Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Reading Room STRANGE WORLDS "Octopus-Kings of the Lost Planet"

Sometimes the cover of a comic doesn't match the contents...
...until you look closer!
While there is no comic tale called "Octopus Kings of the Lost Planet" in Strange Worlds #2 (1951), there is a text story...
Written by "W Malcolm White", a name that only appears in three text stories in Avon Comics, so its safe to state that it's a pen-name.
The illustrators for the cover and interior spot illustrations are unknown.
Regrettably, the files and records of Avon Comics are long gone, so we'll probably never know.
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Monday, April 25, 2022

Monday Madness STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL "Threat!"

Here's a fascinating tale that makes perfect sense...
...up to the last two panels, when it all falls apart!
Wait...
If Harlow disappeared after the machine merely slowed, why didn't the rest of them disappear after it was wrecked?
Wouldn't the logical thing to do be to insure the machine be kept running at that slightly-lower level?
I suspect writer Carl Wessler didn't think through the consequences of the machine's destruction in this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Strange Tales of the Unusual #10 (1957)!
What's your opinion, dear reader?
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Sunday, April 24, 2022

The Comic Book Trade Paperback You SHOULD have Bought...but DIDN'T!

Remember this spectacular wraparound cover?
This superb, never-reprinted Murphy Anderson illustration encapsulates what made DC's science fiction line in the 1950s and 60s so entertaining!
  • Adam Strange and Alanna! (DC's premiere Silver Age space-going heroes!)
  • Winged Apes! (DC was famous for using apes almost anywhere you could think of!)
  • A ridiculous, physically-impossible image (giant arrow thrown by aforementioned winged [but normal-sized] ape through the Earth) that you just must know the story behind! (Though, sadly, in this case, there's no actual story behind this particular piece!)
Fireside's Mysteries in Space (1980), a $7.95 trade paperback reprint compiled from Strange AdventuresMystery in SpaceTales of the Unexpected, and From Beyond the Unknown came and went quickly through bookstores.
Sadly, it didn't sell well, and many copies were returned to the publisher and pulped!
It's not available in e-book form, and a different 1999 trade paperback, Mystery in Space, doesn't reprint any of the stories featured in this compilation!
When you can find a copy now, it runs from $30 to $100, depending on condition!
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Saturday, April 23, 2022

Space Hero Saturdays AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE "Dark of the Moon"

He was Flash GordonBuck RogersTarzanand Thun'da!
(And he would've been a helluva Doc Savage, if they had done a feature or serial in the 1940s!)
He was Larry "Buster" Crabbe, the first (and many say, the greatest) cinema action hero.
A two-time Olympian (with a swimming gold medal to his credit), Buster didn't even have to audition for Flash Gordon. (He came to support a friend who was auditioning, and the director, who had seen Crabbe's earlier work as Tarzan offered him the role on the spot!)
Art by Alex Toth
Like many other action-movie actors of the 1930s-1950s, Crabbe had his own comic book where he's shown as Buster Crabbe, not "Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon" or somesuch in the tale, and it's assumed that he's actually able to do anything he's been shown doing in his films.
Unlike most of the other matinee idols, Crabbe's comic adventures covered a variety of genres from Western to sci-fi, and even some cross-genre mashups.
(The others, except for John Wayne, were purely Western-themed series.
Wayne, because of his extensive war film work also had Korean War and present-day adventure comic stories in his comic series.)
Though the writer for this wild, never-reprinted tale from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #2 (1954) is unknown, the artists are Alex Toth (pencils), Mike Peppe (inks) and John Celardo (retouching on Buster's face in several panels).

Friday, April 22, 2022

Friday Fun FROM HERE TO INSANITY "Century's Most Practical Inventions"

What could be a better way to end the week...

...than a never-reprinted Basil Wolverton story?
Charlton tried several times to match the success of EC's MAD, both as a color comic and a b/w magazine!
This particular book, From Here to Insanity V3N1 (1957), was comic-book sized, but tried to look like a b/w magazine with "spot color" elements!
The remaining seven issues in the series were the same b/w magazine format as MAD.

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