Chi-Com Crushing with The Duke! CRAZY, MAN, CRAZY! "Bloodshot Alley"

Technically, this is a Cold War adventure starring the legendary John Wayne...

...and though Blood Alley didn't have a comic adaptation, it did have a never-reprinted comic parody...penciled and inked (and possibly written) by none other than Jack (King) Kirby!
Warning: May be NSFW/NSFS due to ethnic stereotypes common to the era.

Appearing in Charlton's Crazy, Man, Crazy V2N2 (1956), this piece makes us wish Kirby had done some serious John Wayne comics and/or even more humor work!

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Sincerest Form of Parody
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Russkie-Smashers LARS OF MARS "Terror from the Sky"

Commies and atomic weapons!

As the Frank Sinatra song says, "They go together like Love and Marriage..."

...as the guy who doesn't just portray a Martian on TV, but is a Martian playing an actor playing a Martian on TV while fighting crime in real life (got that?) discovers...

Could this be an attempt to set up an ongoing Lex Luthor-esque arch-enemy (but with lots of hair) for our hero in this tale from Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #10 (1951)?

The duo who created this short-lived series had a lot of collective experience with the Last Son of Krypton! Writer/editor Jerry (Superman) Siegel and and artist Murphy (Buck Rogers) Anderson (who did a lot of work on Superman during the Silver and Bronze Ages) incorporated a lot of Man of Steel-style story elements.
BTW, Raskov returns next issue with even more super-scientific weapons.
And, yes, the irony of a guy from the "Red Planet" battling the"Red Menace" of Communism doesn't escape us...

Trivia:

The cover paintings for both issues of Lars of Mars were painted by Allen Anderson, who was not related to interior artist Murphy Anderson!

Here's a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"-style factoid (done in only four degrees)...

1) Ziff-Davis also published a short-lived adaptation of an actual sci-fi tv series, Space Patrol, illustrated by Bernie Krigstein.

2) Krigstein illustrated the first issue of another Ziff-Davis sci-fi series: Space Busters!

3) Bernie was replaced on interior art for the second (and final) issue of Space Busters by...Murphy Anderson!

4) Allen Anderson did the painted cover for the Space Busters issue illustrated by Murphy! (Norm Saunders had painted the first issue's cover!)

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MARTIANS! MARTIANS! MARTIANS!

Comic Collectibles Shop

featuring the covers of both issues of Lars of Mars!

Russkie-Smashers PHANTOM LADY "Man the Kremlin Applauded!"

We showed a tale where a different heroine battling Nazis became Phantom Lady battling Russkies...

...but here's an all-new story featuring our stalwart all-American heroine!

Script for this tale from Ajax-Farrell's Wonder Boy #17 (1955) is probably by Ruth Roche.

However, the art is not by Matt Baker (who had left the Iger Studios).
While competent, the art, by nameless Iger Studio staff artists, is hardly the classic cheesecake we've come to expect of Phantom Lady!

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Phantom Lady

TPB Reprinting the Complete Golden Age Fox Comics Series, Mostly Illustrated by Legendary Good Girl Artist Matt Baker, and with a New Cover by Current Good Girl Artist Adam Hughes!
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Russkie-Smashers PLASTIC MAN "Trio of Tyranny"

What does comics legend Jack Cole's best-known creation look like without Jack Cole?
Like this never-reprinted cover by Quality Comics stablemate Blackhawk's Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera, and the following never-reprinted story by scripter Dick Wood and illustrator Charles Nicholas!

This tale from Quality's Plastic Man #50 (1954) was typical of the direction the book took after Jack Cole left.

Plas and sidekick Woozy battled Commies (as we also showed HERE), monsters, and aliens in the lead stories by a plethora of writers and illustrators while the rest of the book was filled with reprints of Jack Cole's earlier tales.
A couple of issues later the book went entirely reprint (except for new covers and one-pagers) until it was cancelled with #64 when Quality closed its' doors and sold its' inventory (both published and unpublished) to DC in 1956.
DC continued publishing Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs and the short-lived Robin Hood Tales and left the other characters and strips unused until the mid-1960s when Plas was revived in 1966 in all-new stories in a short-lived series!
(Note: around the same time, IW/Super Comics reprinted several issues of Plas's Golden Age book since they had purchased the actual printing plates from a printer where they had been abandoned by Quality. The timing appears to have been a coincidence.)
Since then, he's been revived and revamped several times in the humorous spirit of Jack Cole by a variety of creatives including Kyle Baker and Phil Foglio, and eventually incorporated into the DC mainstream universe...whatever its' current incarnation is as of this year!

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Plastic Man 80-Page Giant

Featuring classic tales from each of his eras (Golden Age/Silver Age/Bronze Age)
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Russkie-Smashers YOUNG MEN COMICS "Captain America Turns Traitor!"

Last Time, We Presented a Captain America Pastiche...

...This Time, He's the Real Deal!

(At least 1950s readers thought he was, though he was later retconned into one of several Cap replacements before the real Star-Spangled Avenger was defrosted by The Avengers!)

The Super-Soldier Serum makes Cap invulnerable to psyche-controlling drugs?

Written by Don Rico and illustrated by John Romita Sr, this tale from Atlas' Young Men Comics #26 (1954) also features Bucky killing an entire Russkie sub crew!

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Decades

Marvel in the '50s

Captain America Strikes!

(Which reprints this story)

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