The term “metaverse” dates back to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash and has been widely used among online gamers and virtual-world nerds for decades. So, it annoys me that the jerk who created Facebook is trying to own the term now, and all this talk about getting corporations and businesses involved is tired old news to anyone who has used Second Life for any length of time.
We went through that years ago, and in the aftermath of all of it turning out to be over-hyped nonsense, a lot of awesome, creative people put their energy into doing something artistic and interesting with Second Life.
You might have heard a lot of negative stuff about Second Life. And you know what? It’s all true. I have seen it all firsthand. But despite the dweebs, dorks, perverts, and pinheads—all of whom I highly recommend you block and de-render—there are people making virtual reality fun and inspiring with immersive art exhibits and live music performances. People gather to read poems and stories, play games, and share new music they’ve discovered. They build fantastic environments and put on dazzling light shows.
They might get together to meditate, hold an AA meeting, ride a virtual roller coaster, or just go shopping for clothes. You would not believe how much time people spend shopping for clothes for their avatars! An entire virtual industry revolves around it. Playing dress-up with your digital dolly is more than a little addicting.
So, it should come as no surprise that Halloween is the season of costumes even in cartoon world. Today I’m sharing a few snapshots of the cool costumes and pretty pixels some people I know are sporting this October.
Suckerberg might still be trying to figure out legs, but in Second Life, we’ve had awesome legs for years. Even breast physics are old news to us. In video games, they date back to 1992—the same year as Snow Crash, coincidentally—and legend has it that some kid worked them out for Second Life eons ago as a project in college. So, work out your basic appendages, billionaires. We got bouncy boobs.
Shout out to comedian Ryan George for showing Second Life some love this month in his recent sketch about the so-called metaverse. Bagging on Mark Zuckerberg is TIGHT.
‘Tis the season to be spooky, so let’s enjoy a horrifying tale.
Back in October 2012, I celebrated the monstrous month of morbidity by sharing with you all the scans I could find of Ray Bradbury stories that had been adapted by EC Comics. You can access them all by clicking this link to my tagged archives. Since then, some delightfully obsessed readers contacted me to fill in gaps in my research and share additional scans. And, oddly enough, several institutions of higher learning now include a few of my Bradbury blog posts in their literary curricula for students.
No, that isn’t the horrifying tale. Use your head!
The horrifying tale for today is called The Coffin. It appeared in Haunt of Fear #16 in 1952, written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Davis, and was reprinted in 1996 by Gemstone, who made so many great EC Comics available and affordable for a new generation. I believe this version also appeared in a rare collection called The Autumn People.
Bradbury’s original version appeared in his first published book Dark Carnival in 1947, and is sometimes called Wake for the Living. If you want a copy of that vintage tome, you will need around $1000. But The Coffin was reprinted in 1980 in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which you can currently get on Kindle for $12, and affordable print copies still exist. Finally, The Coffin was adapted for television as part of Ray Bradbury Theater in the mid-1980s. You can see that episode in the video at the end of this post.
So, without further ado, here is a gallery of this slice of spooky weirdness from EC Comics.
I am a child of Time and Night, and this place will prove my end.
—Morpheus; Overture #5.
Last month’s Big Box of Comics featured Sandman: Endless Nights. This month, thanks once again to this blog’s readers, I filled in another gap in my Sandman collection with the superbly illustrated Overture. While I enjoyed Endless Nights, it didn’t quite earn a place among my all-time favorite Sandman stories, but Overture definitely made my top five. Let me share with you why.
First, the art by J.H. Williams III—assisted in no small part by colorist Dave Stewart—is probably the most awesome art to ever grace the pages of a Sandman story. It has incredibly inventive panel layouts that re-imagine what is possible with the very concept of panels and are perfectly suited to this story’s journey through numerous levels of reality and dreams. Williams employs a variety of art styles for the various realms and characters, even going so far as to draw multiple styles in a single panel, such as the four-page fold-out mega-splash page in the first issue where many incarnations of the Lord of Dreams gather in a single place.
