earlier tales HERE.
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