Separated at Mirth: Great Ball's O' Fire!

Well, maybe not exactly Separated at... "Mirth"... unless your idea of fun is being under attack by fireballs - but, for any of you Fireball Fanciers out there, we humbly submit... 

DONALD DUCK #101 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: (May, 1965)...

...And WONDER WOMAN #99 (DC Comics, Cover Date: July, 1958).

One thing they DO have in common is that both are breathtaking images!  DONALD DUCK #101 is by Carl Barks.  WONDER WOMAN #99 is by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.  Each are the most classic artists for their respective characters - and it certainly shows here!  

And, while not a comic book cover, I'd be remiss if I didn't include this striking image from LOST IN SPACE, "Condemned of Space" (1967), with the Jupiter 2 narrowly avoiding a catastrophic collision... with guess what?!  

All three are guaranteed to "light up your life" in their own unique ways!  

I’m Not an Artist (...or Colorist), But… WHAT Massive Fist?!

I am not an artist, nor am I a colorist.  If I WERE a colorist, I would be a worse colorist than I would be as an artist.  

It's not just a matter of specific skills of art and coloring that I have never possessed, it's also my admitted lack of creative imagination in those two areas!  

Oh, I have an almost limitless creative imagination in the area of WRITING!  This Blog, my many APA and fanzine writings of yore, and my professional comics work bear testament to that.  But, even if I had sufficient skills in the areas of art and coloring, my work would at best rank as pedestrian, as I have scant (all together now) creative imagination to apply to said work. 

Art is, of course, a matter of subjective taste.  Meaning that while I (and, presumably, most of you) really like things like THIS...

 ...Or THIS...

 ...Or THIS...

...I do allow for the possibility, remote as it may be, that there COULD BE some folks who actually like THIS...

...Even if it's only the artist himself, and possibly his editor!  

But, when COLORING fails, it's pretty much universal!  For instance, take the cover of HAWKMAN #6 (DC Comics, Cover Date: February-March, 1965) and its titanic struggle between Hawkman and a great winged-gorilla. 

Hawkman says: "Got to bring my mace UP -- before that massive fist comes crashing DOWN!" 

MASSIVE FIST?!  WHAT MASSIVE FIST?!  Without squint-staring really hard, do you see any massive fist?  

Quick aside: It has nothing to do with the quality of the digital image used above.  I have the actual comic here beside me as I write this, and the "real thing" looks exactly the same!  

It would seem to be a matter of too much dark brown concentrated in what should be a critical area of the illustration!  

Let's assume there was insufficient room for artist [The Great] Murphy Anderson to position the gorilla's arm and fist elsewhere on the cover, as the dramatic focus of the piece is the gorilla about to smash Hawkman into a fine Hawk-puree! (Sorry, but my keyboard doesn't allow for the accent mark, and spell-checker isn't offering it either!) 

But, perhaps just the slightest bit of gradation in the dark brown might have made a difference, or maybe a better-defined outline of the gorilla's arm and fist to separate it in depth relative to the  gorilla's wing! 

Then again, the coloring techniques of the Silver Age were far more limited than they would be beginning in the 1980s, so I don't have a definitive solution to offer.  

But, that's why I’m Not an Artist (...or Colorist), But… I'm still left to ask "Massive fist? WHAT massive fist?!"

Oh, and for a "massive fist" that you actually CAN see clearly, try this on for massive-size!  

Oh, THAT massive fist! Got it!  

No, actually Superman got it... right in the super-breadbasket! 

Adventures in Comic-Boxing: Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm... Pebbles and Splish-Splash!

Here's a comic book that featured "PEBBLES and BAMM-BAMM"! 

Here's a comic book that featured "PEBBLES and SPLISH-SPLASH"! 

Gotta love this gag from MUTT AND JEFF # 103 (DC Comics, Cover Date: June, 1958), with individual panels enlarged for your reading pleasure. 

So, while in this comic, Pebbles watches Bamm-Bamm go "BAM! BAM!"

We learn that another "Pebbles" went SPLISH-SPLASH"!

Johnny Cash once sang: "Life ain't easy for a Boy Named Sue"!  

Neither, it would seem, for a boy named "Pebbles"! 

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Sixteen: AT LAST!!!

Staggering winded and achy across the finish line of this sixteen-post marathon, it's time to keep a semi-promise I made earlier in this (gasp!) sixteen-count-series... TOP THREE COVERS, finally  - naming a THIRD cover to join THIS ONE...

...Which shared co-honors with the one below, both by Bugs-master Tom McKimson (... and both counting as a single-occupant of one of those precious three slots - yes, I'm doing TWO-INTO-ONE here, but I was never very good at math)! 

And, of course, THIS magnificent Batman cover by Neal Adams! 