Longtime fans of Sandman since the 1980s might recall the days when the original issues were printed on cheaper paper with more primitive printing processes and the colors often lacked vibrancy. But in Overture, with Dave Stewart’s colors on high-quality paper, the vibrancy is turned all the way up to eleven. Overture is a visual feast that must be seen to be believed.
Second, Overture brings back all the elements that made so many of the original long-form story arcs into instant classics. We travel through all kinds of fantastic realms, meet fascinating characters whose infinite depths we barely have time to explore, converse about weighty and poetic concepts, re-imagine mythologies, and create new mythologies on the fly as only Neil Gaiman can do.
Some reviewers have posted negative comments about the story, but those reviews only make me wonder if the reviewers remember story arcs such as the wandering Brief Lives from the original series. Sandman was always content to spend a lot of time on journeys that at first appeared aimless, was never in a hurry with the build-up, and reached unexpected and often quiet conclusions that left you scratching your head thinking, “WTF was that about?”—until you re-read the entire thing and grasped the meaning of it all.
Some reviewers complain about a lack of dramatic tension, since you know that somehow all of Overture’s complicated plot must eventually resolve into the events of the first issue of the original series. After all, it’s obviously a prequel. But I found the high stakes kept me engaged in wondering how Morpheus could simultaneously succeed on his quest and yet find himself captured at the end, and the outcome was anything but predictable.
One of the joys in reading Overture is how it connects to so many ideas and stories that were alluded to in the original series but were never fully explored or explained. Some reviewers say Overture is a bad place to start with Sandman because it requires you to know a lot about the original series for context. I disagree. I would absolutely recommend this as a starting point, because even though a new reader won’t totally understand all the context, the same could be said about starting with Sandman #1 and saving Overture until you finish the original seventy-five issues.
Sandman always had a lot of unexplained back-story about major events that were only alluded to in a couple of panels of dialogue. Overture gave Gaiman a chance to go back and fill in or expand on what might have seemed like throwaway concepts forty years ago. After reading Overture, I re-read the original series and found a new appreciation for so many small moments. Here are a few examples.
Overture gives us a more complete tale of Alianora, a former love of Morpheus who only briefly appeared near the end of A Game of You. Reading her scene in A Game of You made so much more sense to me after Overture. Likewise, when Morpheus recalls in just two panels of The Doll’s House how he failed to properly deal with a Vortex a long time ago, you know what he meant after Overture.
In Brief Lives, Delirium tells Destiny there are things that don’t appear in his book that contains the entire universe, and there is a single panel which mentions how Morpheus was weakened after some major episode that left him vulnerable to being captured in the first issue of the original series. Both of these brief moments are explored in much greater detail in Overture.
Overture also harkens back to one of my favorite standalone issues: Dream of a Thousand Cats. Morpheus appears differently to different species, such as when he appeared as a fox to the fox in Dream Hunters, and Dream of a Thousand Cats showed that he appears to cats as the Cat of Dreams. Overture explores this idea in its opening pages where Morpheus appears as a sentient carnivorous plant to an alien lifeform, and it also features the Cat of Dreams. Plus, a major plot point centers on having one thousand beings dream the same dream to create a new reality—a central concept in Dream of a Thousand Cats.
Overture builds on the idea of stars-as-conscious-entities from Endless Nights, giving the stars an entire cosmic city you don’t want to mess with, and developing the antipathy Morpheus feels for his androgynous sibling Desire as a result of that story.
You also discover the origin of the weird gasmask-plus-spinal-column thing Morpheus sometimes wears, another item whose origin was only ever mentioned in a couple of panels of the original series. DC Comics geeks know the real reason for the gasmask is that the original golden-age Sandman wore one while he was gassing his foes with chemicals that made them sleepy, but Gaiman took an old idea and ran with it—much as he did with the subsequent Jack Kirby version of Sandman in The Doll’s House.
