Friday Fun MIRTH OF A NATION

Some things never go out-of-date...

...like dumb jokes and juvenile humor, as these panels from Mirth of a Nation #5 (1943) demonstrate!

Five issues were produced by the Harry "A" Chesler Jr. Features Syndicate for the short-lived Wm H Wise & Company.

Each issue had this notice on the first page...

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Magnet of Magneto"

Nope, it's not the mutant villain/anti-hero/hero of X-Men fame, but an entire planet...

...hell-bent on conquering the universe!

Written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Steve Ditko, this tale of menace and magnetism from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) is scientifically-inaccurate, but fun.

and isn't that what comics are all about?

You may recognize the splash panel as the cover for this issue...

...which we ran when we presented the other cover-featured story two days ago.

Charlton had a tendency to re-use/recompose interior art for covers, especially with their anthologies.

Whether it was for budget or deadline reasons has been lost to the mists of history.

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Steve Ditko Archives Volume 5

Dripping with Fear

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LOST WORLD "Mad Mute X-Adapts"

Though Hunt Bowman and Lyssa continue their war against the VoltaMen...

...it's not them on this cover supposedly-featuring their battle against aquatic mutants!

Nor do these reptiles look like the mutants in the story!

For whatever reason, the editors used a generic cover by Joe Doolin and apparently hoped kids wouldn't notice the difference!

Have Hunt and Lyssa gained a new ally?

Only time will tell.....

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Planet Comics

Volume 11

(contains issues 48-53) 

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