Friday, May 3, 2013

IRON MAN 3

With Free Comic Book Day tomorrow, it's a great weekend to be a comics fan!
See it in 3-D if you can.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

YouTube: Iron Man & the Mandarin: the Early Years!

Art by Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky
It took almost 50 years, but Iron Man finally gets a crack on the big screen against The Mandarin.
But, the Golden Avenger battled his arch-enemy several times in his first screen appearances on the 1960s Marvel SuperHeroes Show, based on scripts by Stan Lee and art by Don Heck and Gene Colan (with a few inserts of Jack Kirby's art)
Art by Don Heck

(Yes, the subtitles are non-removable, but they're the cleanest copies I could find.)

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Reading Room: TIME TRAVELERS "Merlin and the Motorcycle Knights"

The previous Time Travelers tale left "serious" sci fi behind...
...and this one tramples it into the ground.
If Tom Refield looks too young to have been an officer in World War II, remember this story was published in 1950, only five years after the end of WWII, so the idea of Tom serving in an Allied unit less than a decade earlier isn't unreasonable!
Written by Richard Hughes and illustrated by Ken Bald, this story from Operation: Peril #3 (1950) enters straight fantasy with the introduction of Merlin (non-magical and surprisingly traitorous) and King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.
Next issue introduces alien menaces and an ongoing emphasis on space opera.
Despite this, the series' title will remain "Time Travelers" for the entire run.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Reading Room: SPACE SQUADRON "Terror from the Deep"

Let's blast-off for excitement (if not scientific accuracy) in the year 2000...
...as the Space Squadron journeys to the "water world" of Neptune!
Until the Voyager 2 flight in 1989, little was known about Neptune except for it's size and color, so sci-fi went all over the place speculating about what lay under the bright blue atomosphere.
Because of the name, derived from the Roman god of the sea, most tales (like this one) portrayed the planet as an aquatic world with a breathable atmosphere and amphibian, reptilian, or fish-like inhabitants.
The writer and artist for this tale from Atlas/Marvel's Space Squadron #3 (1951) are unknown to me, though in the scripter's case, it might be best to remain anonymous.