Those are just a few things I picked up on, and other fans of Sandman will undoubtedly find more. So, as to the question of whether this is a good place to start with Sandman, I say it is. New readers won’t always understand what is going on, but that’s the same experience they get if they start at Sandman #1. To read Sandman, you must be willing to not have everything explained to you, to put together pieces of a puzzle, and to read the stories more than once to pick up all the clues and see how everything ties together. You must also be ready to indulge Gaiman’s love of leaving many mysteries unsolved, and many endings ambiguous.
I loved Overture, and it made me love the original series even more than I already did. The art will blow your mind, the story will deepen your appreciation of the original series, and it works not only as an overture but a coda to one of the finest examples of what can be accomplished in comic books. A huge Thank You to this blog’s readers for helping me add this missing gem to my big box of comics.
Collector’s Guide: Get the Sandman: Overture 30th Anniversary Edition on Amazon in Kindle or paperback formats. It’s a little harder, but not impossible and certainly rewarding, to find all the original single issues in stock.
For Halloween, let’s take our minds off all the stressful current events. It’s time to relax and enjoy some good old-fashioned escapist fiction from EC Comics.
Here is a tale from The Haunt of Fear #6, originally published in 1951 and reprinted by Gemstone in 1994. It begins with a virulent epidemic.
The influenza epidemic eventually reaches the most prominent politician… Wait a minute. I was trying to escape current events! What’s next? Don’t tell me there’s a problem with ballots being improperly handled.
Improper ballot handling AND slow-moving lines of people? Damn it! I give up. Find your own Halloween stories! Reality is horrifying enough for me.
While re-reading the entire Sandman series from Vertigo this weekend, I found this John Constantine trading card from 1994. It had been safely encased in the original sealed plastic envelope for more than two decades now, like some kind of hell-blazing time capsule. So, what the heck. Why not rip that puppy out and put it on the Internet?
Every year, the Burton Barr Library, the main hub of the Phoenix Public Library system, dedicates its first-floor art gallery to a Dia De Los Muertos exhibit. The exhibit presents altars made by locals in remembrance of family, friends, and others who inspired and influenced the altars’ creators before dying. This year’s exhibit features not only tributes to artists like Jim Henson, Salvador Dali, Sylvia Plath, and Shel Silverstein, but also memorials to grandparents, cousins, and co-workers.
The brightly-colored altars contain images and objects of meaning to the departed, from books they loved to food they liked, from memorabilia of their favorite sports teams to images and quotes that meant something to them. Every altar has an artist’s statement about what the departed meant to them on a very personal level. These are intimate statements, and one cannot help but be moved by their candor and affection.
Traditional motifs of Dia De Los Muertos abound: multi-colored paper marigolds, candy skulls, and sculptures of people and animals painted black and then painted over with skeletons. The exhibit always contains a piece where people have written names and messages on bright paper butterflies and hung them on lines stretched below a colorful arch of paper marigolds. I imagine the butterflies are symbols of transformation, and also flight and rising above—a deep contrast to the familiar Halloween imagery of graveyards and haunted houses where spirits remain trapped.
Halloween holds little appeal for me. Halloween focuses on fright and creepiness. Halloween imagines the dead come back to haunt us. Halloween portrays the dead as tortured souls come back from the grave to share their torment with us. Perhaps that is one way people confront their fears of death.
But Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead quite differently. Rather than the dark and gloomy colors of Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos revels in color and brightness. Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead continuing to do the things they loved to do in life. The dead joyously ride bicycles, make art, love their pets, and play musical instruments. Los Muertos are quite happy, and the day celebrates the joy and love they felt in life—and that we felt for them.