An image so strong, so powerful, so awesome, that you don't even bother to question why Batman remains masked... and "pants-ed" for that matter!  

And, while all of these had great stories backing those covers, they were primarily selected on the sheer brilliance of the covers themselves!   

But for that final slot, I find myself looking beyond strictly images, getting into the story it illustrates and the significance of said story - simultaneously noting that the cover is great in and of itself!  

So, without further ado (and "further a-don't", even) my list of  TOP THREE COVERS - in no particular order - is rounded out by (...pause for effect, while we cue the drumroll)...

DONALD DUCK in LOST IN THE ANDES by the great Carl Barks (originally published in 1949 by Dell Comics, as part of their unparalleled-in-comics-history FOUR COLOR SERIES!) 

...But, NOT the original printing as seen above!  No, the one that means much more to me is its first American reprint in THE BEST OF DONALD DUCK #1 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: 1965)!

While it has a little less detail than the original FOUR COLOR cover, I feel the BLUE background served the illustration far better than the garish orange of the Dell version!  You can take your pick! 

But, as I indicated, it was what this version REPRESENTS that makes it special!  

Walking up the corner street to the nearest soda fountain store that carried comics with my aunt (not the one with the nice house - but the "more fun" one who lived off-and-on with us) on a Friday early evening (knowing there was no school for two whole glorious days) and finding this on the rack!  I was so excited, I didn't even WANT a fountain soda!  I just wanted to get this baby home, and leap into it!  

...And finding it to be (what *still is*) my choice for THE SINGLE GREATEST COMIC BOOK STORY OF ALL TIME!  THIS POST can tell you why, and spare me the additional marathon-depleted-effort!   

And so we name THE BEST OF DONALD DUCK #1 our well-deserved and final (whew!) cover number sixteen! 

Now, if you'll excuse your exhausted and beleaguered host, I'm going to completely self-dissolve in a pail of liquid human-goo!  If any portion of me remains, those parts (once congealed) will be back soon!  

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Fourteen: "OG We There Yet?" Part Two!

Yesterday we highlighted DONALD DUCK # 109 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: September, 1966), and its lead adventure story "Og's Iron Bed"... but hold on to your "iron bedsheets", 'cause we ain't done "OG-in'" yet!  

Let's review a few historical facts about this book, and the day I acquired it...

A bi-monthly Gold Key title, as was DONALD DUCK # 109, with a  SEPTEMBER cover date would have been released in JULY.  Therefore, I would have come across this issue in JULY, 1966. 

And, in July, 1966, I would have been delightfully on summer vacation from THIS STRUCTURE...

...Back when it had REAL doors and windows, and no attending dumpsters!  

In those primitive and barbaric - yet, paradoxically, warmly nostalgic - days, comic readers (...we weren't FANS back then, we were READERS - and stop READING on my lawn, ya pesky young'un) were at the mercy of the newsstand distribution system! 

Okay, maybe not as far back as THAT!  We're talkin' 1966 here!  But what a GREAT picture! 

I can count as many as FIFTEEN comics in that photo that are in my collection... one of which I just got last week!  You can probably guess most of them!  ...And, no... I never wore overalls and a beanie-type hat like that! But, advance it somewhere close to 20 years in time, and that could have been yours truly!  Single-digit-age me even kinda LOOKED like that... such an adorable little tyke!  Whatever could have gone so wrong!   

ASIDE TO SERGIO: That last paragraph is an example of the loopy and improvisational typing I referred to in another set of comments!  I just looked at the photo and began typing away, on the road to who-knows-what!  Didn't know any of that was coming... and only the vaguest idea of what's coming next... if that! 

Where were we?  Oh, yeah... newsstand distribution of comic books!  

Most kids looked forward to Saturdays and Sundays - and I was no exception - but MY favorite days of the week were Tuesdays and Thursdays!  

WHY?  Because on Tuesdays and Thursdays NEW COMICS were put out on the shelves and racks of small stores all across the (still safe, but inching toward eventual danger by 1966) town in which I lived.  Not only in my town were Tuesdays and Thursdays what we now call "an event", but anywhere else in my region that traveling to was possible!  By 1968-1970, I would be traveling by bus to the far corners of my region in search of increasingly elusive comics on almost a weekly basis - and those days (and those trips) began in me an interest in bus transportation that led me to being a local bus transit advocate today!  

From other accounts I've noted, the "Tuesday and Thursday thing" was sort of the standard for the release of new comics. 

It was one such Thursday toward the end of July, 1966 that, for reasons long forgotten, I was spending a nice summer afternoon at a nearby aunt and uncle's house, in a decidedly nicer neighborhood than my own - both then and now!  

