Monday, April 10, 2023

Monday Madness THIS MAGAZINE IS CRAZY "Russians are Stealing Our Comics!"

Russians using pop culture to spread disinformation is nothing new...

...as this never-reprinted feature from Charlton's MAD clone This Magazine is Crazy V4N8 (1959) by an unknown writer and artist (or writer/artist) demonstrates!
The really sad thing is how few of these strips survive to this day!
Nancy, Dennis the Menace, and Beetle Bailey are still being published.
Peanuts is in reprints only, with no new strips since creator Charles Schultz retired.
Abernathy and They'll Do It Every Time are gone and pretty much forgotten.

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Sunday, April 9, 2023

Holiday Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Easter Sunday"

Our final Walt (Pogo) Kelly post for Easter...
...is a never-reprinted piece from Four Color Comics: Easter with Mother Goose #220 (1949).
We hope you've enjoyed our presentation of these long-lost pieces by one of the field's masters.
Now go eat a chocolate bunny and some marshmallow chicks!

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Space Secret Agent Saturdays MYSTERY IN SPACE "Secret of the Double Agent"

It was 1965, and secret agents were everywhere...
...even DC's Mystery in Space, whose 100th issue, introed a cover-featured "space spy" series!
(With a cover by Dick Dillin and Sheldon Moldoff!)
Written by Dave Wood, illustrated by Gil Kane, and guest-starring a Sean Connery-lookalike, an ongoing Interplanetary Investigations series seemed like a sure bet, but it disappeared after only one more appearance two issues later!
(BTW, neither of them have been reprinted!)
Instead, a new character, Ultra: the Multi-Alien took over the book until cancellation with #110!
Pity, since the Interplanetary Investigations strip showed such promise.
Considering DC had the rights to James Bond (which is why there were no comic adaptations of any of the 007 flicks after Dr No, which didn't do well due to being released months before the movie came out), could you imagine what Gil Kane could've done illustrating any of the other pre-Roger Moore Bond movies?
Sadly, we'll never know.
Two notes:
1) The comic rights to 007 eventually lapsed and Marvel did two movie adaptations in the 1980s, For Your Eyes only and Octopussy.
Neither were big sellers.
2) DC released Doctor No as part of the Showcase tryout comic as shown HERE.)
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(which contains only a couple of stories from this previously-listed volume)

Friday, April 7, 2023

Good Friday Fun: Did You Know the First Captain of the USS Enterprise...

...was Jesus Christ?
Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ in King of Kings (1961)
 Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike with Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in Star Trek "The Cage" (1964)
Here's"six degrees of separation" trivia...
...in only
 five degrees:
  • John Huston, who later did a prequel movie, The Bible: In the Beginning, directed Moby Dick, using a screenplay adapted by Ray (Martian Chronicles) Bradbury from the Herman Melville novel.
  • Ray Bradbury wrote the voiceovers in King of Kings spoken by Orson Welles.
  • Orson Welles' The Shadow and Mercury Theatre co-star Agnes Moorehead served as dialogue coach to  Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus Christ) in King of Kings.
  • Jeffrey Hunter later played Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Starship Enterprise in the pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage".
  • Star Trek did an episode, "Bread and Circuses", about a planet where parallel evolution produced a society that resembled a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire, complete with it's own "Christians" and Jesus Christ (who doesn't appear on-camera, but is mentioned in dialogue)!

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Reading Room WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE "Beginning or the End!"

Let's start with ACTION and LOTS and LOTS of SPACESHIPS...
Is that an opening splash page or what?
The rest of the story isn't quite so frantic, but it is interesting...
Oops!
The writer of this never-reprinted story from Key's Weird Tales of the Future #6 (1953) is unknown, but the artist is Eugene E Hughes, who had a brief career in comics working exclusively for Key Publications, then disappeared from the art world (comic books/strips/commercial art) entirely!
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