Reading Room ALIEN WORLDS "Few and the Far"

In space, things aren't always as they seem to appear...

...as this never-reprinted tale from Pacific's Alien Worlds #1 (1982) demonstrates not once, but twice...

Admit it.

Writer Bruce Jones and artist Al Williamson fooled you!

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Creatures that Captured Earth"

Do you know the two famous sci-fi stories' plots that were combined to create this tale?

Hint: one original involves robots/androids,, and the other is about cannibalism...

This never-reprinted story by Stan Lee/Larry Lieber and Don Heck from Atlas' World of Fantasy #18 (1959) was based on two classic sci-fi tales...

"With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson, which premiered in Astounding Science Fiction...

...and was expanded into the novel The Humanoids, (and a sequel, The Humanoid Touch, over 30 years later)!

Though never done on film or tv, the story was adapted to radio on Dimension X (which you can hear HERE) and the basic plot was re-used in the classic Star Trek episode "I, Mudd".

The other plot point, involving decoding an alien text to discover a secret agenda, was probably taken from the 1950 Galaxy Magazine short story "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight.

(Note that the classic Twilight Zone episode adapting the tale wouldn't appear until three years later.)

Also note that, while the comic tale was never reprinted, it was redone only two years later by another of Atlas/Marvel's major artistic stars!

We'll have that story on Monday...

Return to the Swinging '60s with Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman!

Well, we warned you...

As part of the Countdown to Halloween blogathon, our "brother" RetroBlog, Hero Histories, will present the complete runs of the 1960s superhero incarnations of Frankenstein and Dracula., plus the first issue of the superhero WolfMan, which was retitled "Werewolf".

If that doesn't scare your pants off, nothing will!

Be here October 1st!

Reading Room ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN "UFOs...Bunk or the Real Thing?"

From the final issue of one of comics' longest-running fantasy anthologies...

Art by "Lou Wahl" (Kurt Schaffenberger)

...comes a tale about an always-popular subject!

Written (as was almost everything at ACG) by editor Richard Hughes using a pseudonym, this cover-featured story from Adventures into the Unknown #174 (1967) was illustrated by Bob Jenney, whose experience with sci-fi/fantasy included numerous movie adaptations like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Frankenstein).

And speaking of Frankenstein, we have a bit of news about a special Halloween treat for fans of Victor's creation...tomorrow.

Reading Room VOODOO "Goodbye...World!"

Yesterday we presented an unusually-odd Silver Age tale...

 ...with a cover that seemed as if was from another story entirely.

Well, it was, sort of.

The story in Ajax's Midnight #4 (1957) was a reprint of a tale from Ajax's Voodoo #7 (1953), which was published during the height of the horror comics boom!

And, let's just say that Ajax's editorial packager, the Iger Studio, was not noted for its' subtle (or even tasteful) stories.

The heavy hand of the Comics Code Authority forced quite a few changes from the wild original version, as you shall see from the splash onward...

Beyond little things like making the duo who are sent into space to spawn the new human race a married couple instead of a pair of unmarried co-workers, the harpies were redrawn as insect-like humanoids (which made a certain amount of sense), and the ending was totally-redone as a happy ending with humanity surviving the alien onslaught!