Their house had a nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table -- the very definition of comfort vs. the "uncovered brick fortress" we had at the back of our house!  Though I really did have many years of enjoying 1960s comics out on that "uncovered brick fortress".  And, on that Thursday in July, 1966, I would have a particularly memorable day-of-same in the "nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table" at my aunt and uncle's house!

Earlier in the day we'd gone shopping. In their local strip mall center there was a newsstand store. As it was THURSDAY, I made sure to check it out!  ...AND WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUND?  

Try THIS...

But even more amazing was THIS... 

And out on the SAME DAY, just like my 1965 experience with UNCLE SCROOGE #58 and THE FLINTSTONES #28, as detailed HERE!  

Only I didn't have to rush through them during my "home lunch period" and go back to school!  NOPE, I had the WHOLE AFTERNOON to enjoy these puppies... or perhaps "ducklings"?  

And, enjoy them, I did!  In the LAST POST, I described "Og's Iron Bed" as "one of the best - and most ambitious - Donald Duck stories of the period".  I dove into it first, and it well and truly lived up to my "future-hype"!  Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl's best collaboration, with the possible exception of their consumerism-satire story in THE JETSONS #2 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: April, 1963), discussed somewhere in the depths of THIS POST! 

However, THE BEST OF UNCLE SCROOGE AND DONALD DUCK #1 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: November, 1966) was nothing short of a magnificent gift from the Comic Book Gods!  

As the cover says, it did indeed reprint "Two Famous Disney Classics"...

"Back to the Klondike"... 

 Cover by Carl Barks. 

...And "The Ghost of the Grotto".

 Cover by Carl Buettner. 

Ah, but there was a THIRD "Famous Disney Classic" to be found in the pages of this 25-cent ticket to Comic-Readers'-Nirvana... Carl Barks' famous story of "The Land of Tralla La"!  The "Bottle Cap Corruption" story! 

And, needless to say, it was the first time I saw any of these great Barks stories!  

One funny thing is that Carl Barks' art had evolved so much over the years that, while I could tell that  "Back to the Klondike" and "The Land of Tralla La" were by the same artist, I thought that "The Ghost of the Grotto" was by a different artist entirely!  

...And that "Giant Robot Robbers" and the other "contemporary-to-1966" Uncle Scrooge stories I was then reading were by a THIRD different artist!  

Nevertheless, that was quite an afternoon out on my aunt and uncle's (all together now) "nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table".  One that I recall so vividly to this day!  

Of course, with these two ever-memorable comics, it would have also made for a special day on my family's stark "uncovered brick fortress"!  ...Maybe even in some dingy alley, somewhere!  Yes, they were THAT great!  

Gosh, I hope that was enough "stream-of-consciousness-typing" to satiate Sergio!  :-) 

Finally, what could possibly put a capper on such a perfect day?  ...How 'bout THIS?  

It was a THURSDAY, in 1966, remember?  

That meant that, by the time I was deposited back home, there was a summer rerun (...remember "summer reruns"?) of Part Two of this week's installment of BATMAN to enjoy on top of all that great Duck stuff (...as opposed to "Stuffed Duck") 

 "Stuffed Duck"... That's ANOTHER JOKE, SON! 

Yeah, after a "joke" like that, I'd run away too!  

But, before you do, Dynamic Duo (Aren't you glad I didn't say "Before you DUO"?), stick around for one Bat-moment more as I name  THE BEST OF UNCLE SCROOGE AND DONALD DUCK #1 our Cover Number Fourteen!  

Wheee!  Only TWO MORE TO GO, and then I get my life baaack!!!  ...Haaaa-haaaa-heeeee-heeeee! 

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Four: Lunch Specials!

It was was quite the "special lunch" indeed that fine day in the later spring of 1965!  But first, a bit of background...  

I may have said that I spent my childhood in a neighborhood that was once a thriving county hub that, almost overnight, turned bad and outright dangerous. Summer 1960 until February 1969, to better place it in time. 

You could almost say it was a "tale of two cities", with profuse apologies to Charles Dickens! Through 1966, it was, at best, a suburban paradise and, at worst, just an ordinary convenient village.  With so many different places to buy comic books, all within reasonable walking distance, it was a great place to spend virtually the entire Silver Age!  Those four-colored twelve-cent tickets to Utopia seemed to be just EVERYWHERE, and I was more than happy to reap the benefits of such a bounty!

 I still have most of mine, and nearly all of them look better than those in this stock photo! 

By 1967, things suddenly took a dramatic change and, by the fall of 1968, it had gotten so bad, so threatening, so dangerous that I refused to go to school out of fear for my safety.  Had I possibly known in 1968 what the future's "cyber-bullying" would be, I would have gladly traded it for the torturous reality I faced every day!  Regardless of good or bad times, it was a particular quirk of this school that led to some decidedly wonderful lunches for me...