So, I like to make an annual trip to Burton Barr to see this exhibit. I always find it profoundly moving in the way it celebrates those who have died. Though tinged with sadness, the altars focus on why we loved those we have lost, and what brought them joy while they were alive. This year, I took my camera phone to snap a few shots for this blog, but then had second thoughts.
Instead, I took one of many copies of the Lakota prayer, scanned below, from one of the altars. I did not know Carole, but she worked in the public library system here, and worked in libraries all her adult life. Her multi-level altar—created collaboratively by friends, family, and co-workers—includes a diorama of Carole in skeletal regalia seated in a comfortable chair, watching her favorite sports team on television, surrounded by shelves of books and the pets she loved in this life. Above this diorama is a poem composed for her. It tells of her life and her eventual death from cancer. It mourns her passing but celebrates her life. If, as the mythology of Dia De Los Muertos says, the dead do gain permission one day each year to visit their living loved ones, then I have no doubt Carole would be touched to find the exhibit made in her honor. I found the following verse much more meaningful than any spooky and scary Halloween imagery.
In June, to promote their inclusion as award nominees by the Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance, the creators of Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter made a preview of their work available. We read it, were immediately hooked, and ordered the book. One reviewer on Amazon has compared the artwork to Mike Mignola’s style on Hellboy, and we will agree that if you like Hellboy then you will love Witch Hunter.
The story begins with the humiliation of poet Robbie Burns, a historical figure Witch Hunter brings to life in fiction. Soon, Burns stumbles across a pagan ritual in an abandoned church, a ritual matched in its sensuality only by its pure evil. There, Burns is rescued by a pair of experienced dispatchers of hellish hordes. And so begins his adventure. (Burns composed a horror poem you may know: Tam O’Shanter, first published in 1791. It serves as the inspiration for this tale.)
Did we mention how much we love the artwork in this book? Let us say it again, to give artist Tiernen Trevallion his due. After all, writers Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby did win the Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance ‘Best Writer’ awards at the Glasgow Comic Convention, Beeby won ‘Best New Writer’, and the book itself won ‘Best Graphic Novel’. But it’s Trevallion’s artwork, along with Jim Campbell’s lettering, that brings the rollicking script to life for us on the page.
You may recognize co-author Gordon Rennie from his work on Rogue Trooper, a classic 2000AD series we have featured on this site. So, if you are a fan of that unique Scottish comic-book sensibility which brought readers in the States such popular writers as Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, or if you are a fan of 2000AD comics in general, that’s just one more reason to read Witch Hunter.
Our favorite character is Meg: tough as nails, quick with profanity, great with a crossbow, and seemingly unafraid to ride into the very mouth of hell itself to do battle with the demonic forces of the underworld.
Meg stands in sharp contrast to the vacuous ladies Burns pleasures himself with in the opening pages. She’s every bit an action hero with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, and her inclusion in this tale endears us to it all the more. And to think that Meg was merely the noble horse in the original Tam O’Shanter!
Fast-paced adventure with an outstanding cast of leading characters fighting the hordes of hell make Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter an enjoyable and unforgettable read. We look forward to more work by these creators and from Renegade Arts Entertainment.
Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman – Dark New Year is a new digital comic available FREE at ActualityPress.com and DriveThruComics.com. This free issue introduces new readers to the character in an interesting way. From page one, we know she has a hit to carry out. But on the way, she travels through a limbo where she confronts an abusive figure from her past.
We enjoyed this action-based approach to learning about a character’s background. It got us involved with the story and with her. We’d love to read more from this creative team to see where they take this unusual story.
Cabra Cini is a bad-ass, and the authors seem determined to subject her to some pretty horrifying events to test her mettle. The free issue of Dark New Year is a great place to jump on board, meet the character, and begin what promises to be an exciting adventure. Here are the first three pages to preview!
Written by Sam Johnson (Geek-Girl, The Almighties). Illustrated by Bruno Letizia, Nathan Ramirez, and R.D. Ricci (Ligeia the Vampire, Reborn, The Shadow of Rivene) , published by Actuality Press. Suggested for Mature Readers. 17 pages.
