Only reprinted once since initial publication 70 years ago in Prize's Black Magic V4N4 (1954)...
...here's a tale showing the legendary Simon and Kirby team at their spooky (but non-gory) best!
Just cries out for a sequel, eh?
Sadly, there wasn't one, nor was the story reprinted...until 2014, in Titan's Simon and Kirby Library: Horror anthology (see below). But, there was a retitled retelling of this tale, in a rather unlikely place, in 1974!
When it has noBarbie (or her supporting cast) in it...until the very last page!
Perhaps that's why this never-reprinted tale from Marvel's Barbie Fashion #41 (1994) was in their April Fool issue!
But as for who is in this story, well...
Either in-universe Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco (not the real guy, of course) was an easily-manipulated fool...or he was a sadist!
Note:Barbie Fashion ran for another year, until it was really cancelled with #53 in 1995. Written by Barbara Slate, penciled by Mary Wilshire, and inked by Trina Robbins, this story from three decades ago featured the entire creative and editorial crew from the two Barbie titles as well as various other Marvel personnel.
Before Flash Gordon the Movie came to movie screens in 1980... ...another Flash-related project came to fruition! No, not the animated TV series! A self-contained, feature-length, animated movie!
It was conceived and written by Sam (ClassicStar Trek "Where No Man Has Gone Before") Peebles as a prime-time live-action feature, not a Saturday morning animated kiddie series! But the budget required for the script would've been $30,000,000 (almost $100,000,000 in 2024 dollars!)! So, it was decided to do the project using classic cel animation, including rotoscoping for both character movement and spaceship action! Note: Heavy Metal; the Movie, in production at the same time, utilized the same approach! But they had to use several different studios, working together, to complete their feature film! Though a lot of the footage from Greatest Adventure of All was recycled, over half is exclusive to the feature, including Flash in a Doc Savage-style torn shirt and jodpurs for the first 2/3rds of the film! That footage was re-drawn for the series with Flash in his red and blue Mongo uniform. It's the way Flash was drawn in the first few weeks of the newspaper strip, and Buster Crabbe followed suit in the first couple of chapters of the first movie serial!
BTW, the film starts out in Warsaw, Poland at the beginning of World War II before heading to Mongo, and all the Earth-based technology, including Zarkov's ship, are contemporary to what was shown in sci-fi magazines and flix of the era!
Now, with pardonable pride, we present the complete feature film which is unavailable on American physical media sources and only aired once, on late night TV in 1982.
Note the cameos by Adolph Hitler, to whom Ming is supplying weapon and rocket technology!
The second, final, also never-reprinted installment in this series features an artist who already had a rep doing humor, John Severin, best known for his serious Western and War comics work at Harvey and EC!
He was also brother of EC Comics colorist Marie Severin, who later became Marvel's resident caricaturist (among her many other talents)! I suspect this was going to be an ongoing series featuring rotating illustrators, but since Riot was cancelled as of this issue (6) in 1956, we'll never know! BTW, if the writing style for both stories feels "familiar", that's because it was by snarky Stan (the Man) Lee!
