Friday Fun PUZZLE-FUN COMICS "Alec in FumbleLand: You Can Bank on It"

A couple of weeks ago we presented Alec's premiere adventure...

...now we present his second (and, sadly, final) tale, this one a lesson in personal finance!

Their banking system and procedures are incredibly-weird...even for comics created for a kid/pre-teen audience!

That point aside, the never-reprinted tale from George W Dougherty Publishing's Puzzle-Fun Comics #2 (1946) by sadly-neglected writer/artist George Carlson is beautifully-done, playing cleverly on the concepts of Lewis Carroll's books.

Carlson, who created and produced the amazing Jingle Jangle Tales for Eastern Color, was a book and slick magazine cartoonist illustrator who did comic books "on the side".

His only comic book work was Jingle Jangle Comics, this title, and a few one-pagers for Eastern Comics!

99% of his comic book output has never been reprinted.

Once we can assemble it, we're going to do a blogathon of his astounding work!

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Perfect Nonsense

Chaotic Comics and Goofy Gags of George Carlson

Reading Room RADIO BOY "Conclusion"

When Last We Left Our Tiny Robot Hero...

What do you do when giant monsters attack?

If you're the Electric Patrol, tasked with guarding the globe, you throw up your hands and call upon that tiny triumph of technology, Radio Boy!

Eclipse's never-reprinted Radio Boy #1 (1987) one-shot is loosely-based on Osamo Tesuka's Astro Boy, which had achieved success as a translated anime in the early 1960s and opened the door for a flood of Japanese cartoons on American TV that continues to this day.

Note: Though Astro Boy is best-known in the US as a tv cartoon series, it began as a wildly-successful manga in 1954.

The premise of Radio Boy is that the creator himself did the translations for this American edition, resulting in a mish-mash of syntax and tenses as well as some literal translations of Japanese phrases.

As a collector of foreign videos (including Japanese and Chinese DVDs), I can attest that the English subtitles on them often do read like the captions and copy in this spoof.

I suspect writers Chuck Dixon (yes, that Chuck Dixon) and Jim Engel had also seen some mis-translated films/videos, and wanted to re-create the experience on the printed page.

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Manga

the Complete Guide

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LOST WORLD "Children Shouldn't Play with Guns"

You'd think after overcoming Republican...I mean "idiot"...resistance to doing the right thing to stay alive...

...it would be smooth sailing for Hunt Bowman and Lyssa's new school to train a new generation to battle the invaders from Volta.

You'd be wrong...

Playing with guns is dangerous, even in the post-apocalyptic world of Hunt Bowman!

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A Slight Case of Murder

and Other Stories

Illustrated by George Evans

Reading Room RADIO BOY "Part 1"

Here's a never-reprinted 1987 manga/anime spoof...

...in, of course, glorious black and white!

Manga (and its' Korean counterpart, mahnwa) seem "weird" when colorized.

To be concluded and finished...Thursday!

Loosely-based on Osamo Tesuka's Astro Boy, which had achieved success as a translated anime in the early 1960s and opened the door for a flood of Japanese cartoons on American TV that continues to this day.

Note: Though Astro Boy is best-known in the US as a tv cartoon series, it began as a wildly-successful manga in 1954.

The premise of Radio Boy is that the creator himself did the translations for this edition, resulting in a mish-mash of syntax and tenses as well as some literal translations of Japanese phrases.

As a collector of foreign videos (including Japanese and Chinese DVDs), I can attest that the English subtitles on them often do read like the captions and copy in this spoof.

I suspect writers Chuck Dixon (yes, that Chuck Dixon) and Jim Engel had also seen some mis-translated films/videos, and wanted to re-create the experience on the printed page.

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Atomic Kommie Comics

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Manga

the Complete Guide

Monday Mars Madness STRANGE ADVENTURES "Science-Fiction Convention on Mars!"

You gotta ask: how can three of the best creatives of the Silver Age of Comics...

...make such an exciting concept so dull?

Writer Gardner Fox, penciler Gil Kane, and inker Joe Giella (together and separately) produced some of the koolest tales of the Silver Age!

Yet, this story from DC's Strange Adventures #73 (1956) almost put me to sleep!

The premise is great, the concepts are well-thought out, but the rendering of it is...well...drab!

Why aren't the Martians more visually-interesting?

They're just bald guys!

Couldn't they be using disguises (either masks or holograms) while on Earth and then reveal themselves to be Martians when the convention-goers arrive on Mars?

It's not like penciler Gil Kane has any problem with rendering kool-looking humanoid aliens, as shown HERE!

And would it have killed them to give the creatives an extra page?

Jamming in all that exposition into the last page really limited Gil into what he could present.

(Remember, DC worked "full script", so Kane knew how much room the captions and dialogue balloons needed to take!)

Using two pages for that last sequence would've helped enormously!

And what about the weird rays that destroy any spaceships?

Natural?

Artificial?

We'll never know...

In comparison, this tale from Dell's Four Color #1288: Twilight Zone has a less-epic, but much more "fun" feel to it!

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Showcase Presents

Strange Adventures

Volume 1

(which reprints this tale...but in black and white)