Space Force Saturdays STARFAWN "To the Nearest Quasar" Part 1

Welcome to the first (never-reprinted) space opera graphic novel...

...as we meet the crew of the starship Destiny, the best and brightest Earth has to offer, starting with the tale's narrator/ship's historian/archivist...

To Be Continued on Wednesday Here at Atomic Kommie Comics as Part of

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder

In this pre-Alien tale, "in space, everyone can hear you scream!"

While pre-Alien, this project was post-classic Star Trek and it shows in the basic exploratory concept, the cast's multi-ethnic composition, and a "hey, we come in peace" attitude...not to mention a lackadaisical approach towards touching unknown objects of obviously-extraterrestrial origin!

Created in 1976 by writer/editor Byron Preiss and illustrator Stephen Fabian, this digest-sized graphic novel (second and last in a series which then converted to trade paperback size for two more volumes) was racked in drugstores and candy stores with similarly-formatted periodicals including Archie Comics and various soap opera, romance novel, UFO, etc. mags.
As a result, it sold rather poorly.
Remember there were less than a half-dozen comic book stores in America at that time, and regular bookstores refused to carry the digest-sized periodical!
After this, Pyramid Books modified the format to trade paperback size, but, despite projects by Jim Steranko and Ralph Reese, the series only lasted two more volumes!

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Friday Fascist Fun MAD "Mad's All-Inclusive Do-It-Yourself Impeachment Newspaper Story"

When the previous criminally-inclined Republican Prez was about to be impeached in 1974...

...it was (unlike now) for a non-violent crime and MAD Magazine was at a creative peak, as demonstrated by this classic (and pretty comprehensive) piece by writer Frank Jacobs published in EC's MAD #170 (1974)!

The process took several months, allowing for such satirical pieces to be carefully-crafted.

Today, sadly, MAD as a print magazine is gone (except for reprints), and the increased speed political matters now proceed at prevents such material from being created!

Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Unreal!"

As Mighty Thor and Tales of Asgard took over Atlas/Marvel's Journey into Mystery...

...one-shot backup tales like this one were, sadly, slowly squeezed out of the book!

The cleverly-written narration doesn't offer a clue as to which protaganist is speaking.

Of course, we assume it's the human...

Plotted by Stan Lee, scripted and penciled by his brother Larry Lieber (Stan's birth name was "Stanley Leiber"), and inked by Matt Fox, this never-reprinted story from the back of Marvel's Journey into Mystery #100 (1964) was one of the last non-Asgardian tales in the book.

They were discontinued as of #105.

Matt Fox began as a pulp illustrator for Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and others.

When the pulps died in the early 1950s, he moved to Atlas Comics, where, because he wasn't a fast penciler, he inked others' pencils more often than doing solo pencil-ink assignments.

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Atlas-Era

Journey into Mystery

Volume #4
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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CROM THE BARBARIAN

While Conan the Barbarian rampaged thru pulp magazines in the 1930s...

...another barbarian would be the first to slash his way thru comic books!

CROM WILL RETURN NEXT WEDNESDAY!

Crom was the brainchild of writer Gardner Fox and artist John Giunta.
His first story appeared in the 1950 Avon one-shot anthology Out of This World, then was reprinted the next month in Out of This World Adventures #1, an offbeat pulp magazine/comic book hybrid combining b/w text and spot illustration sections with a color comic insert section.
After a second appearance in OoTWA, he moved over to the comic Strange Worlds which reprinted his second OoTWA appearance, then ran one more tale before the barbarian disappeared into the mists of history.
If the name "Gardner Fox" sounds familiar, he's best-known for his extensive Golden and Silver Age superhero work including creating SkyMan, Golden Age Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, Kenton of the Star Patrol, Moon Girl; the Silver Age Adam Strange and Atom, both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes and Hawkmen, and conceptualizing and scripting the first batches of stories of both the Justice Society and Justice League!
He also made important contributions to Batman (utility belt, batarang, bat-gyro) and introduced the parallel-world concept of Earth-One/Earth-Two to comics in "Flash of Two Worlds" in DC's The Flash #123 (1961) which united his Golden and Silver Age Scarlet Speedsters and established the concept of a Multiverse for various incarnations of characters so predominant in today's pop culture!
Including non-series comics tales Fox wrote over 4,000 stories during his long career.
In addition, Fox wrote at least one prose novel per year (sometimes under pen names), covering genres from sci-fi and fantasy to romance to espionage as well as numerous prose short stories.
Besides scripting Crom, Fox wrote two paperback series in the 60s-70s featuring sword and sorcery barbarians; Kothar (five books) and Kyrik (four books).
Plus, he wrote a pair of John Carter/Barsoom-style novels featuring American lawyer Alan Morgan on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn.
Note: Fox was a lawyer who had passed the bar exam, but with little paying work for a lawyer duing the Great Depression, chose to take up pulp (and later, comic book) writing instead!
Was this series a manifestation of his personal fantasy world?

We'll never know...

Reading Room SENSATION MYSTERY COMICS "Last Dream!"

Wonder Woman lost her cover feature in DC's Sensation Comics as of this issue (#107 in 1952)...

...when the book was retitled Sensation Mystery, and featured "mysteries" like this one!

(Sensation Comics was Wonder Woman's "sister" title, much as Action Comics is Superman's "brother" comic and Detective Comics is Batman's "brother" book!)

In 1952, horror comics became the "hot" genre, with most comics publishers going "all in" to see who could be the goriest!

DC, though, tried to stay relatively innocuous, refusing to go for the gore.

While their sales didn't skyrocket as many other publishers' did, they managed to stay below the radar during the whole "Seduction of the Innocent" mania.

And, it certainly made reprinting any of the material produced during this period a breeze after the Comics Code was imposed!

This John Broome-written, Carmine Infantino-penciled, and Frank Giacoia-inked tale was typical of DC's output during this period.

(Some say Sy Barry inked it, but expert art identifier Martin O'Hearn thinks it's Giacoia, and I agree with him.)

Straightforward, logical, and effectively-told, it's almost a template for the various stories the anthology would carry until the book's cancellation a year later with #116.

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Showcase Presents

Ghosts

(which features this story...but in black and white!)
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