When Rick Veitch began writing Swamp Thing, he’d already drawn many issues of it. In his first issue as writer, he continued several of Alan Moore’s themes, like the Parliament of Trees and the psychedelic effects of eating Swampy’s tubers. While Swamp Thing descends into the green realm of the Parliament, Abby takes a weird hallucinogenic trip in issue #65. The events here kick off the main theme of Veitch’s run: Swamp Thing and Abby’s attempts to have a baby, and the unusual role John Constantine plays in that endeavor.
Many before us have sung the praises of the Len Wein and Berni Wrightson stories that kick off the first volume of Swamp Thing stories. Have you seen the first issue of Swamp Thing? We might be in the minority, but the first chunk of issues where Swamp Thing takes on some pretty generic monsters seem like merelyt a warm-up for further greatness.
Even the Batman crossover in #7 fails to get our engines revved. But then: issue #8 comes along. Swamp Thing encounters a demon in a cave on the outskirts of a small town, giving us a dark visual feast that brings the series to life for us. The Lurker in Tunnel 13 may be the first of the early tales that hints at what Swamp Thing would later become in the 1980s –the first appearance of Arcane notwithstanding. It’s cosmic, satanic, horrific, and sports one of our favorite Wrightson covers.
Wein and Wrightson also present a great story about a stranded alien trying to repair his ship and return to the stars. Making this freakish beast sympathetic and compassionate reminds us that monsters and heroes come in many forms.
Before leaving the book, Wein & Wrightson deliver the consummately creepy Man Who Would Not Die, the first return of Arcane from the hell where he deserves to stay. The confrontation between Arcane and Swampy in a graveyard may be our favorite artistic moment of Wrightson’s legendary contributions.
Nestor Redondo steps into Wrightson’s shoes without missing a beat, working with Len Wein on three issues before David Michelinie takes the reins. We have some other images of Nestor Redondo’s Swamp Thing art if you’d like to check them out.
Michelinie and Redondo seem to lose steam towards the end of their contribution, and what happens next is a bit of a disappointment. The creative team changes, and the book loses much of its horror appeal quickly. Readers must have felt the same way at the time, as Swamp Thing would soon be cancelled. Swamp Thing’s gambit to revert to a normal Alec Holland once again just doesn’t work for us, and it’s been more or less ignored in subsequent Swampy stories.
The end of the volume is a bit of a mess, but the early stories have definite high points. We sold our collection of VG+/FN issues — almost a complete run — on eBay. But a few of them we would be happy to collect and read again. You can get many of the early Wein/Wrightson issues in Roots of the Swamp Thing reprints.
Having owned both the reprints and the originals, we prefer the originals. Though the printing and color is more crisp and clean and bright in the reprints, the vintage horror vibe feels much more authentic with a well-worn copy from the early 1970s, the smell of tanned comic book paper, and the distinctive original covers.
Rick Veitch took over the creative helm of Swamp Thing after having worked on it as artist for Alan Moore’s stories of Gotham City and Swamp Thing’s space travel, among others. Let’s have a look inside his memorable contributions.
But first, let us mention that a full Veitch collection is nicely rounded out by two Annuals (one with work by Steve Bissette), an odd issue of Secret Origins that covers the Floronic Man (revisited by Veitch in his S.T. run), and a couple issues that complete Veitch’s unfinished cliff hanger.
Recall that Veitch had wanted an issue where Swamp Thing met Jesus, but DC would not publish it. Frustrated, he left, but the resolution by the next creative team works well. With brilliant Totleben covers and the return of Tom Yeates’s art to these pages, Veitch’s long saga of the unborn child of the Swamp Thing comes to a satisfying conclusion.
