By George, three stories!

I consider George Metzger to be not only a great underground cartoonist, but a great cartoonist, no matter the genre.

Three stories: "Flying Saucer Man" from BRAIN FANTASY #1, 1972, published by Last Gasp. "Comic Book Addict" from FOG CITY COMICS #1, 1977; "Light As a Dream" from FOG CITY COMICS #2, 1978, published by Stampart. Color illustration above is the back cover to BRAIN FANTASY #1.

Copyright © 1972, 1977, 1978 by George Metzger.

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Driben my baby back home...

A couple of days ago Chuck Wells asked me to show my personal favorites the next time I posted some pin-ups from THE GREAT AMERICAN PIN-UP CALENDAR by Taschen. While I love all the cuties I show, my personal favorites are the voluptuous, sexy, high-heel lovelies from Peter Driben. Driben, who did many magazine covers and pin-up illustrations over the years, was one of the best of the pin-up artists, and his girls are sexy and adorable.

Here are some covers and even some scans of original art I've managed to gather from the Internet.

You can find the pin-ups that Chuck is referring to by typing in Taschen in the "search this blog" box at the top of this blog. At least a couple of the Driben illustrations found here are found in that calendar collection as well. You can find an outstanding sample of Driben's covers on Flickr here.

In the Scarlet Star

As far as I'm able to tell from what research is available to me, "In the Scarlet Star" by Jack Williamson, has been reprinted only once, in the 1951 anthology, EVERY BOY'S BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Donald A. Wollheim. My scans of the story have been taken from its first appearance in AMAZING STORIES, March 1933.

The letter column for this issue was full of letters from readers complaining about the "new" AMAZING, which had taken on an art deco look for its covers. The stories were still very much in the old school of science fiction, and some of the readers were concerned because they weren't scientific enough. There is more of Edgar Rice Burroughs than science in this story, as a man goes through the Fourth Dimension, back to the Stone Age. But at the first of the story enough scientific gimmickry is included to squeeze in some "science" in the science fiction. It's an entertaining story; not one of Williamson's best, but firmly set in the pulp sf tradition of 75 years ago.