Thursday, August 11, 2011

Reading Room PHANTOM LADY "Stinging Whip"

At long last, from the issue Dr Wertham vilified in Seduction of the Innocent...
...that fine filly, Phantom Lady, spends a day at the races in this tale from Phantom Lady #17!
Though the GCD lists Jack Kamen as the artist, I suspect he did pencils only, as there's a lot of Matt Baker influence in this art, especially the rendering.
Here's Adam Hughes' take on the cover for this issue, Phantom Lady #17
from the HTF trade paperback Phantom Lady: Crime Never Pays!

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

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Reading Room: JET DREAM "Spider and the Spy"

...in another short, but sweet comic adventure!
It's amazing how much story writer Dick Wood and artists Mike Sekowsky & Frank Giacoia can cram into only four pages!
Gold Key ran very few ads in their books, so they had to provide editorial content to fill out the 32 pages of material.
Issues 1-6 of Man from U.N.C.L.E. had 32-page stories (Yes, 32 pages of story, not 18-22 story pages with 10-14 pages of ads!)
From #7's into of Jet Dream to the end of the book's run, the lead U.N.C.L.E. story ran 27-28 pages with Jet Dream running 4 pages and, if needed, a one page spy-themed text or filler page.
And all these stories were self-contained.
No ongoing plotlines!
No cliffhangers!
You could jump in at any point and follow the stories perfectly!

Friday, August 5, 2011

Reading Room PHANTOM LADY "Soda Mint Killer"

At long last, from the issue Dr Wertham vilified in Seduction of the Innocent...
...The Phantom Lady deals out just desserts in this never-reprinted tale of luncheonette larceny!
Yeah, she killed them, but they deserved it!
The splendidly-sordid, but deliciously-cheesecakey art is, of course, by legendary good-girl illustrator Matt Baker!
The quirky story is probably by Ruth Roche.
And, oddly, it's NEVER been reprinted!
Here's the cover to this issue...
...but, oddly enough, it has nothing to do with either Phantom Lady story,  but it's probably the single most famous example of comic book "good girl" art in history.
And, yes, it's by Matt Baker!
Dr Fredric Wertham described it in Seduction of the Innocent as "sexual stimulation by combining 'headlights' with the sadist's dream of tying up a woman."
And...?
featuring goodies emblazoned with cover art that Fredric Wertham railed against in Seduction of the Innocent.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE (& SPIDER-MAN) "The Future is NOW!"

When Last We Left Our Heroes (in two different eras)...
Art by Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia.
Both Doc Savage (in 1934) and Spider-Man (in 1974) are lured to the same Manhattan building (in their respective time periods) by the same beautiful woman from another dimension.
(Only in comics would such a statement actually make sense!)
The woman, Desinna, warns both of them (in their respective time periods) about the presence of her associate, Tarros, mutated and driven insane by an accident during the testing of an experimental dimensional portal.
Suddenly, in 1934, Tarros appears...
Though the Doc Savage comic had been cancelled in 1973 after only eight issues, Marvel still held the license, and with a Doc movie coming out in the summer of 1975, they did one more new color comic, along with a reprint of the first two issues of Doc's series (which we re-presented HERE), before initiating a b/w magazine featuring all-new stories rather than adaptations of the pulp/paperback novels.
The movie tanked.
The magazine, though a critical success, was cancelled after eight issues.
Doc would make one more Marvel appearance, in 1976's Marvel Two-in-One #21 (which we re-presented HERE), teaming up with The Thing in a similar split-time period story with a notable exception...the two heroes actually met!
Ironically, DC Comics has reprinted both the color and b/w Doc series from Marvel Comics!
(In the world of entertainment property licensing, truth is stranger than fiction, even science fiction!)
However, due to licensing restrictions, neither Marvel nor DC has reprinted the two team-up tales we've re-presented on this blog, nor will they ever do so.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "Other People, Other TImes!"

A mystery at a Manhattan building brings Doc Savage and Spider-Man to the same locale in their respective time periods (1934 and 1974).
Web-Head meets Desinna, a lovely blue lady from another dimension who warns him the demolition of the building will unleash danger, which it does!
Spidey manages to temporarily contain the threat and demands an explanation as to how something that happened during the building's construction 40 years earlier relates to the present...