Sunday, November 9, 2025

Who or What Will Be Our Thanksgiving Turkey for 2025?

Almost EveryYear, the RetroBlogs Run What We Charitably-Call...
...a "Thanksgiving Turkey"!

It's a comic, graphic novel or mini-series that's so unbelievably-bad, we can't believe it was actually published!
We're talking the worst of the worst.
Stories and/or art that are so awful, so inane, they're not even shown on the 'Net, just talked-about in embarrassed whispers!
In fact, they're so bad they've never been reprinted, and probably never will be!
Here they are, in all their gruesome glory!
Note: Once you click on the link, each chapter after the first one has a link at the end to lead to the next part...if you dare!

 The (actually fairly-good) comic adaptation of the awful movie Conan the Destroyer...in Secret Sanctum of Captain Video!
...and the so-so comic adaptation of the equally-awful flick Red Sonja in Heroines! and Secret Sanctum of Captain Video!
But That's All in the Past!
What (or Who) Will be the Thanksgiving Turkey for 2025???
Find Out...Next Week!!!

Saturday, November 8, 2025

Space Hero Saturdays FLASH GORDON by Dan Schkade

There's currently a lot of new Flash Gordon material from several different publishers...


...but the one that's a must-see is the hardest to find!
Yes. visually, it's not the minutely-detailed Alex Raymond/Austin Briggs/Mac Raboy/Al Williamson "classic" series (which, for the record, I revere)!
But it is a stylized semi-reboot that King Features decided to implement after almost 20 years of reprints!
I'm gonna give you an analogy...
If the original Flash Gordon was the Neal Adams/Jim Aparo/NormBreyfogle Batman...
...the current Flash is the Bruce Timm version!
Are you gonna tell me you don't like (if not love) Bruce Timm's take on the Caped Crusader???
He's visually-different, but incredibly-respectful to the "classic" vision!
That's the near-impossible feat Schkade's pulling-off six days a week...and Sundays!
Dan believes everybody knows the basic premise, and if you've seen the 1980 movie...
(and/or the first Buster Crabbe serial)...
...you know the basic plot!
The series follows-though with the history of Mongo shortly after Ming's fall, and carries on from there.
Here's a link to a superb interview with Dan from The Comics Journal.
And here's a link to Schkade's own feed on BlueSky, where he not only posts the strips every day, and offers backstory, but also interacts with the audience!
He goes the extra mile because he loves the series and wants it to find as big an audience as possible!
So do I!
Sadly, too few newspapers are carrying the strip.
So hit those links and/or go directly to Comics Kingdom!

Friday, November 7, 2025

Friday Fun HARRY HOTDOG "Peevy Over TV"

He's not a dachshund, but a generic canine with no self-control...
...who just can't understand what's going on with the then-"newfangled" tech known as "television"!
For those under 70, when TV was introduced to the American public in the early 1950s, it featured news, old movies, and low-budget original programming which this never-reprinted story from Magazine Enterprises' Hot Dog #1 (1954) aka A-1 #107 satirizes!
If you're wondering why the comic has two titles and numberings, let me explain...
Like Dell's Four Color ComicsA-1 was an anthology title which served as a tryout platform for various concepts, so it had both the strip's numbering and the title's numbering.
That way, if the strip didn't sell well, the publisher wouldn't have to pay for another second-class mailing permit (which was required for each title published) for a new series!
Numerous ME series were published this way, including Cave GirlI Am a CopTrail ColtManhuntGhost Rider, and Thun'da!
This issue was the first of four Harry Hotdog-starring issues!
Writer/Artist George Crenshaw began as an animator for Walt Disney, then MGM before going to comic strips and books.
Besides being a longtime "ghost" on Dennis the Menace, he created his own long-running strip, Belevdere, about (surprise) a dog...but not an anthropomorphic one like Harry!
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Thursday, November 6, 2025

Reading Room STUART TAYLOR IN WEIRD STORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL "Waterloo"

...today, we see how Stuart and his mentor, Dr Hayward, changed the course of history!
Bet you didn't know time-travelers with ray guns helped defeat Napoleon!
That's just one of the time-lost secrets found in this Sy Reit-illustrated tale from Fiction House's Jumbo Comics #25 (1941), published almost a year before we entered an already-ongoing World War II!
At that time, almost everyone felt we'd be entering the war sooner or later.
The only questions were "when?" and "why?", which were answered on December 7th, 1941, when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.
The rest...as we say...is history!
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Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Best of Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CHRONICLES OF GENGHIS GRIMTOAD

I'm Sure a Lot of You are Going...WTF???

It's the story of the heroic and handsome Prince Erik, the heroic and beautiful Princess Jade (his MILFy mother...don't get any ideas!)..and the decidedly un-heroic and...well...toadlike, inept sorcerer's apprentice Genghis Grimtoad!

Written by Alan Grant & John Wagner and illustrated by Ian Gibson, it was originally-published in Marvel UK's bi-weekly anthology magazine Strip (their counterpart to American Marvel's Epic Magazine), it appeared in the entire 20-issue run, but remained unfinished since the magazine was cancelled before the strip was scheduled to finish several issues later!
However, due to public demand, Marvel UK gathered up the published storyline, added in the unpublished material and issued it as a graphic novel!
We presented the entire rarely-seen-in-America tale here...
Take Robert E Howard, JRR Tolkien, and Terry Pratchett and toss in talking toads, this is what you get!