Ditko x 3

Three stories by Steve Ditko from the early 1960s.

"Midnight Caller" is from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #90, March 1963. "Frederick Fenton's Future" is from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #96, October 1963. "A Monster Waits Outside" was originally printed in TALES TO ASTONISH #12, October 1960. I scanned the story from its reprint in CHAMBER OF CHILLS #24, September 1976.

There are three more Ditko stories here.

Copyright © 1960, 1963, 1976 Marvel Comics

Naked Eye

Cartoons from COBEAN'S NAKED EYE, published by Harper & Brothers, First Edition, 1950.

Captions have been re-set by me for legibility.

Copyright © 1950 Sam Cobean

Copyright © 1944-1950 Inclusively by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.

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The Astounding Wesso

Hans Waldemar Wessolowski, who signed his work H. W. Wesso, is the artist for these wonderful covers of ASTOUNDING STORIES. He did the first 34 consecutive covers, of which these are a sample.

1930:

Issue #1 above.

1931:

1932:

The Omega Report

Bryan Talbot's 1978 private eye/science fiction/rock 'n' roll epic, "The Omega Report." This is from BRAINSTORM #6, printed in the UK, and according to the indicia, limited to 3000 copies.

Copyright © 1977-1978 Bryan Talbot

Anderson and Stamaty

Brad Anderson, creator of the Marmaduke daily panel and Sunday strip, was born in 1924. He has been at cartooning a long time; he sold his first cartoons when he was 15 years old.

Stanley Stamaty was a gag cartoonist, father of children's book author/artist Mark Alan Stamaty. I wish I knew more about Stamaty the elder. I love his spontaneous and expressive drawings.

All of these cartoons are from YOU'VE GOT ME IN THE SUBURBS, edited by Lawrence Larier, published by Dodd, Mead & Company.

Copyright © 1957 Lawrence Larier

"Take my best side, please!"

Best side? Ah, honey...there's no best side because there's no bad side!

From THE GREAT AMERICAN PIN-UP CALENDAR.

Copyright © 2004 Taschen

P.S. I love you...

P.S. MAGAZINE (not the P.S. Magazine published by the U.S. Army for preventive maintenance, and produced by Will Eisner), was a short-lived magazine of nostalgia from the mid-1960s. With an editor like Ed Ferman and associate editor Gahan Wilson you'd think they couldn't miss. But I think they were a little early for the nostalgia bandwagon, which really didn't start rolling until a few years later. Their magazine had poor art direction, was fairly unattractive, with pages of cold gray type and few illustrations. No color, either. Even PLAYBOY had color--and nude girls!--for 60¢. But the P.S. articles were great, and this article by Carlton Brown from P.S. #3, August 1966, about the Johnson Smith Novelty Catalog, is one of my favorites.

Oh yeah...one other thing. I see the motto ring, circa 1928, uses the slogan, "If you can read this you are too darn close," which has been familiar on bumper stickers for many years, but was obviously far from original for tailgating motorists.

Copyright © 1966 Mercury Press, Inc.

I wanna be a cowboy...

...and you can be muh cowgirl!


TEXAS PETE LITTLE COWBOY By Jene Barr, pictures by Chauncey Maltman
Copyright © 1950 Albert Whitman & Company

More Chas Addams

More laughs from the genius of Chas Addams. These pages are from the first edition of his first book, DRAWN AND QUARTERED, published during World War II. There are more Addams cartoons from the same book here.

Copyright © 1942 Random House, Inc.

Weird Wonder Wolverton

I love reprint comic books; this particular Marvel comic, WEIRD WONDER TALES #1, is dated December 1973. It has four really fun strips from the old Atlas horror comics of the '50s. The final story, "The Eye of Doom," by the genius Basil Wolverton, has been reprinted more times than I can count, but there's always someone out there who hasn't yet seen this surreal 6-page science fiction nightmare, or may even be seeing the Wolverton magic for the first time. I envy you the experience, but then as many times as I've seen it, I re-read it every time.

The kind men like

NIFTY GALS 'N' GAGS was one of those old-style sexist cartoon digests that sold to servicemen and young guys (and probably some old ones, too), looking for cheesecake. The jokes are about sexual harassment, cheating wives and hookers. It was strictly second-tier when it came to showcasing cartoon talent, but I find one thing interesting about it, and that's having a character (in this case Nick, a horny devil if ever I saw one) who is shown in a sort of loose continuity depending on what he's doing that issue. In this one, from October, 1956, Nick is a--dare we say it--private dick.

I have no idea who did the Nick cartoons. One page has an indecipherable signature, the other cartoons are signed with "G". There are other cartoonists better known to me. Al Kaufman contributes a gag, Bill Ward shows up under his pen-name, McCartney. Vic Martin (signed "Vic") and Don Orehek, who later went on to CRACKED, contribute a couple of panels each, and even Hal Sherman and Bill Wenzel have some work in there. Wenzel's cartoons, which are signed Bill W., seem like roughs rejected by other publishers, then accepted by NIFTY. The artwork isn't up to Wenzel's usual standards.

NIFTY was one of a line of "Wolf Books" (love that logo!)

Laff your way to the bank

The golden age of exploitation films, as told by someone who was there.

From FILM COMMENT, Volume 22 Number 4, July-August 1986.

Copyright © 1986 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center

There Oughta Be A Law

Harry Shorten's homage to Jimmy Hatlo's THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME panels, shown in these examples from the paperback, THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW.

Comics fans will recognize the name of the idea contributor in panel #2 below.

Copyright © 1969 Harry Shorten

Come and get it!

Whatever is hot that these gals have cooked up for you, it's ready to be eaten. Chow down, boys!