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Friday, June 11, 2010

The Metamorphosis of the Gkmloooms (1952) by George Evans


Fawcett’s “World of Fear” showcased a lot of top talent – like the underappreciated George Evans, and featured some genuinely creepy stories that would not have been out of place over in the EC horror comics. This tale presents Atomic Surgery at its most disturbing. Poorer summer blockbuster movies have been made out of slimmer ideas than this.


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World of Fear #3, ©Fawcett
Art by George Evans



Centenary of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s Birth

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (June 11, 1910 – June 25, 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, marine biologist and ocean explorer, known for his extensive underseas investigations. He was co-inventor of the aqualung which made SCUBA diving possible (1943).

Cousteau the developed the Conshelf series of manned habitats, the Diving Saucer, a process of underwater television and numerous other platforms and specialized instruments of ocean science. In 1945 he founded the French Navy's Undersea Research Group. He modified a WWII wooden hull minesweeper into the research vessel Calypso, in 1950. From Today In Science History

Here’s salute to the great man with a showcase of covers from our favorite undersea adventure series:


SubHuman is © M. Ryan and M. Schultz. All art © M. Schultz





Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Blank! by Angelo Torres (1956)



A nice little tale with art by Angelo Torres who is still going strong more than 50 years after this story was published. This would have been from towards the start of Torres' career and was probably knocked out over a weekend with the help of rest of the ‘Fleagle Gang’, including Al Williamson (layouts?; e.g., panels 3 & 4, page 2) and Frank Frazetta (figure work?, especially on Dora, e.g., bottom of page 2).


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Strange Stories of Suspense #12 (Dec., 1956), © Marvel Comics
Art by Angelo Torres
Things don’t look too good for the professor. Perhaps the young lovebirds should have given the old guy a better alibi than "there are blanks in my memory” to explain their ‘disappearance’!

Monday, May 31, 2010

Robin Dies At Dawn! (Batman, 1963)



One of the great 1960's iconic DC covers for an otherwise dopey story. The editors must have released how good the cover was because they tried to tie three otherwise separate stores in to a 3 part ‘epic’. As we saw two days ago, the ‘Ant-Man’ story (part 1) has little to do with this story (part 2). Part 3 has a brief flashback to part 2, but is mostly about Batman catching bad guys while wearing a gorilla suit.


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Batman #156 (June, 1963) © DC Comics
Script by Bill Finger; Pencils by Sheldon Moldoff; Inks by Charles Paris


Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Hero of 50,000,000 B.C. (1965)










Tale of the Unexpected #90, Aug.-Sept., 1965, © DC Comics
Script: Dave Wood; Art George Roussos



Discovered This Day: Krypton

Morris William Travers (Jan 24, 1872–Aug 25, 1961), was an English chemist who, while working with Sir Willam Ramsay in London, discovered the element krypton (30 May 1898). The name derives from the Greek word for "hidden."



It was a fraction separated from liquified air, which when placed in a Plücker tube connected to an induction coil yielded a spectrum with a bright yellow line with a greener tint than the known helium line and a brilliant green line that corresponded to nothing seen before. link

To make a long story short, after Phantom Girl finds an ancient tablet at an archaeological project on a little island in the Atlantic Ocean in the 30th century, the LSH split into two teams & set off in Time Bubbles to Earth & Krypton's “remote past” to investigate “The War Between Krypton and Earth”.



As it turns out a group of Kryptonian scientists set up shop on Earth because they were persecuted back home.



Too bad the uninhabited Earth had already been colonized by the Vruunians who had established a town called Atlantis. After the "Civil War of the Legion" that saw the two teams taking sides with their new friends, came this inevitable ending after Brainiac 5 uses "artifical evolution" to turn the Atlanteans into mermen:

LSH & Superboy © DC Comics