Reading Room Annex: MAN O' MARS

With Battle: LA opening this week, we thought we'd present some of the more memorable alien invasion-themed comic stories of the Golden Age.
First up...the lead story from a 1953 one-shot that combined all the great cliches of space opera in one tight ten-page tale...

These days, this story would be a six-issue mini-series with tie-ins to several other titles.

The rest of the book was made up of unrelated reprints from earlier issues of Planet Comics.
While the interior artist is unidentified in the Grand Comics Database, it looks, IMHO, like either the pencils or inks were by Mort Meskin.
The cover was done by Maurice Whitman, one of Fiction House's more prolific artists.
When the book was reprinted in 1958, yet another cover was done (see left), featuring totally different-looking characters and flying saucers that appeared nowhere in the story!

We included the original cover as part of our Martians! Martians! Martians! retro collectibles line including mugs, t-shirts and other nifty stuff.
There's lots of vintage alien invasion-themed stuff there, as well as at SpaceMan Jet and the SpaceBusters (whom we'll also be presenting in the Reading Room Annex this week), and Quatermass: the Man Who Inspired the X-Files!
Keep checking back for more alien fun..and Watch the Skies!

Reading Room Annex: THE GREEN HORNET in "Proof of Treason" Conclusion

When last we left our heroes...
Why does Mayoral candidate Wilkes Sherman hire a criminal to bomb the home of nuclear scientist Professor Baldwin?
When the police track down the bomber, an assassin ends his life before he can talk.
The Green Hornet, who had followed the police, trails the murderer back to Sherman, and discovers the politician is a Commie spy!
In addition, he learns Professor Baldwin is a former Communist now working for the US, and the Commies want him brought back behind the Iron Curtain!
When The Green Hornet enters the meeting, the assassin tries to shoot him and is KOed by the Hornet's gas gun.
The Hornet then makes a deal to grab the professor and turn him over to Sherman for $5,000. (It was 1953, remember?) As a free bonus to Sherman, he'll "get rid" of the unconscious murderer (whom he turns over to the police.)

This b/w page was the inside back cover.

Curiously, though both stories in this issue are adaptations of radio episodes, this was published a year after the radio series was cancelled!

Art on both stories is presumed to be by Frank Thorne, but there are influences of several other artists, including Don Heck and Frank Giacoia, so it's possible they performed uncredited penciling and/or inking assists to meet the deadline.

The Hornet and Kato didn't appear again in comics until early 1967, when the first issue of their Gold Key series, based on the tv show starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee, was published.

Thanks for visiting the Reading Room. Come back soon!

And don't forget to check out...

The Classic Green Hornet Store

and the kool Green Hornet stuff below from Amazon

Reading Room Annex: THE GREEN HORNET in "Crime at Floodtime" Conclusion

The original art for the cover for this issue

When last we left our hero...

The Boy Heroes were watching a TV broadcast of The Green Hornet's latest adventure as he battles a group of criminals using a captured Japanese mini-sub to loot a flooded town.
Lenore Case, assisting Britt Reid in covering the flood for his newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, was captured after she inadvertently stumbled upon the crooks' base of operations in an abandoned lighthouse.
Casey manages to activate the lighthouse's lantern, in the hopes of signaling help...

You'll note at this point in time, Casey doesn't know her boss, Britt Reid, is The Hornet.
She admires The Hornet and believes he's a misunderstood "good guy", not a notorious criminal.
Within a year she'll learn her boss' secret identity both in the comics and on the radio show.
Speaking of which, most of The Green Hornet comic stories were based on radio show scripts.
This one, from All-New Comics #13, was not.
The scriptwriter is unknown, but the artist is Al Avison.

The Boy Heroes were a group of non-superpowered teens who battled everything from spies to ghosts.
Every comics company had at least one such group during the Golden Age, almost all of them created by the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, including DC's Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos and Timely/Marvel's Tough Kid Squad. and, as we see here, Harvey's Boy Heroes!

Since Dynamite's Green Hornet Golden Age Remastered title is cancelled as of #8, we'll be "filling in the gaps", presenting the GH stories they didn't get around to printing, which will pretty much be the Harvey and Gold Key runs as well as the Dell one-shot.

We hope you've enjoyed your first visit to our new Reading Room Annex.
Bookmark us and visit often.

And don't forget to check out...

The Classic Green Hornet Store

or the kool Green Hornet stuff below from Amazon

Reading Room Annex: THE GREEN HORNET in "Crime at Floodtime"

Welcome to The Atomic Kommie Comics™ Reading Room Annex*!

We're starting off with a never-reprinted Golden Age story from All-New Comics #13 featuring The Green Hornet...on TV...in 1946!
Commercial TV broadcasting did begin in 1946, but coast-to-coast transmission wasn't a reality until 1951, and color broadcasting was over a decade away!
Yet Simon & Kirby's Boy Heroes not only have a device that receives "coast-to-coast" signals, but it's in color as well!
Enough about the technical side! Let's see what a Green Hornet TV show might've looked like in The Golden Age of Television...

Will The Green Hornet rescue Casey?

Can he foil the submarine bandits?

Is that TV set cable-ready or high-def-enabled?

The answers to some of these questions will be found right here...tomorrow!

Same Blog-Time!

Same Blog-Feed!

*Our "parent" blog, Atomic Kommie Comics™presents these tales in their Reading Room, but since many of you who link to us don't link there, we're re-presenting these tales several days after their initial appearance. (Of course, if you linked to ATC, you'd see these stories several days earlier...hint, hint!)

And don't forget to check out...

The Classic Green Hornet Store

or the kool Green Hornet stuff below from Amazon