 My school abandoned and boarded-up sometime in the "20-teens". Only picture I could find. 

One problem I DIDN'T HAVE was getting "beaten-up for my LUNCH MONEY"! 

Why? Because I DIDN'T CARRY lunch money!  Why? Because my combined elementary and junior high school, built in 1911, per the cornerstone... (as hard as this is to believe) had NO CAFETERIA FACILITIES... and we students were (as hard as THIS is to also believe) were DISMISSED from 12:00 Noon to 1:15 PM... and SENT HOME FOR LUNCH!  Yes, really!  

Could you imagine this in today's world?  Could you imagine mothers being home every day to receive their offspring and serve them lunches in their kitchens?  Could you imagine kids having to (and BE ABLE TO, distance-wise) walk (most of us unattended) home and then back to school for an afternoon session?   ...If you meet Mom in heaven, don't tell her about all those 1:15 to 3:45 afternoon sessions I resorted to some "creative ways" to avoid attending - once released for lunch! 

Now, as things were still good in 1965, there were some distinct advantages to this, for me at least. 

For one, I was out of the stifling school building, and would run the three blocks home like a road runner!  

For two, there was always a reasonably good lunch waiting for me. Something, alas, not all kids had. 

And for three - and best of all - sometimes there were COMICS waiting for me, which I joyously devoured along with lunch!  

By then, I had solidly moved from "young casual reader" into "never-miss-an-issue" mode, as discussed in THIS POST and one way to "never-miss-an-issue" was to SUBSCRIBE to as many titles as my meager allowance and generous-to-her-grandson GRANDMA MILLIE would provide! 

Our mail would generally arrive by 10:30AM, and so any subscription comics delivered that day, would be waiting for me on the kitchen table when I arrived home for lunch.  What a WONDERFUL FEELING THAT WAS!  

The day that is the subject of this post provided a particularly memorable yield, so much so that I remember it distinctly to this day.  Try to imagine what a Gift-From-The-Gold-Key-Gods this two-issue bonanza was through the wide eyes of eleven-year-old me! 

 UNCLE SCROOGE #58...  

...And THE FLINTSTONES #28!

Each one a prime Silver Age specimen of its respective title!

"The Giant Robot Robbers" was one of the best Uncle Scrooge outings of the (much-unfairly maligned) sixties-period of Carl Barks' incredible - nay, historic - run on the title.  Even inspiring an informal, though also effective, adaptation for the TV series DuckTales (1987). 

THE FLINTSTONES #28 has my vote for The-Best-Ever-Never-To-Be-Surpassed issue of THE FLINTSTONES that ever was, and very likely ever will be! 

Stridently reflective of the FIFTH SEASON of THE FLINTSTONES TV show, which was in summer reruns (...remember "summer reruns"?) at the time of its release, #28 offered "The Pirates of Skull Island", a lead adventure story in keeping with the "adventure plots" that kept the Fifth Season lively and memorable. Think "A Haunted House is Not a Home" (with Uncle Giggles Flintstone), "Dr. Sinister" (with Madame Yes "I'm too important to be captured!"), and, to me, one of the best eps of the entire series "Time Machine" (with its trip to the 1964 New York World's Fair!)

Oddly, to digress, my favorite seasons of THE FLINTSTONES are Season One, and Season Five! Both seasons "did what they did" better than any of the other seasons - especially Season Six! 

Harvey Eisenberg did some of his finest art for this story and when you can say THAT, you're really saying something - considering he routinely did stuff like this!

Harvey Eisenberg died in 1965, perhaps even before THE FLINTSTONES #28 was published. At the time of his death, I felt that he even surpassed Carl Barks (though ever slightly) as the best artist of the Western Publishing stable. Take a peek at a page of interior art from "The Pirates of Skull Island" and some panels from "The Giant Robot Robbers", and decide! 

For many years, I've said, "IF YOU'RE GONNA GET ONLY ONE ISSUE of THE FLINTSTONES, THIS IS THE ONE TO GET!" 

...And get the UNCLE SCROOGE, too!  They're two of the best Gold Key Comics of what was an extraordinary creative period for them! (1964-1966). 

I read both of these comics during my home lunch break and, as was my custom at the time, read them both AGAIN that evening after my homework! That made for one great day... except for that "homework part", that is! 

One great day, with one great lunch, thanks to Gold Key's subscription department and the United States Postal Service!  

And so, our "16 Covers -- Number Four" goes to both UNCLE SCROOGE #58 and THE FLINTSTONES #28... as a Two-for-One Lunch Special!  

 Where will we go tomorrow?  Come back and see!