Monday, January 15, 2024

Monday Madness DOC SAVAGE COMICS "Polar Treasure"

Our current arctic blast reminded me of the setting of an early Doc Savage novel...
...which was condensed into the shortest comics adaptation of any of the Man of Bronze's "supersagas" (as Phillip  Jose Farmer refers to them) we've ever seen!
Two notes:
1) the flying man on the cover is Ajax the Sun Man, who had his own strip in the book.
(Ajax is not in the Doc Savage tale.)
2) the story may be NSFW due to racial stereotypes common to the 1940s.
The first few issues of the 1940s Doc Savage Comics condensed and adapted Doc pulp novels.
This issue (#3 from 1941) took the 1933 pulp tale "Polar Treasure" and fit it into only eight pages!
Both writer and artist of the adaptation and cover are unknown.
Lester Dent wrote the original novel under the "Kenneth Robeson" house pen-name.
Trivia: both the original and paperback editions of the novel are #4 in their respective series.
Cover by Walter M Baumhaufer
Cover by Lou Feck or James Avati or Frank McCarthy
(After the first novel, "Man of Bronze", Bantam Books reprinted the stories out of original publication order, going with what they felt were the most exciting tales first.)
Bookmark us (if you haven't already) since we have a lot of cool never-reprinted material coming up this year!

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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Visit Amazon and Buy...

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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