Veitch maintains several strong motifs from the Moore saga. Swamp Thing’s travels through the surreal sentient plant dimensions of the Green take on new life with the Parliament of Trees. The Parliament reveals Swampy is one of a number of plant-like avatars of the Green. Meanwhile, Abigail Cable, now Mrs. Swamp Thing, starts taking more psychedelic trips by eating the tubers of the Swamp Thing. Whoa, dude.
We made some scans of one of our favorite Veitch issues where Swamp Thing thinks deep thoughts by growing a giant plant brain. Veitch seems to have fun revisiting the drug-fueled aesthetics of underground comix of the 1970s, and the reader gets many a lavish visual treat.
Some lucky Swamp Fan picked up this collection from us on eBay, but you can usually find Rick Veitch issues of Swamp Thing in stock. You want issues #65-87, and go all the way to #91 if you want the concluding story arc. It resolves Veitch’s two main plot lines: Swampy & Abby’s attempt to conceive a child, and a time-travel saga through the history of the DC Universe.
Somebody got this set from us on eBay already, but wow was it fun to assemble. Writer Martin Pasko, author of more than one minor classic for DC Comics, would leave the series to pursue opportunities in his television writing career. Before he left, though, he set the stage for the team of Moore, Bissette, and Totleben to take over.
The run feels, in many ways, like a television series. With a movie still from the Swamp Thing movie adorning the cover of issue two, it’s likely DC had an eye out for the transition to television success. Pasko gave readers a large supporting cast and many subplots that evolve at different paces.
With demons from hell and evil sea monsters with huge brains, Pasko keeps Swamp Thing largely in the realm of monster-based horror as Wein & Wrightson did in the beginning. A back-up series of Phantom Stranger stories adds to the spooky vibe.
The cover of #6 is our favorite, hands-down. Or, tentacles down. We dug the entire story as Swamp Thing gets stuck on the cruise from hell. A demonic squid brain takes over the ship and turns a masquerade party into a cyclops circus. #6 and #7 are just too much fun!
Judging from the letters pages, readers really loved issue #8, too. Swampy ends up on an island where fantasy and reality become indistinguishable for a group of war vets. Behold the cover, with its skull mountain, jungle foliage, and long-haired lady with her clothes shredded and slipping off. This is pure Hollywood pulp, but delightfully executed.
At the beginning of the series, we found Tom Yeates’ art merely serviceable, but by this point in the series he seems to have really hit a groove. The covers and interior art have become memorable and dynamic.
More damnable demons spring up from the Stygian depths to confront Swamp Thing as Yeates keeps the volume cranked on madness and the macabre.
A sombre interlude with a freakish crystal antagonist begins perhaps like any silly superhero story, but the moody artwork and utter tragedy of the participants makes it a surprisingly moving tale. These two issues feature a different creative team, and Tom Yeates would not return to the interior art. But, dude, crystal alligator. Check it out.
And then, something magical happens. Steve Bissette and John Totleben come aboard and revolutionize the atmospheric, horrifying visual style of the book. While we often sing the praises of the Moore run, these few issues with the same art team demonstrate how much the intensity of that run came solely from the pictures. We lack the words to depict the scope of how stunning these pages are for us, so let us simply leave you with a few to enjoy!
Like we said, we sold our set on eBay recently, but you can almost always get a great deal on these Martin Pasko issues of Saga of the Swamp Thing. The last couple rarely come into stock, but good luck!
Conan’s larger-than-life personality works wonderfully in the first two Marvel Treasury Editions that feature him. These over-sized editions also spotlight the artistic talents of Barry Windsor-Smith. #15 features the Song of Red Sonja, and Smith’s Sonja artwork rocks at Treasury size. Conan would conquer four different Treasury Editions (#4, 15, 19, 23) from 1975 to 1979. Let’s have a look inside the first two!
Before we open them up, dig these back covers. Wow, that Smith one would make a killer poster!
