Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Sword of the Dead!"

Here's a never-reprinted Adventure Comics tale of "HIGH adventure"...

...written and illustrated by Gil Kane during the same period he was producing his landmark graphic novel BlackMark!

Simple.

Visceral.

Effective.

Now, THAT'S the way to tell a story!

This tale appeared in DC's Adventure Comics #425 (1972-73), when it was, briefly, an anthology between the departure of Supergirl into her own title and the debut of heroine Black Orchid!

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Blackmark

by Gil Kane

One of the first true graphic novels

Monday Madness FANTASTIC FOUR UNLIMITED "Shape of Things That Came!"

You thought you'd never see this guy...

...anywhere except in reprints?

well, you don't know Marvel, Bunkie!

Decades after his initial appearance (which we showed HERE), both the monster and his supporting cast re-emerged from obscurity in Marvel's Fantastic Four Unlimited #7 (1994), beginning with Frank Johnson, the illustrator who created Zzutak, meeting the team (minus Reed Richards, but plus Scott Lang aka Ant-Man II)...

However, there was a familiar (to Frank Johnson, at least) party-crasher...

Mayhem ensues, but the Aztecs manage to grab both Frank and his son...

Once in Mexico, we learn why Frank had the ability to bring illustrations created using those paints to life...

In comics, that's actually a quite plausible theory...and it works!

And before you can shout "Here I come to save the day!"...

Subtitled "A ten-story tribute those those marvelous Lee/Kirby monsters", writer Roy Thomas, penciler Herb Trimpe and inker Carmen Imperato followed the original tale's plot and concepts closely enough that anyone reading them back-to-back (as you did) would have no problem considering it a legitimate sequel to the original!

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(HTF anthology TPB from the 1980s featuring Zzutak's first appearance plus a kool never-reprinted "Kirby-tribute" wraparound cover by Walt Simonson)

The ORIGINAL "Miss LonelyHearts" Can Help YOU Get Your Message Across on Valentine's Day!

Comic books aren't just about spandex-clad heroes and heroines in battles of cosmic import!

They also tell intimate tales of heartbreak & joy, betrayal & redemption, and misery & true love.

God knows, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ can relate to those emotions...

On that note, here are kool, retro, romantic, Valentine's Day kollectibles featuring Beatrice Fairfax!

"Who?", you may ask!

Before Dear Abby, before Ann Landers, she was the original Miss Lonely Hearts, dispensing sage advice in her newspaper column long before the Internet was even a gleam in a techie's eye.

Let her help you express your true feelings on the Most Important of Days--Valentines Day with greeting cards, teddy bears, mugs, and even "naughty" undies!

And, if she can't assist your love-life, perhaps something from one of our other sections at True Love Comics Tales™ can help you get your point across!

Space Force Saturdays MARS COMPANY in "Winner"

In the early 1970s, DC experimented with pulp-style illustrated prose tales...

...in genre (sci-fi, horror, western, and romance) titles!

Written by Denny O'Neil, and rendered in retro 1950s Buck Rogers style...

...by Murphy Anderson, this never-reprinted text feature from DC's Strange Adventures #227 (1971) seems more a tribute to classic 1940s-50s "hard" sci-fi pulps instead of a then-current "new wave" science fiction tale!
Since it featured the last story about Earth's interplanetary fighting force, Mars Company, we felt it would be the perfect "capper" to the SpaceBusters saga, which Murphy re-conceived just before its' cancellation!

Murphy seemed to be DC's "go-to" guy when they needed retro-style material in the 1960s-70s!

He was the artist for Silver Age revival try-outs of Golden Age characters in Brave & Bold (Starman & Black Canary) and Showcase (Dr Fate & HourMan and The Spectre), as well as the first few issues of The Spectre's own Silver Age title!

Anderson was also the initial artist on DC's Bronze Age version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, as well as filing-in where needed on other Burroughs strips including Korak and Beyond the Farthest Star!

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Mysteries in Space

The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics

Frigid Friday Fun PLANET COMICS "Cosmo Corrigan: Exiled from Earth"

Like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many other handsome space heroes...

...Cosmo Corrigan had a weird first name.

Unlike them, he was a bit of a screw-up and wise-ass...

...so he was sent to the Solar System's equivalent of Siberia...the frozen planet Pluto, qualifying him for running as part of our new Frigid Friday Fun feature!

Planet Comics was noted for its...well...lack of scientific accuracy, being much more "science fantasy" than hard science fiction (which at least tried to apply known scientific facts to the storytelling).

But this series seems almost like a space opera sit-com, featuring a slacker as the hero!

Sadly, it only ran for three installments...which you'll see over the next few Fridays!

Illustrated by George Tuska (who would handle the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in the 1950s, as well as become Iron Man's illustrator when he received his own book in the 1960s) the scripter for this tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #9 (1940) is, regrettably, unknown.

("Ray Alexander" was a Fiction House pseudonom.)

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Planet Comics

Volume 3

Reprinting issues 9-12