Reading Room TIME WARP "Righteous Ones"

As rumbles of nuclear war grow ever louder...

...we thought we'd take a look at a possible result of such a frightening future!

Oops!

Cue Twilight Zone theme...

Written by DC writer/editor George Kashdan (who co-created Tommy Tomorrow) and illustrated by the multi-talented Dick Giordano, this never-reprinted tale from DC's Time Warp #1 (1979) reads like it was scripted a decade earlier in the late 1960s, especially in the teen-agers' dialogue ("Like it was chain-reacted into doomsville!")!

Reading Room BASEBALL COMICS "Rube Rooky Heads Down the Home Stretch"

When Last We Left Our Wholesome Hero...

...under coach Pop Flye's guidance, Rube has developed into a top-notch pitcher.

But even a first-rate hurler needs a great team behind him!

Fortunately, the formerly-mediocre Badgers are inspired by the pitching prodigy and...

Regrettably, there was no "next issue" of Baseball Comics, so no World Series appearance for Rube Rooky.

But we still have this one-shot wonder by writer/penciler Will Eisner and inker Tex Blaisdell to remember...

Reading Room: WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE "Escape to Death"

Yeah, you read that correctly.

"To", not "From".

Don't worry, this s-o-b deserves what he gets in the end...

It's a kool story with superb Basil Wolverton story and art.

But, there's one problem...the coloring.

Basil went to the trouble of doing a number of different alien races, but they're all colored the same shade of green!

(There is one panel with the various aliens colored differently, but even there, the coloring is not consistent.

Members of the same species are colored several different ways!)

I hope that, when this tale from Key's Weird Tales of the Future #2 was reprinted in Eclipse's Mr Monster's Super-Duper Special #8 in 1987, it was recolored to play up the various species' differences.

Reading Room TALOS OF THE WILDERNESS SEA "...to the Wilderness Sea!" Part 1

Welcome to the future...

...which looks a lot like the past, as shown in heroic fantasy fiction!

The story continues...next Friday!

Riding high on the success of the Sword of the Atom mini-series and follow-up annuals which re-imagined the hard sci-fi character in a barbarian adventure setting, Gil Kane (along with collaborator Jan Strnad) was given the go-ahead for another high-adventure series, this time based on a new character.

Planned as a 12-issue mini-series, cutbacks at DC dictated that the already-penciled and scripted first two issues be combined into a one-shot whose sales would determine if the project would continue.

Unfortunately, the unfamiliar character didn't attract a large enough audience (as The Atom had), and only the single, open-ended issue came about.

BTW, if you're thinking the plotline seems familiar, It's because Kane based it on the Biblical tale of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, transposed into a barbaric future!

Reading Room STRANGE TALES "Earth is Off-Limits!"

Once more we open the squeeky vault door...

...(Why are they always squeeky?) and present another long-unseen, never-reprinted tale from a pair of Silver Age legends!

If you're thinking "why don't they just keep transmitting audio and video signals and someone else will hear them and relay the info to everyone on Earth?", remember this was written in 1963.

No Internet.

No personal computers.

No home video (VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray) recording devices.

Few people had ham/short wave radios, and even if they picked up the astronauts' signals, they had no way to tell (or show) the world what they saw and heard.

So, in that context, the story works!

Of course, today it would be another matter...

The Human Torch had taken over the cover and front of Strange Tales as of #101, but the back half of the book still had the sci-fi/fantasy short stories that served as the core of the anthology from its' beginning.

Though the Torch stories have been reprinted, most of the shorts, like this one, haven't been seen by readers since their initial publication.

It's a pity, since they're classic examples of some of the Marvel Bullpen's better non-superhero stuff.

This particular story, from Strange Tales #109 (1963), is by the guys who would co-create Dr Strange in the very next issue...Stan Lee and Steve Ditko!

That would mark the end of the shorts in the back of Strange Tales.

Though The Torch (despite being joined by The Thing) would be displaced by Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. , Doctor Strange would not only survive, but take over Strange Tales as of #169.

(Nick Fury got his own book beginning with #1)