Sunday, January 14, 2024

THEY'RE Here! THE GREEN HORNET! Yes, That Sentence Actually Makes Sense...

...because over 30 years ago, NOW Comics produced a Green Hornet comic series...

...featuring a multi-generational plotline encompassing the various versions of the character, from 1930s radio to 1940s comics and movie serials to the 1960s TV series.

The primary creatives, writer Ron Fortier and illustrator Jeff Butler, did an amazing job both of tying the original versions together, then adding to the storyline with descendants based in the then-present (1990s)!
Sadly, though Dynamite Comics has reprinted some of the Golden Age Green Hornet books, they've shown no interest in repackaging this particular series, which introduced some of the concepts Dynamite's creatives have used since, such as how the 1930s Britt Reid and Kato met and a contemporary female Kato!
We believe that this now all-but-forgotten series deserves to be seen by present-day fans, so we're running the unseen-for-decades series in weekly chapters on our "brother" RetroBlog Crime & Punishment!
Click HERE to enjoy!
Let's Roll, Kato!
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The Green Hornet
(Limited-edition, HTF hardcover produced in 1990 reprinting the initial storyline)

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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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