Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Reading Room I'LL BE DAMNED "Nest Egg"

Here's a sci-fi strip meant for Major Publications' Web of Horror #4...
...but, since that magazine ended with #3, it found a home in Mark Feldman's I'll be Damned #2, a year later!
Note the word balloon coming out of the big black hole in the title lettering where a photostat of "Webster" (the monstrous spider host of Web of Horror) would have been pasted-up.
Instead it's a word balloon coming out of a literal black hole!
Written by Alan Simons, penciled by Steve Hickman, inked by Robert L Kline (1-3) & Dan Adkins (4-6), this never-reprinted tale is an example of the high-quality material in fanzines of the late 1960s-early 1970s, much of which (sadly) has never been seen since the mags were limited to mail order and comics convention sales!
(There were no comics shops, and no such thing as the internet at that time...hard to conceive, I know!)
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Monday, July 24, 2023

Monday Madness MARVEL TALES "Last Man Alive!"

This lovely cover by Bill Everett is sorta true...

...but it's also sorta deceiving!
Read about Freddie Kruger (yep, that's his name)...
So he wasn't the last man alive...nor was he even on Earth!
Why the disconnect between the cover for Atlas' Marvel Tales #153 (1956) by Bill Everett and the story illustrated by Ed Winiarski?
Two possibilities!
1) the cover was conceived and drawn before the story was written, and the tale, done later on, was modified from the basic premise!
2) Editor Stan Lee (who probably didn't write the story) failed to convey the concept of the already-done story properly to the cover artist, and it was too late in the production process to correct it!
Trivia: It's not unusual for a one-shot character's name to became famous for another reason later on!
This character has no relation to the villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise!
Conversely, when Raymond Burr's character in the first Godzilla film, reporter "Steve Martin" was resurrected 29 years later in Godzilla 1985, a certain comedian by the same name had become extremely famous!
Despite that, Burr's character retained the name in the sequel...
BTW, the story's author is unknown and neither the cover nor the tale has ever been reprinted.
This is its' first appearance in 67 years!
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Sunday, July 23, 2023

RetroBlogs' Summer Blogathon Welcomes...the Memory of Bruce Lee!

With the 50th Anniversary of Bruce Lee's passing last week...
And that story continues, tomorrow, at...
Meanwhile, the never-reprinted Silver Age tales of The Shadow continue with our last contribution to the re-presentation of his blue/green spandex adventures at
...followed by another never-reprinted tale of the Bronze Age stories of the classic Pulp/radio version at
There's no summer break for our RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon!

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Space Hero Saturdays FANTASTIC COMICS "Space Smith and the Headless Men of the Gold Comet"

Newspaper comics had Flash GordonBuck Rogers, and Brick Bradford...
...but comic books had the even wilder exploits of adventurers like Space Smith!
Wow!
Dianna's no mere helpless female sidekick, as this tale from Fox's Fantastic Comics #4 (1940) proves!
Fletcher Hanks was no stranger to visualizing assertive women.
His Fantomah strip in Fiction House's Jungle Comics presented a jungle heroine with super-powers on a par with Wonder Woman (whom she pre-dated by a year)!
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