Saturday, September 15, 2012

LIFE Magazine's Flawed James Bond 50th Anniversary Special

LIFE Magazine has produced a 50th Anniversary special on 007...
..which I eagerly picked up.
I was severely disappointed with it on two counts.
1) Most of the pix are not from LIFE's amazing archives!
2) It's riddled with factual flaws.
Here's the most obvious...
page 51 "For some reason, in You Only Live Twice, James Bond did not pilot any kind of vehicle--first time ever."
Really?
I guess that's not James Bond in the cockpit of that mini-copter...on the POSTER?
Sure as hell looks like Sean Connery (aka James Bond: 007) to me!
That's the most obvious mistake!
I've found several other mistakes (and a number of omissions), and that's just a cursory run-through!
Sloppy work, kids.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Cover Gallery SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN

Here's a look at the covers for the complete run of Speed Carter: SpaceMan...
Art by Bill Everett
Oddly, though they're really nice pieces of art, they never relate to the stories inside the book!
Art by Carl Burgos & ?
Art by Bill Everett
Art by Mike Sekowsky & ?
Art by Mort Lawrence
Art by Joe Maneely
You'll note Bill Everett (who didn't do any inside art) did two covers, and Joe Maneely (who did all the the Speed stories in the first three issues) did the final cover.

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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Reading Room: SPACE SQUADRON "Blast Revere: Volunteer for Death"

Besides a "future history", Space Squadron also had an ongoing strip set in the "past"...
...1960 (which was still "the future" in 1951)!
While the writer for Blast's never-reprinted debut in Atlas' Space Squadron #1 (1951) is unknown, the artist should be familiar to Speed Carter: SpaceMan fans...Joe Maneely, Speed's designer/co-creator and primary illustrator for the first half of his run!
Blast Revere ran in all six issues of Space Squadron. and it's one-issue "sequel", Space Worlds.
When Speed Carter: SpaceMan came along a couple of years later, series writer/co-creator Hank Chapman ignored everything done in Space Squadron, producing stories that often contradicted "future history" established in the earlier series.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Romney and Ryan...the Secret Conspiracy!

And you thought our comparison of Republican methods to Communist techniques (as shown HERE) was off-base?
HA!
They're laughing at you, America!
Those dirty Conservatives think they're so smart that they can put clues literally right under your collective nose and you won't realize it!
Once Chairman Romney has been "elected", it's "Game Over" for the middle-class.
There will be only the 1% Party and the 99% Proletariat.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Reading Room: SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN "Die, Spaceman, Die!"

Speed Carter gets a new look (again) as another artist takes over...
...as Space Squadron artist George Tuska assumes the art chores.
As we mentioned, everything from uniforms to tech to the look of aliens is re-conceived yet again with the debut of another artist who will do all three Speed Carter tales in the issue.
This story from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #5 (1954) was scripted (as were all Speed Carter tales) by Hank Chapman!
Illustrator George Tuska later became the final artist on the original Buck Rogers comic strip (1959-67) and then assumed the art duties for almost a decade on Marvel's Invincible Iron Man!

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Monday, September 10, 2012

Reading Room: LOST WORLDS "Space Race"

After yesterday's entry about civilians in space...
...we thought we'd take a look at what people over 50 years ago thought it would be like!
This is the sort of story that proves the trope that most sci-fi of the Golden Age was just re-written Western stories.
Replace the horse or stagecoach with a spaceship, six-shooters with ray blasters, and Indians with aliens, and voila, a sci-fi story!
This never-reprinted tale from Lost Worlds #6 (1954) was penciled by John Celardo and inked by Bernard Sachs.
The writer is unknown.

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

NY Times gets sloppy with their graphics

When I picked up the Sunday NY Times this morning...
...I was disappointed that the opening page of the Travel section didn't look like the version seen here on their website.
Instead, the print version looked like there was no Black ink at all in the illustration!
No contrast in the darker areas, and the blue lettering all but merged into the background!
Pick up a copy to see for yourself.
(I took a digital picture of the front page to show for comparison, but any attempt to color-correct for the true value of the newsprint itself actually improved the image beyond the printed version!)
That sort of thing tends to occur when "webheads" (as I call web-only designers) fail to even do a simple color proof to check how their "optimized for web" RGB images will look as CMYK printed pieces.
It's the sort of sloppiness that's becoming way too common these days.
I e-mailed the NY Times with my concerns, and am awaiting a response.