DC Takes Action!

I wish I had this poster in my collection. It's a wonderful announcement of an event that alas would not happen.

Rip Off

Oh Henry!

I saw this Henry cover and it reminded of something.


Yikes!

Well summer is over at last! It's been a hot one. One more day of ninety degree days and then we'll have some refreshing cool air.

As for Henry, well I've always been a fan since he was always in my local paper. I read Henry first because the wordless panels tracked so effortlessly. Carl Anderson who died before I was born created a solid concept and Don Trachte kept making it work week after week.

Rip Off

Johnny Comet!

ACG also known as Avalon is a Canadian publishing outfit run by Roger Broughton. The nigh-mythical Broughton acquired a bunch of old comic plates from Charlton, essentially everything but the Action Heroes which were sold to DC and Thunderbolt which reverted to Pete Morisi and E-Man which was bought by First Comics and eventually came into the possession (mostly) of Joe Staton. Also no Hanna-Barbera or King Features things show up either for obvious reasons. Broughton also had a bunch of vintage ACG comics from the 60's.

Through the 90's and early in this century material was reprinted under all sorts of titles and packaged and repackaged. One thing that Broughton must've gotten at some point was the rights to Johnny Comet a comic strip drawn by Frank Frazetta, either that or it's in public domain.

Frazetta created the race car comic strip "Johnny Comet", later called "Ace McCoy". The strip featured Johnny, his girl Jean , and Mom and Pop Bottle. Peter DePaolo, an actual race car driver and winner of the Indy 500 in 1925 was the scripter, so there's no denying the pedigree of the this comic. But it was not terribly successful; the strip was started in 1951 and was cancelled in 1953.

ACG put out five Johnny Comet comics, and in an odd move which I've only seen this company do, they published trades by taking the remaindered comic books themselves, re-cutting them and binding them together. I have several of these trades and they are unusual with the comics, cover and all, bound tight together. That's how I have Johnny Comet.


It's a reasonably entertaining comic strip and Frazetta's artwork is pretty lush as you can see by this original. Unfortunately lots of that great line work and detail is lost in the ACG volumes. But the story is there, and that's something.

Oh and does Johnny Comet remind you of anyone?

Johnny Comet
Frank Frazetta
I thought so.

Rip Off

Fabian's Wildside!

Here are the covers for the Wildside Press volumes featuring the work of Robert E. Howard. Each is graced by a Stephen Fabian cover. All ten are available in hardback at this link, and some few are available in trade paper. I picked up the volumes one through three in trade, but for some reason the distribution here stopped. They've been recollected under different covers in regular paperback with some differences in content. I just wish I could have all these Fabian covers though. Beautiful.

Rip Off

Conan The Recording!

Here are more sonic Conan the Barbarian treats. Above is the cover to the Power Records album featuring four Conan tales. The Neal Adams cover is outstanding and the stories are a lot of fun. This link will take you to them.


As it turns out Power Records also produced "Crawler in the Mist" as a 45 single. Here's a link to this one along with the full comic book which came along with it. The artwork is classic Neal Adams with a lot of help from the Crusty Bunkers.


Rip Off

Conan The Album!

Here are some fun things I stumbled across from the mid 70's. I've seen the cover before, a beautiful image by Tim Conrad, intentionally evoking the spirit of Barry Windsor-Smith. But at long last I've listened to the recordings. And so can you.

Here's a link to Howard's classic "The Tower of the Elephant". This is a beautifully crafted story, and the presentation does a wonderful job of capturing the blood and thunder of REH's style. It's done with complete seriousness, befitting the material, but I can readily imagine it otherwise alas.

Roy Thomas is the guy who developed the script from Howard's short story. And by the way, here's a link to go read the original story.

Here's a link to the flipside recording of "The Frost Giant's Daughter". This is a Howard story with more atmosphere than narrative focus, but nonetheless it puts the Cimmerian into another impossible scenario, and we find him up to the task so to speak.

Here's a link to see the details on the recordings and see the credits.


Apparently there is a second of these albums by Moondance, this one featuring stories read by L. Sprague de Camp, the man who husbanded Conan through several decades, and a figure in the history of Howard's work who elicits strong opinions.

Here's a link for the details on that production.

I downloaded from these links without incident, so I hope they prove safe for one and all.

Rip Off

Queen Of The Black Coast!

"Whenever I was obliged to draw a violent scene I had to decide how far to go. Today, violence on film, on television, and in comic books sometimes reaches a level of grossness I find hard to stomache. When this drawing was in the preliminary pencil stage I had Conan's sword swinging down just above the native warriors head, I would not go so far as to show the head being lopped off, that would be too gross. But when I was in the inking stage and got to that area, without thinking about it I erased the pencilwork and redrew the sword lopping off the head! It was a mistake, I should have left that part up to the viewer's imagination. There is no excuse for being gross. I made the same mistake when I painted a poster showing Conan cutting a giant ape in half with his sword, which also happens to be based on the same story, "Queen of the Black Coast". I guess I got caught up in the violent nature of Conan and lost control of myself!" - Stephen Fabian


"One of the early decisions an illustrator has to make when composing a picture is where to put the horizon line, or the viewpoint. In this case I placed it at the lower part of the picture so that both Conan and the viewer have to look up at Belit, who is basically performing, 'on stage'." - Stephen Fabian







Here's a link to the complete REH story "Queen of the Black Coast".

These are some of the most beautiful images I've ever seen from Fabian. He's a master. Here's a link to his website where I found the quotes used above.


Rip Off