On the inside covers, writer and Editor Roy Thomas gives us a fun history of how he and Smith got started doing a Conan series for Marvel in the first place. Smith contributes some new artwork on a Robert E. Howard memorial page.
Cool! Let’s have a look at these splash pages and stunning interior art.
Dark Horse collected these tales in their recent Chronicles of Conan collections, giving the coloring and paper quality an upgrade from these 1970s editions. But, you really can’t beat reading Black Colossus at colossal size. We also get several bonus pages of Red Sonja being awesome in chain mail underwear.
On a trip to the top secret fifty cent rack here on Mars, we discovered the UK price variant for Creatures on the Loose #36 featuring Man-wolf. The cover claims not 25 cents but 9 pence for a price! Plus, the person at the bookstore used marker to deface the cover and sell it at 6 pence instead. Some collectors focus on these UK price variants, but our beat up copy will probably never be worth more than a couple bucks.
Still, we enjoy this early example of George Perez artwork. We dig his rendering of the unlikely astronaut/werewolf so much that we did a pastel study of a Perez panel from this issue.
This story reads a bit like a television script from the mid-70s, but it offers plenty of chances for gnarly werewolf drama, insane splash panels, and hypnotic light effects. Enjoy this legendary lycanthropic liturgy from the boisterous bronze age!
We discovered the short story “Samurai” in one of our favorite comic blog features: Black-and-White Wednesdays at Diversions of the Groovy Kind. Gene Day’s incredible artwork appears in 1977’s Star Reach #11.
Up from the primordial muck slithers… the Dan-Thing! In his oozing fist he clutches a time capsule: Marvel comic books from 1972! Our muck-stomping friend the Dan-Thing asked that we share these bronze-age beauties with you for education and inspiration.
Welcome to our fourth and final installment of the Dan-Thing Archives for 2013. Today, we crack open the Dan-Thing’s time capsule to discover beautiful artwork on Dr. Strange by Barry Smith. The story uses a tried-and-true plot with our hero assailed by a mysterious villain warping his reality. Smith takes the opportunity to present us with stunning page designs, compelling facial expressions for the good doctor, and a delicately sumptuous rendering of Strange’s mystical doodads, magic threads, and spiritual chill pad.
The “reveal” of the villain may seem a little weak to today’s readers, not involved in the Marvel continuity of 1972. But, Stan Lee and Barry Smith nonetheless deliver a truly trippy confrontation, replete with mystic energies and warped realities. While the World Spins Mad is one of the most satisfying Doctor Strange stories we’ve read in a long time.
Up from the primordial muck slithers… the Dan-Thing! In his oozing fist, he clutches a time capsule: Marvel comic books from 1972! Our muck-stomping friend the Dan-Thing asked that we share these bronze age beauties with you for education and inspiration.
Dan-Thing’s archival copy of Web of the Spider-God came without a cover but is otherwise intact. In fact, it kicks major ass! We didn’t expect much from a beat up old copy of Conan. Fitting, because Conan gets beat up pretty badly at the opening of this story. But we were admittedly just as wrong as Conan’s foes who thought him defeated. This story rose up to rock and roll with the best of them, coming out on top as perhaps our favorite of the famous Roy Thomas / Barry Windsor-Smith classics.
Although we have seen Conan in the excessively awesome Marvel Treasury format, he seems just as much larger than life on these regular pages. We admit a preference for the first fifty issues of the Dark Horse Conan series, especially with the amazing Cary Nord painted look. But the more we discover the classic Marvel series, the more we find to like.
“Gorgolla! The Living Gargoyle!” with pencils by Jack Kirby; “Beware the Hands of Hundu” (art by Don Heck?); “I Was Trapped in the Nightmare World” with art by Paul Reinman; “When the Totem Walks!” with art by Steve Ditko; and a two-page text story, “The Whirlpool of Gairloch.” Kirby cover pencils. Cover price $0.10.
