Sunday, January 17, 2021

Trump Reading Room ARCHIE'S JOKE BOOK MAGAZINE "Profiles in Courage"

Every family has its' "black sheep"...
...even the incredibly-wealthy Lodges!
(From Archie's Joke Book Magazine #73 [1963])
This never-reprinted strip was created during the 100th Anniversary of the Civil War, when Southerners were determined, in fact almost desperate, to rehabilitate their image.
Numerous movies and TV series portrayed the Confederates as noble, but misguided, and in some cases,  objects of humor.
(Hey, if they could make the Nazis funny in Hogan's Heroes...)
The irony is that this was also the era of the creation and implementation of the Civil Rights Act, which brought out the worst in many White Southerners who were terrified at the concept of Black people being on a totally-equal level (socially and politically) with them!
It's also worth noting that, in this era, Republicans...the Party of Abe Lincoln...are the ones defending memorials to the "glory" of the Confederacy!
Truth is stranger than fiction!

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Space Force Saturdays SPEED CARTER "Space Trap!"

"Wow! That's the second biggest robot I've ever seen!"
But, in the 1950s (or the future as seen from the 1950s), giant robots didn't transform into trucks...
This is the sort of story you wish Joe Maneely had ten pages instead of five to play with to allow a couple more pages of kool robot vs spaceship mayhem.
The series continues to play up the Saturnians as the future's equivalent of the Chinese Communists of the 1950s.
This never-reprinted tale from AtlasSpeed Carter, Spaceman #2 (1953) is written (as are all the Speed Carter stories) by Hank Chapman and illustrated by original artist Joe Maneely.
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Friday, January 15, 2021

Friday Fun BLACK ZEPPELIN "The Strip"

Artist Gene Day was best-known for his work on Marvel's Master of Kung Fu and Star Wars books...
...but he had a rarely-seen humorous style as well!
After Gene passed away, his family went through his files and found a wealth of unpublished and uncompleted work, whch served as the basis for the anthology mini-series Black Zeppelin.
His brothers Dan and David, also talented artists, finished the incomplete tales, and his wife Gale served as editor for the project.
In addition, several stories Gene had plotted or scripted, but not drawn, were rendered by friends like Dave Sim and saw publication in the book.
Here's the intro by Gale to this tale...
We ran one of Gene's earlier tales HERE.
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Thursday, January 14, 2021

Trump Reading Room ALIEN WORLDS "Ride the Blue Bus"

Was this the future Don the Con had in mind for us?
Thanks to him, we were edging ever closer and closer to it.
But next week, we reverse course...
This never-reprinted post-apocalyptic tale by writer Bruce Jones and artist George Perez from Pacific's Alien Worlds #7 (1984) has an odd quirk.
Both Toby's friend, Juke, and the unnamed bus driver are illustrated as black/ethnic.
Yet neither is colored differently than the blond/blue-eyed Toby!
Was this deliberate?
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Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LOST WORLD "Fugitives from Volta Vengeance"

When Last We Left the Four Humans and One VoltaMan with a Human Brain...

...now that you're up to speed, let's continue...

Is Bruce's VoltaMan body "Guth" or "Garth"?
Does Hunt make a new bow for him?
Will they head back for New York City?
This never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #39 (1945) offers questions, but few answers!

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