How Do You Spell "Adventure"? H-A-Z-Z-A-R-D!!!

Mentioning Airstrip 27 in my recent Green Lama post reminded me of their first revamping of a 1930s-40s pulp character...Captain Hazzard!
An interesting combination of elements from already-established characters: wealthy globe-trotting adventurer with team of aides (Doc Savage or Avenger), training in para-psychic abilities (Green Lama or Shadow) and tendency to kill opponents (Shadow or Spider); Hazzard (he doesn't have a first name as far as I can tell) can also communicate telepathically with his men and senses danger with a forerunner of Spider-Sense, due to the fact he was blinded, sharpened his senses, and then had his eyesight restored thru an experimental procedure, but kept the hightened abilities (Black Bat)!
He faced the "Python Men of Lost City", and...well, that's it!
He only made one appearance!
There was no second issue!
Pity, since he had a lot of potential.
At least he left behind a cool cover, which we've digitally-restored and remastered onto a plethora of products including shirts, mugs, etc. at Capt Hazzard: Adventurer for those with an Indiana Jones/high adventure yearning!
But that's not the end of the story...
Much like Alex Ross has done with old comics characters in Project SuperPowers, noted writer Ron Fortier is reviving the Capt Hazzard pulp series, both with a rewritten version of the original novel "Python Men of the Lost City" and a series of new novels.
The books are linked below, and they'd make a great gift set in conjunction with any of our Captain Hazzard collectibles!

"...into the Third Dimension leaps...Captain 3-D!"

In the early 1950s, "3-D" using red and green prints of simultaneously-shot movie footage from cameras a couple of feet apart. (note: sometimes blue was used instead of green, but the stereotype of 3-D is a red / green lens juxtposition.) became the hot format in movies.

When a viewer wore glasses like these they would perceive the two projected images as a single 3-D image!

Taking comic book line art and modifying it to produce a similar 3-D effect was technically simple, so almost every company attempted at least one 3-D book between 1952-55.
Most were 3-D versions of existing comics including Superman, Batman, Tales from the Crypt, Tor, even Katy Keene!
However, Captain 3-D was the Simon & Kirby team's attempt to jump on the 3-D bandwagon with NEW material.

A disheveled, stranger stumbles into a seedy used bookstore.
He hands a book and pair of weird glasses to the young clerk, warns him to never sell it, just as a gunman comes in and shoots the stranger, disintegrating him.
The clerk, Danny Davis, disarms the gunman, who flees and is shot by an associate waiting outside.
Danny puts on the glasses and looks thru the book, which is blank except for an illustration of a costumed man which jumps from the page and stands in front of Danny.
Before another word is said, the associate gunman returns...with allies!
The costumed man defeats the group with ease and tells Danny to look at them thru the strange glasses.
Danny sees the attackers as cat-people!
As it turns out, the costumed man is the last survivor of an advanced civilization wiped out in a war against the Cat People 50,000 years earlier.
Placed in the book by advanced technology, he is brought to life by the holder of the book and glasses to battle the Cat People, who were all but wiped out, but who now have sufficient numbers to try to conquer the world again!

A cool premise and nice set-up, playing up the use of glasses to both empower the hero and perceive villains. (The movie They Live! used a similar gimmick)

Unfortunately, a legal battle involving the 3-D process all but killed the financial viability of producing 3-D comic books, and, though material was already finished, there was never a second issue of Captain 3-D!

We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ feel the character deserves better than that, so we restored him (or at least his cover) to our all-new 3-D Comics & Movies line (in the Comics section, naturally)!

Welcome him back! ;-)

The Not-So-Jolly Green Giant!

Pre-dating the "Ho-Ho-Ho-ing" frozen vegetable spokesman by over a decade, a radically-different, costumed, Green Giant appeared in (what else?) Green Giant Comics #1 (and only) in 1940!
The emerald avenger was secretly Brent Wood, who beat Marvel's Henry Pym to developing a size-changing serum which enabled him to grow to between 15-150 feet (depending on who illustrated the story)!
(Mind you, this story background information is second-hand, as the comic book we photographed and digitally-remastered was "slabbed" in lucite, so we were unable to actually read the stories. If anyone could verify or correct us, please do so.)

Less than a dozen copies of this incredibly-rare comic (distributed only in the New York City area, and now valued at several thousand dollars each) are believed to still exist!
The Green Giant recently cameoed (in flashback) in Alex Ross' Project SuperPowers mini-series which revives Golden Age heroes in the present day.
Hopefully, we'll see more of him in the on-going series.

Atomic Kommie Comics™ has incorporated him into the Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ line, in the Solo Heroes section, where characters with only one cover available to us (at the moment) go! (And since he only had one issue...)
If you're looking for a retro-style graduation or birthday gift for a Golden Age of Comics fan in your life, why not bundle one of our Green Giant goodies  with the Project SuperPowers trade paperback (or the original mini-series issues) for a kool, kollectible present?
It's what I'd want...if I didn't already have it! (one of the few perks of working here) ;-)