Reading Room UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION GIANT-SIZE SPECIAL "Threads"

An alien invasion may not be in the form of hulking monsters and heavily-armed spacecraft...

...but something subtle and unseen...

This oversized special, published in 1976 after Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction was cancelled, ran previously-unpublished material like this story...except for the tales "Arena" which had appeared in the color Worlds Unknown title (You can read it HERE and HERE.), and "Sinner", previously-published in the pro-zine witzend.
The writer of this tale, listed here as "Mat Warrick", may be the same person as "Mal Warrick" and "Mal Warwick", as stories under all three names appeared during the mid-1970s in various titles from Marvel, Star-Reach, DC, Red Circle, and Charlton.
Artist Adrian Gonzales was part of the wave of Philippine artists who contributed work to American comics from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s.
In 1985, he turned from print comics to doing character design and storyboards for animation studios until his passing in 1998.

Monday Madness OZARK IKE

As SuperBowl Sunday approaches...

...lets see how rurals, including hillbillies, outside the big cities, play football...in the comics, of course!

The rest of the issue deals with the multi-talented Ike playing baseball, so we'll run it during baseball season.

Yes, the King Features strip was created in the mid-1940s as a competitor to Al Capp's wildly-successful Li'l Abner series!

No, it was nowhere near as successful.

The only known licensed spin-offs were this one-shot reprint collection in Dell's Four Color Comics #180 (1948), a subsequent short-lived 1950s comic series for Standard/Better/Nedor. and a couple of 1980s reprint paperbacks from Blackthorne Publishing.

Writer/artist Ray Gotto, though not a familiar name to comics fans today, achieved sports immortality for designing one of the iconic graphics in baseball history...still in use 61 years later:

The New York Mets' logo!

BTW, this month's Monday Madness theme is SPORTS!

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by Al Capp

Tell Your Loved One "Giddiyap, Sweetie!" on Valentines Day!

Valentine's Day is almost upon us, and nothing says "I Love You" like gunpowder, horse blankets, and guys who don't bathe for days, right?

Right?

Someone sure thought so back in the 1950s, when two of the most popular genres--romances and Westerns were combined into Western romances (or Romantic Westerns) in both prose fiction and comics.

True Love Comics Tales™ has digitally-restored and remastered the best of the comic cover art from that all-too-brief shining period of American literature for a new line of Valentine's Day goodies including greeting cards, diaries, teddy bears, even shirts, tops, and, well...bottoms for men and women at...

Western Love™

Just the thing for the cowboy or cowgirl in your life!

A Valentine's Day Public Service message from the buckaroos at Atomic Kommie Comics™

Space Hero Saturdays WEIRD FANTASY "Judgement Day!"

Not every Space Hero uses a ray gun to save the day!

Sometimes, simply talking, the way Tarleton does, is the most effective way!

As Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, and Al Feldstein (who wrote this story) could tell you, one of the best aspects of science fiction is the opportunity to present commentary on social issues that you couldn't otherwise show due to censorship.
Most of this blog's audience is too young to know, first-hand, that the societal conditions shown on Cybrinia were, in fact, the way society in most of America was structured up to the mid-1960s.
(And there are aspects that continue to this day!)

This story originally-appeared in EC's Weird Fantasy #18 (1951) to mostly-positive feedback.

But that was pre-Comics Code!

When it was scheduled to be reprinted in Incredible Science-Fiction #33 (1956) it had to be submitted to the newly-created Comics Code Authority.

As explained in the superb book Tales from the Crypt: the Official Archives by Digby Diehl...

This really made ‘em go bananas in the Code czar’s office. 

“Judge [Charles] Murphy was off his nut. He was really out to get us”, recalls [EC editor Al] Feldstein. “I went in there with this story and Murphy says, “It can’t be a Black man”. 

But … but that’s the whole point of the story!” Feldstein sputtered.

When Murphy continued to insist that the Black man had to go, Feldstein put it on the line.

“Listen”, he told Murphy, “you’ve been riding us and making it impossible to put out anything at all because you guys just want us out of business”.

[Feldstein] reported the results of his audience with the czar to [EC publisher Bill] Gaines, who was furious [and] immediately picked up the phone and called Murphy.

“This is ridiculous!” he bellowed.

“I’m going to call a press conference on this. You have no grounds, no basis, to do this. I’ll sue you”.

Murphy made what he surely thought was a gracious concession.

“All right. Just take off the beads of sweat”.

At that, Gaines and Feldstein both went ballistic.

“Fuck you!” they shouted into the telephone in unison.

Murphy hung up on them, but the story ran in its original form.

It was the final color comic book EC Comics published.

MAD was converted into a b/w magazine, removing it from Comics Code approval, and reprints of EC's comics (including this story)...

...in Tales of the Incredible (1965). were published in standard paperback format by Ballantine Books also exempting them from the Code.
EC tried a line of four magazine-sized b/w titles known as "Picto-Fiction" with a more adult approach to storytelling, like pulp magazines, but with more illustrations.
Like MAD, their magazine format bypassed the Code's restrictions, but none of them got past the second issues.

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Tales from the Crypt

Official Archives

(which covers a lot of EC Comics history, not just the horror titles!)

Friday Fun: CALVIN

The Black Panther was not the first Black Marvel character to get a cover-featured series!

He wasn't even the second!

He was the third!

First was Luke Cage, who received his own title...

...and was the star of his own Netflix series!

Note: Though the series ended, three of the stars have gone on to headline other shows...

Simone Missick (Misty Knight) on All Rise, Mike Colter (Luke Cage) on Evil and Rosario Dawson (Clare Temple/Night Nurse) on the upcoming Ahsoka!

(BTW, Luke Cage is now available on Disney+!)

The second character was...

WHO???

Several months before Prince T'Challa took over a reprint book, Jungle Action, and began a memorable series that served as part of the plot of the billion-dollar blockbuster movie...

...this character took over another reprint book and began a series that nobody remembers!

You can read every never-reprinted tale featuring Calvin and his buddies HERE!

What makes the strip even more fascinating, beyond the vaudeville-level humor, is the identity of the writer-artist behind it!

"Kevin Banks" was not a pseudonym for an already-established creative, but an editorial staffer at Marvel in the early 1970s who received his "big break" with this strip!
Trivia: Kevin was the first (and so far, only) Marvel creator to have a head shot illustration on an on-going series!

Even the ever-amazing comics researcher Nick Caputo could find little about the mysterious Mr Banks, as seen HERE.
What did Banks did after working at Marvel?
Did he work in advertising?
Become an art instructor?
Switch careers and become an accountant or fireman?
We may never know the answer...

BTW, this is our 5,000th post!