The April 1954 issue of Strange Tales contains four illustrated shorts and one text piece. Early work by Joe Sinnot appears in The Cask in the Cave. Vernon Henkel provides the eerie artwork for the brief but dramatic Garden of Death! This tale, narrated by Death, scanned a bit better than the other tales. Let’s take a look!
This issue of Strange Tales stands out from others we’ve shared with you for a couple reasons. First, Marvel published it much earlier, in 1954. While we do have scans of earlier issues than that, they are admittedly poor quality. Even this one had some pages we just couldn’t bear to post, so you are getting two of the stories today.
Second, the good news: you can get a high-quality reprint of this entire issue from Marvel in hardcover format now, along with issues #21-30 (see our Collector’s Guide below.).
Third, the earlier publishing date means that this cover does not bear the Comics Code Authority stamp of approval. We believe you will find, as a result, a closer resemblance to EC Comics material of the 1950s. It’s rendered less in the embryonic “house style” at Marvel you find just five years later in this title. And by “house style” we mean “copying Kirby’s style and layouts or just having him block out the pages for you.”
But, that is a discussion for another time! Now, crack open the vault and gaze at the wonder of Strange Tales #26!
The Last Stop, art by Gene Colan; Guinea Pig, art by Jack Katz; A Grave Mistake, art by Tony DiPreta. To the Stars, pencils by Carmine Infantino, inks by Sy Barry; It Could Be You, art by Vic Carrabotta.
Let’s set the time machine for 1959! Take a look this week at a stack of Marvel’s Strange Tales. You’ll find fast-paced science fiction stories with an occasional occult theme thrown in for good measure. (Strange Tales ran more horror in the early 1950’s, before the Comics Code Authority nonsense began.) Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby feature prominently alongside other masters of these classic short-form comics.
“I Dared to Defy Merlin’s Black Magic!” with art by Steve Ditko; “I am the Man Who Will Destroy Your World!”; “When the Saucer Strikes!” with art by Paul Reinman; “I Fought the Man Who Couldn’t Be Killed!”; “I Am the Man Without a Face!” with art by Joe Sinnott.
Let’s set the time machine for 1959! Take a look this week at a stack of Marvel’s Strange Tales. You’ll find fast-paced science fiction stories with an occasional occult theme thrown in for good measure. (Strange Tales ran more horror in the early 1950’s, before the Comics Code Authority nonsense began.) Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby feature prominently alongside other masters of these classic short-form comics.
“Last Warning–Evacuate Earth!” with art by Joe Sinnott; “The Creatures From the Bottomless Pit!” with art by Steve Ditko; “Test Pilot!” with pencils by Jack Kirby; “Next Stop–Mars!”; “Trapped in Tomorrow!” with art by John Buscema; Kirby cover pencils.
Let’s set the time machine for 1959! Take a look this week at a stack of Marvel’s Strange Tales. You’ll find fast-paced science fiction stories with an occasional occult theme thrown in for good measure. (Strange Tales ran more horror in the early 1950’s, before the Comics Code Authority nonsense began.) Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby feature prominently alongside other masters of these classic short-form comics.
“Trapped Between Two Worlds!” (art by Steve Ditko); “I Seek the Sea Serpent” (art by Don Heck); “I Was the Invisible Man!” (pencils by Jack Kirby); and “The Man Who Never Was!” Joe Sinnott cover.
A friend mailed us a copy of Penthouse Comix a couple years ago. It has a cool story by Richard Corben. It harkens back to classic horror tales by Berni Wrightson, and puts a new spin on the theme of eroticized underwater adventures. Kevin O’Neill also illustrates a disturbing story in this issue, and even Galactus makes an appearance.
Given the graphic sexual content of most of these stories, we leave them to your imagination, only presenting what we find to be a tasteful story of mermaids and mortality.
Collector’s Guide: From Penthouse Comix Vol 2 #14, August 1996. Story & Art by Richard Corben
, Vol. 3
Mars Will Send No More 