Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Shroud for the Bride"

This final tale from Phantom Lady #14 doesn't stint on what "good girl" artist Matt Baker does best...scantly-clad women and catfights!

MUCH MORE Phantom Lady action to come!

Next week: Zombies and her first supervillain: Dr Crime!

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"Naughty" Collectibles Shop

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

Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE

John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga

Have NO Fear--Because YOU Demanded It--Doc Savage is HERE!
In fact, the Doc Savage posts have been among the most popular this blog has ever run!
And there's lots more to come...
Material that has not been reprinted/re-presented anywhere else!
Like the color pin-up (from Giant-Sized Doc Savage #1) above and this (from Doc Savage #1)...

Ross Andru and Jim Mooney

and stuff that has only been seen, albeit briefly, on other blogs or websites, but will now be all together on one easy-to-search blog, along with many other pulp-related goodies!

Note: there's lots of currently-available Doc Savage material (pulps, comics, movies, and even radio shows), all well-worth picking up (most of them are in my personal collection), but we'll be showing only the stuff not included in those volumes!

Video Fridays: The FIRST Live-Action THOR!

Thor (Erik Allan Kramer), Stan Lee, and The Hulk (Lou Ferrigno).

Face Front, True Believer!
Though Chris Hemsworth did a smashing job as The Mighty Thor, he wasn't the first choice to personify the God of Thunder in the flesh!
Erik Allan Kramer portrayed a somewhat headstrong Thor in the tv-movie The Incredible Hulk Returns.
Besides the quite-different costume, this version of Thor is two different people, the Thunder God and Don Blake (Steve Levett), a former student of David Banner's (Bill Bixby) who found Mjolnir and can summon Thor from between dimensions by holding the hammer and yelling "ODIN"...

And later the two team-up to...well, you'll get the idea...

Besides being a continuation of The Incredible Hulk tv storyline in a series of tv movies, this was a "backdoor pilot" to promote The Mighty Thor in his own tv series.

Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Condemned Venus"

The scantly-clad femme fatale who freaked-out Fredric Wertham is back in the second Matt Baker-illustrated tale from Phantom Lady #14 which features her behind bars, though not in a womens' prison!  Darn!

MORE Phantom Lady action next week!

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"Naughty" Collectibles Shop

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

Reading Room: THE BATMAN & THE SHADOW "Who Knows What Evil--?" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Art by Mike Kaluta

While tracking a group of counterfeiters, The Batman is saved by an expert marksman who shoots a criminal in the hand who was about to plug the Darknight Detective.
The wounded criminal runs into a dead-end alley...and disappears...with only a mocking laugh to indicate anyone had been there!
A clue from the crime scene leads the Caped Crusader (as Bruce Wayne) to Tumbleweed Crossing, where he meets another visitor...Lamont Cranston, a scientist investigating the water supply, which is loaded with minerals and would be perfect for matching the government's formula for the ink used in printing...money!
Believing nearby abandoned cliff-dwellings would be an ideal base of operations for the counterfeiters, The Batman is ambushed as he heads there, but an antique autogyro distracts the gunmen long enough for the Cowled Crimebuster to capture them.
As he nears the ruins, The Batman speculates about the identity of the mysterious laughing marksman in the autogyro.
Could he be...?

This appearance in Batman #253 came between the first and second issues of The Shadow's bi-monthly Bronze Age run at DC, back when comics actually came out on schedule.
It was a nice tip-of-the-fedora to the long-believed idea that the pulp character was a primary influence on the creation of the Caped Crusader. (A fact confirmed by Shadow historian Anthony Tollin HERE.)
Denny O'Neil was also writing The Shadow comic, and this issue's cover artist Mike Kaluta, who had already done a number of wonderfully-moody Detective Comics and Batman covers, would come to be the definitive Shadow artist for all versions of He Who Knows What Evil Lurks since. (much as James Bama's version of Doc Savage is the iconic one all others have been based upon)

We'll be presenting the other Batman story featuring The Shadow HERE, and the Shadow/Avenger team-up HERE!
And, if you want to see a REALLY strange version of Lamont Cranston, be here next week, when the purple and green costumed version makes his debut!
(Yes, you read that right! Purple and green costumed version! And you can blame Batman for that...)

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for goodies featuring other Silver Age heroes, besides The Batman and The Shadow!