Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Vortex of Scoundrels and Scandal!"

Page 1 is the book's 2-color inside cover.
More Matt Baker "good girl" art in the first of three stories from Phantom Lady #14!
Enjoy!
When this story was reprinted as the cover feature in Daring Adventures #12, the splash page was left out, because the reprint publisher didn't have the cover printing plates, only the interiors for this issue!
FYI: Covers (on slick paper) and insides (on newsprint) are printed on separate presses and combined later.
Because the splash page was missing, the reprint editor didn't know the original title, and renamed the story "The Great Stamp Robbery"!
The splash page above is blue and black, not four-color, because, until recently, inside covers of comics were either b/w or 2-color, with the second color being either cyan (blue, as in this case) or magenta (pinkish-red).
Since the plates for the cover weren't available, a new cover by Joe Simon was commissioned, which was nowhere as nice as the original Matt Baker cover, and features Sandra Knight's boyfriend Ted being much more heroic than in the actual story!
You can see one of Matt Baker's 1950s romance stories at our sister blog True Love Comics Tales.
For those interested in writer Ruth Roche and / or artist Matt Baker, the books below will be of interest.














featuring goodies emblazoned with cover art that Fredric Wertham railed against in Seduction of the Innocent.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Reading Room: THOR: GOD OF THUNDER "Buddha's Golden Hoard"

Note that the Real Thor has white hair on this page, but red hair on page 3
The third appearance of the Golden Age Thor was presented HERE.
We now present his fourth tale.
Note: there are Asian stereotypes common to the 1930s-40s in this tale.
Definitely not Politically Correct, so this story may be NSFW.
Penciled and inked by Dan Gormley, this was the longest story of the Golden Age Thor's run.
Gormley's version discarded all the accouterments (helmet, cape, long hair) of the mythological god, and Grant's blonde hair is now red.
The final story will run soon.
Watch for it.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Reading Room: THE SHADOW "Eyes of the Tiger"

The Silver Age Shadow can be found here and here.
The last story from the never-reprinted The Shadow #1 (The Silver Age version).
Script by Robert Bernstein.
Art by John Rosenberger.
for goodies featuring other Silver Age heroes, besides The Shadow!
And check out the Shadow goodies from Amazon below...

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Knights of the Crooked Cross"

MORE Phantom Lady action from her first issue...
Classic "good girl" art by Matt Baker.
The writer is probably Ruth Roche.
The other feature in this issue was a Blue Beetle story, which we'll present in the near future.
The Phantom Lady will return...

featuring goodies emblazoned with the cover art from this issue of Phantom Lady.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Beauty and the Brain"

We begin presenting the COMPLETE Fox/Farrell Phantom Lady with this torrid tale from #13, which is her first issue. (Before this, the comic was titled WottaLife and featured funny animals.)
The art was by the incomparable Matt Baker, perhaps the premier "good girl" artist of the Golden Age.
As we mentioned at the top of this entry, we'll be presenting the complete run of stories including her All-Top Comics appearances.
PLUS: while we're not going to do most of the Quality Comics appearances (in the yellow and green ensemble), we will be doing the multi-issue crossover with Spider Widow which ran in both Police Comics and Feature Comics in a one-week daily presentation.

featuring goodies emblazoned with the cover art from this issue of Phantom Lady.