Atomic Kommie Comics

Sunday, October 31, 2021

SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS "Headless Horseman Rides Again" Cover

Here's the cover from the never-reprinted 1973 story we ran this week HERE and HERE...

...and here's the original art by penciler Gil Kane and inker Ernie Chua aka Ernie Chan!

Bonus: here's the Gil Kane layout that Chua/Chan lightboxed to produce the final art!

The creative process is an absolutely beautiful thing, eh?

Happy Halloween!

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Space Force Saturdays SPACE PATROL "Stranded on the Sands of Mars"

Since it's Halloween Eve we're offering a preview of our next Saturday feature...

...this strip, which was the first of numerous unrelated series in various media to use the title "Space Patrol", including three different TV series!

Nobody could combine horror and sci-fi like Wolverton...as we showed HERE!

The multi-talented Basil wrote, illustrated, lettered, and probably colored, this wild tale from Amazing Mystery Funnies #23 (1940).

I'd love to see someone animate these classics of surreal storytelling.

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Creeping Death from Neptune
Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton
Volume One

Friday, October 29, 2021

Friday Fun MADHOUSE "Going-Going-Real Gone!"

What if Casper the Friendly Ghost was a middle-aged specter...

...encountering live teen "hep cats"?

This tale takes the concept to a literally-surreal level!

BTW, see how many pop-culture references you can understand without Googling them!

The Iger Comics Studio produced this tale for Ajax-Farrell's MadHouse V1N4 (1954), showing teen/young adult hipsters/hepcats encountering ghosts (apparently of middle-aged/older people) who didn't realize their attempts at creating ugly art and terrifying music resulted in cutting-edge popular culture!

When MAD became a surprise hit in 1953 (after the early issues lost money!) other comics publishers were quick to jump onto the bandwagon, eventually bringing out more than a dozen imitations with titles like FLIP, WHACK!, NUTS, EH!, UNSANE!, MADHOUSE/BUGHOUSE, and GET LOST!

These copiers realized that Will Elder’s cluttered “chicken fat” layouts were a major part of MAD’s success, and their pages were also densely-packed with all sorts of outlandish and bizarre gags!

Trivia: While most companies (like Ajax/Farrell) published just a single MAD imitation title, Atlas (the predecessor to Marvel) dove head-first into the fad, with no less than four titles, Snafu, WILD, RIOT, and Crazy!

These “parody comics” are uniquely 1950s catching the popular culture zeitgeist through a dual lens: not only reflecting '50s culture through parody but also being typical examples of that culture...ironically, in a way that MAD wasn't!

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The Sincerest Form of Parody

The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Reading Room SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS "Headless Horseman Rides Again!" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Upstate New York crime lord "Bones" Bullinger murdered reporter Matt Carter to stop the newspaperman's investigations into the underworld.

But Carter's widow, Kim, and his best friend, private eye Duke Durbano, kept the investigation going.

So "Bones" hired NYC hitmen to kill the pair.

The assassins failed (though they don't know it) and "Bones" (in an elaborate disguise) is about to eliminate them...

Written by Gary Friedrich at the same time as he was co-creating the flaming-skulled motorcyclist known as Ghost Rider, this tale from Marvel's Supernatural Thrillers #6 (1973) was left open-ended with the possibility of the Horseman returning as a "Spirit of Vengeance" to deal with other criminals.

Note: 1973-75 featured the appearances of several avenging supernatural characters including Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, Man-Thing, Scarecrow (aka Straw Man), and the return of The Spectre in extremely-gruesome (for the Comics Code era) tales.

Illustrated by penciler George Tuska and inker Jack Abel, both of whom worked in comics during the horror comics era and were quite familiar with how to tell a terrifying tale!

Be Back on Halloween for a special Treat!

(No Trick, we promise!)

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