Saturday, July 12, 2014

Reading Room: WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE "Flight into the Future"

"Jobs were scarce after the Great Atom Bomb War..."
They wrote that in 1952!
We haven't had an atomic war...yet.
But good jobs are still scarce in 2014!
The inimitable illustration style of Basil Wolverton just oozes from every panel of this tawdry tale from Key Publications' anthology Weird Tales of the Future #2 (1952).
And, the odds are he wrote the story as well.
Wotta guy!

Friday, July 11, 2014

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

"Theatre THREE is Transformers? Not Theatre TWO? Damn dirty multiplexes!"
As you may have guessed, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opens today.
There's been a goodly amount of 'Net chat about how this variation of the concept works (and doesn't work), and if this reboot will do for Apes what the "soft reboot" (which deliberately made the new version an "alternate timeline" from the original) of Star Trek did for that equally-long running property.
(Actually, Trek is a couple of years older! "The Cage" was shot in 1964 as opposed to 1967 for the first Apes film. Oh, let my geek flag fly!)
Personally, I'm willing to see where it goes.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Before the Dawn...there was the Battle!

Looking over the trailers for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes...
...I was struck by how similar a lot of the concepts were to the classic series' final entry...
...so we're re-presenting the never-reprinted color comics adaptation of Battle of the Planet of the Apes at our brother RetroBlog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video!

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Reading Room: SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

I was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...
...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!
This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!
It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!
The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.
Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.
Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.
Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.
You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

The ORIGINAL Planet of the Apes Tale...MONKEY PLANET by Pierre Boule

You've seen the seven films and both tv series...
...but did you ever read the book that started it all?
Here's the only graphic novel adaptation of the original story...
Read it before you see the movie this weekend!

Monday, July 7, 2014

Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES "A-Day"

Are you scared because you think the world is on the brink of war?
Ha!
Back in the 1950s, we lived with the concept on a daily basis...and even told comic book tales about it!
This never-reprinted tale from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #1 (1950) offered some interesting, and (to some) subversive messages.
Illustrated by long-time pro Ogden Whitney, it shows how, unfortunately, human nature can destroy a potential Utopia...while ignoring how current technology wasn't (and still isn't) up to keeping "cheap" atomic power reasonably safe.
Something to ponder, even six decades later...

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Reading Room: "Weekend on the Moon"

It's vacation time in the US, and if you really want to get away from it all...
..."space is the place" as this never-reprinted piece from Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #11 (1951), demonstrates.
And, it's illustrated by young up-and-comer Gene Colan, who also rendered the never-reprinted adventures of Ken Brady: Space Pilot in both issues of Lars of Mars.
You can read those tales HERE and HERE!
The writer is unknown, but believed to be the book's editor, Jerry (Superman) Siegel.