Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

I was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...

...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!

It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!

The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.

Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.

Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.

Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.

He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.

You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.

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Immortal Record

by Sanho Kim

Monday Mars Madness GRAPHIC SHOWCASE "Eyes of Mars"

In the pre-Internet days...

...comic creator wanna-bes had to print samples of their work in "fanzines", then sell them at comic conventions and through mailing lists.

Here's the very first published efforts of a wanna-be who made good...

The Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired creator of this story from CCCS's Graphic Showcase #1 (1967) is none other than Mike (The Shadow) Kaluta!

The strip was probably intended as weekly installments in a high-school/college paper, but was repurposed for use in the fanzine.

Graphic Showcase ran three issues, with "Eyes of Mars" appearing in all three.

You'll see them in the future...

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Michael Wm. Kaluta: Sketchbook Ser

ies

Volume 1

Holiday Reading Room EVERY DAY IS A HOLLY DAY "Mother's Day"

Ever wonder why Mother's Day is when it is...or even why it is?

Oddly, there's no entry in this comic for Father's Day!

(Perhaps because Father's Day wasn't made an official American holiday until 1972, decades after this comic was published in 1956!)

Why is this comic entitled "Every Day is a Holly Day" instead of "Every Day is a Holiday"?

Because it was given away to kids by grocers who sold Holly Sugar!

Illustrated by John Rosenberger, it's a unique pamphlet covering a number of American holidays, including both Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays (before they were combined into "Presidents' Day"), Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a couple of holidays we've largely abandoned...Pan-American Day and American Indian Day!

We'll be presenting the other chapters on the dates they fall upon.

Watch for them!

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Cartoon History of the United States

Space Force Saturdays SPEED CARTER "Slaughter in Space!"

We meet a new alien race, the Vegans...

...who, it turns out, are no more trustworthy than most other alien species.

(We humans are scrupulously honest, of course!)

Don't ya just love a happy ending?

What I want to know is why Speed is suddenly wearing shorts?
Thankfully, it's the only story in the series where he does so.

This story from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #5 (1954) was scripted (as were all Speed Carter tales) by Hank Chapman!

Illustrator George Tuska later became the final artist on the original Buck Rogers comic strip (1959-67) and then assumed the art duties for almost a decade on Marvel's Invincible Iron Man!

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Mysteries in Space

The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics

Friday Fun RIOT "Mother Goosepimple's Nursery Rhymes" 2

The second, final , never-reprinted installment in this series features...

,,,an artist who already had a rep doing humor, John Severin, best known for his serious Western and War comics work at Harvey and EC!

He was also brother of EC Comics colorist Marie Severin, who later became Marvel's resident caricaturist (among her many other talents)!
I suspect this was going to be an ongoing series featuring rotating illustrators, but since Atlas' MAD-clone Riot was cancelled as of this issue (6) in 1956, we'll never know!
BTW, if the writing style feels "familiar", that's because it was by Stan (the Man) Lee!

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Sincerest Form of Parody