Saturday, January 13, 2024

Space...Hero??? Saturdays PLANET COMICS Cosmo Corrigan & Norge Benson

With North America currently caught in a deep freeze with major snow storms/blizzards...

...you can stay warm at home and read Fiction House's Planet Comics' two different characters starring in strips set on the frigid world of Pluto!
Unlike most of the deadly-serious features of the periodthese strips played both series as sci-fi sitcoms, starring "heroes" who could best be described as "spacegoing slackers", or "galactic party animals"!
You can read the complete run of the first guy, Cosmo CorriganHEREHERE, and HERE.
Yeah, he only lasted three issues.
Cosmo Corrigan was apparently caught in a black hole and immediately replaced (like the very next issue) in Planet Comics by Norge Benson, who encountered a whole different group of Plutonians!
Norge was a somewhat less snarky (though no less humorous) version of the "Earthman on Pluto" concept shown in Cosmo Corrigan., mixing talking alien versions of both Arctic and Antarctic animals with total disregard to anything even remotely resembling exobiology (or continuity)!
But both strips were fun, and that's all that really matters!
Norge Benson managed to survive for twenty issues, all of which you can read by clicking HERE!

Friday, January 12, 2024

Frigid Friday Fun WEIRD WONDER TALES / STRANGE TALES "When a Planet Dies!"

The current "deep freeze" covering the USA reminded me of the splash panel from this story...
...from Marvel's Weird Wonder Tales #22 (1973), which was actually a reworking of this (literally) kool splash page from a cool story from Atlas' Strange Tales #97 (1962)!
While the art is credited to Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, who wrote it is not entirely clear.
A number of people, myself included, think it's scripted by Kirby!
Bonus: Here's the cover from a previous issue of Weird Wonder Tales that supplied the Dr Druid figure on the reworked splash page above...
Art by pencilers Jack Kirby and John Romita Sr (Dr Druid's face), and inker Joe Sinnott.
Here's the original art for the story's splash page!
A Marvel production artist "flipped" a photostat of the Dr Druid figure from the Weird Wonder Tales cover and replaced the bearded aliens with it on a photostat of this splash page!
No original art was harmed in the making of the new splash page!

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Visitors from Space" and "Space Platforms--Way Stations of the Future!"

Besides comic stories, comic books often ran one-page features like these...
Standard's Lost Worlds #5 Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito
...based on historical or scientific information available at the time...
Standards' Lost Worlds #6 Art by Rocco Mastroserio
...or speculation about future developments, again, based on then-current knowledge!
(I love that third panel, showing spacesuit-garbed scientists on a balcony on the satellite!)
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Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WOLFF "World of the Witches"

...where technology and magic are both considered "dark arts" by the majority of inhabitants of this barbaric future!
Is it just me, or does the Sorceress of the Red Mist remind you of our previous Wednesday Worlds of Wonder feature, the sexy space heroine Agar-Agar, who was also published in the Dracula anthology magazine (and was also written by Wolff co-scripter Luis Gasca under the pen-name "Sadko")?
Or was that eye-makeup thing just a European fashion trend in the early 1970s?

This tale from  New English Library's Dracula #2 (1971) was superbly-illustrated and co-written by Esteban Maroto.
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Reading Room WORLD OF SUSPENSE "When the Creature Escapes"

Is a "sea monster" a mindless animal...or something more?
That's what this story from Atlas' World of Suspense #7, 1957 asks...
Penciled by Al Williamson, inked by Ralph Mayo, and written by a currently-unknown scripter, this tale leaves the matter open-ended, practically begging for a sequel!

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