RIP Carmine Infantino / The Vampire Maker!

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Sáu, 5 tháng 4, 2013

THOIA honors the passing of comic legend, Carmine Infantino, with an encore presentation of his stunningly horrific vampire classic from the December 1952 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds #13, originally posted here back in Sept 2008 --be sure to click HERE for the scary sequel to this Atlas story when you're done!

Carmine Infantino May 24th, 1925 - April 4th, 2013









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Number 1344: Jann’s jungle fever!

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em

We’re in the final day of our Jungle Jive theme week. Monday we had Atlas Comics’ Lorna, today we have Atlas’ Jann.

One thing you can say about Atlas, when they did jungle girls they used some of their top artists. Werner Roth did Lorna, and Jay Scott Pike, who later went into the pin-up art field a la Gil Elvgren, did Jann. In this particular story, from Jungle Tales #2 (1954), Jann faces a jungle fever, and even runs into a dinosaur! They gave us a lot for six pages.

A bonus tale I'm including today is from the same issue, a horror/jungle hybrid tale, featuring Waku of the Bantu. Waku goes against the golden age jungle comic pattern by being an African, not some caucasian interloper. It's credited by the Atlas Tales website to Fred Kida. It has that really obnoxious coloring job on the Africans, which is a sort of purple-gray. I don’t know what the problem was, but that sort of ashen color continued on into the sixties. I remember an African-American reader calling Marvel to task for the coloring in the letter column of an issue of Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos.













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Number 1343: Sheena, I seen ya

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Tư, 3 tháng 4, 2013

This is the third entry in our Jungle Jive theme week.

When it came to blonde queens of the jungle, Sheena was the blondest and the queenest. She was the original, created by Will Eisner, with the beauty and attributes of female villains found in Eisner’s Spirit stories, wrapped in leopard-skins; a voluptuous woman holding court over her queendom of the jungle. Do not mess with Sheena, pal, because she will knock you out, then chase you off.

I wonder about her mate, Bob. I mean...Bob. My brother’s name is Bob. Bob is a perfectly good name, but to share a throne with a queen? Bob, King of the Jungle? I don’t think so. It’s no wonder Sheena keeps Bob kind of behind, under her protection. She is stronger, smarter and she has a wicked punch. She doesn’t need Bob to take care of the innumerable evil white men who invade her corner of the jungle. Unlike Greg, who is boyfriend to Lorna the jungle girl, whom we saw Monday, Bob isn’t a male chauvinist. He likes being submissive to his queen, and I’ve said this before: maybe a lot of guys who read Sheena during the '40s wished they had a big blonde woman to submit to. Perhaps a 6’2” Sheena could tuck me under her arm and swing me through the treetops. That wouldn’t be the worst way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Drawn by Robert H. “Bob” Webb, from Jumbo Comics #127 (1949):












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Dr. Gueux's Nightmare Monsters

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Ba, 2 tháng 4, 2013

Unless anyone has any objections, April 2013 might turn out to be Giant Monster Month here at THOIA. All the smashing, crashing, rampaging monstrosities you can possibly handle plus other BIG news! Kicking it off with an encore presentation of a favorite Ace tale of mine, first posted way back in Sept 2007, from the January 1953 issue of Baffling Mysteries #13. And speaking of giant monsters, has everyone picked up the new Yoe Books awesome Steve Ditko Monsters Volume One: GORGO collection? Come back in our next post to find out how you can win yourself a copy!









CLICK HERE!
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Number 1342: Lorna the Jungle Girl kicks commie devil bird butt!

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Hai, 1 tháng 4, 2013

This is day two of our Jungle Jive theme week, here with the first of two postings featuring blonde jungle women. You’ll see Sheena on Wednesday, but for today you’ll be reading a couple of stories featuring one of Sheena’s competitors for the Miss Clairol of the Jungle award. Sheena came first, of course (created in 1938), but Lorna covered some of the same jungle territory. She protected the local tribes. She came up against constant menaces which she conquered handily. The difference in Lorna is in her man...Sheena’s man, Bob, is not a male chauvinist like Lorna’s Greg. That’s where the fun comes in. Greg is constantly telling Lorna men are superior to women, even after Lorna has pulled his sorry ass out of a deathtrap. Lorna smiles and goes along with Greg. I suppose she figures the guy is good for something, but considering his attitude we wonder what.

In these stories Lorna takes on communist infiltrators who come into the jungle trying to bamboozle the “superstitious natives”, and then, in the second story she channels some old jungle movies. She gives a Tarzan yell to keep dying elephants from trampling Greg.

It wasn’t the first time Lorna’s comic book creators borrowed an idea. In my last posting, Lorna dealt with a King Kong-size ape called Agu. At the bottom of the page you'll find a link to that post.

From Lorna the Jungle Girl #9 (1954). Art by Werner Roth, stories by Don Rico.













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Click pic to go to Pappy's #1143.


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