Monday, September 17, 2018

Monday Madness MAN FROM S.R.A.M. "Madhouse in Hollywood!"

In the Silver Age, comics mixed genres with wild abandon...
...as this tale, which combines no less than three of them demonstrates, albeit a bit ham-handedly!
When the protaganist has to spend half the story explaining his name, you know the writer's really desperate.
Which is surprising since the guy who penned this tale is Otto Binder, a prolific sci-fi writer who not only scripted classic Superman and Golden Age Captain Marvel stories (including The Monster Society of Evil serial!), but also wrote the first Marvel Comics novel, The Avengers Versus the Earth-Wrecker!
But this never-reprinted, Carl Pfeufer-illustrated tale from Harvey's Jigsaw #2 (1966) is so incredibly-silly that it's surprising Binder was so over-the-top!
Personally, I suspect editor Joe Simon rewrote the story, inserting the SRAM = MARS explanation on practically every page.
Note: Though identified as "Jigsaw" in the indicia, the book's working title was apparently "Big Hero Adventures", which appears as a sub-title on both issues' covers and title pages as well as on the original art for the first issue.
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Sunday, September 16, 2018

Design of the Week LITTLE WOMEN

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!
Yeah, it's not the usual comic art we run on kool kollectibles, but Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women is a pop-culture phenomenon, still going strong 150 years later!
The trials and tribulations of Meg, Beth, Jo, and Amy March are still as relevant today as they were then, as the new, updated, movie version opening this week demonstrates!
So, if you're looking for a kool Little Women kollectible for yourself or a significant other, check it out HERE!

Saturday, September 15, 2018

The MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Blogathon is coming to HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950s!

Our Newest RetroBlog, Horror Comics of the 1950s starts off with a SHRIEK...
...as we re-present the complete run of Dick Briefer's third (and scariest) version of The Monster of Frankenstein to celebrate both Halloween and the 200th Anniversary of Mary Shelley's classic gothic novel!
The terror begins October 1st!
Don't Miss It!

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(which reprints in b/w the complete series we're presenting in COLOR!)

Friday, September 14, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Sonic Slayers from Saturn"

I wonder if Gene Roddenberry got the idea for the Ferengi from this tale?
(He would've been in his early 20s, and in the Army Air Corps at this point.
Our military men were among comics' biggest fans.
The four-color mags were cheap, quick reads, portable, and expendible.)
Emmos has huge ears compressed under that turban?
Wow!
Give writer/artist Dick Briefer credit for coming up with consistently-weird menaces for Rex and Cynde to battle!
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Thursday, September 13, 2018

Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Small Fry!"

You can't tell me this isn't a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s...
...with the only question being "who was the penciler and/or inker over Jack Kirby's layouts?"
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.
This never-reprinted story from Prize's Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) is a prime example.
Some of the "camera angles" are easily-recognizable from later Ant-Man stories by Jack Kirby.
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's creators as "unknown", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material pagecount came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases of tale from the 1940s-60s, unknown...
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