Atomic Kommie Comics

Waaaaay Before "Avengers: Doomsday", the Awesome Assemblers Battled a Totally-Different, Now-Forgotten Planetary Threat...

2026-07-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

...as They Went Head-to-Head with "the Earth-Wrecker"!

Art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia

Join Living Legend of WWII Captain America, Battling Bowman Hawkeye, Super-Sized Scientist Goliath, and the Wonderful Wasp (along with the Armored Avenger Iron Man who, at this point in the story, is separated from the others so he ain't in the above illo) as they take on the awesome alien threat of time-and-space-hopping Karzz the Conquerer!
We're re-presenting the 1967 never-reprinted premiere Marvel Comics prose novel by noted sci-fi/pulp/comics author Otto Binder and published by Bantam Books!
It's an original story, not adapted from a comic book tale, which may explain why there are no illustrations of Karrz...who's never appeared (before or since) in graphic form!
Here are the first few chapters, appearing both on this blog and in fellow RetroBlog Hero Histories...

Introduction by Stan Lee & Chapter One: The Avengers Meet
Chapter Two: Mount Everest Mystery
Chapter Three: Karrz, the Conqueror
Tomorrow:
Chapter Four: Earth Death! at Hero Histories
The RetroBlog Summer Blogathons Roll On!
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Space Hero Saturdays OUTER SPACE "Third Planet"

2026-07-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

Some stories are truly a "product of their time"...

...such as this Silver Age story that reflects the pacifist attitudes of the 18-30 year-olds of the era.

That's how the tale ended in the idealistic 1960s.

If they re-did it today, in the far more cynical 2020s, one (or both) commanders would have had a strike force ready to attack the second the other side disarmed.

This tale from the Charlton one-shot Outer Space (1968) was illustrated by Pat Boyette.

As to who wrote it, it could have been Boyette (who had already proven himself as a writer with several stories for Charlton's anthologies as well as a couple of issues of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt), or Joe Gill, who co-created several pacifist heroes including Peacemaker with Boyette, and GunMaster with Dick Giordano!

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Friday Fun BIG APPLE COMIX "Silent Majority"

2026-07-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

I believe it was the legendary Will Eisner who said...

"If you can tell a tale without word balloons or captions, you've succeeded as a graphic storyteller!"

Appropriately enough, this almost totally-silent story from Big Apple Comix #1 (1975) is by Mike Ploog, who broke into comics assisting Eisner on the military publication P.S. Magazine! before becoming Marvel's primary "monster" artist doing Man-Thing, Monster of Frankenstein, Werewolf by Night, and Ghost Rider during the Bronze Age.

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH WRECKER "Chapter Three: Karrz, the Conqueror"

2026-07-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

Read the Previous Chapter HERE

Chapter Three: Karzz, the Conqueror

Captain America could hardly guess how unusual was the “something” that Iron Man had run into and how deadly. He was plummeting like a stone toward the mammoth electromagnet on the peak of Mount Everest, pulled downward. by superpowerful forces.

But he had not given up all hope. Through his swirling mind a desperate plan had formed. Rapidly, his gloved hand grasped a dial on his chest and rheostated the total power of his suit to its highest output. Ten megawatts of energy sizzled through his circuits and fed into his antimagnetic unit.

Clashing forces flung him back a bit, as his antimagnetic radiation fought the supermagnetic pull below. But inexorably, he was drawn down again, his antimagnetic unit whining uselessly. It was like trying to paddle a canoe up Niagara Falls!

Still, his antimagnetic “brake” had slowed his fall considerably. Was it enough to save his steel suit from cracking open like an eggshell against the force-field cushion?

Fifty feet...25...10...5...WHAM!

A shriek tore from Anthony Stark’s lips, inside, as his outer iron hulk slammed into the force-field like a car smashing into a brick Wall at two hundred fifty miles an hour.

But his steel suit held up without cracking, and his built-in molecular-foam padding protected his fragile human body from absorbing too much of the bruising impact against the armored linings. With no more than his wind knocked out, Iron Man bounced a hundred feet high from the force-field barrier, then fell off to the side toward bare hard rock.

Shaking off reeling dizziness, Iron Man managed to shoot out a retro-braking burst of jets in time, so that he landed on his feet with no more of a jar than that of a than jumping down ten feet.

He swayed on his feet a moment, almost collapsing, but then his spirit-level adjusters and gyros automatically straightened him up. His blurred eyes cleared up and focused—on a man in a strange costume.

iron Man stared in wonder. The man was dressed in clothing that resembled no style ever seen on Earth before. His height and figure were average, but his face had a saturnine cast. Strangest of all was the malevolent expression in his frosty blue eyes, infinitely cold and hostile.

“An intruder,” came his harsh voice, as if he owned Mount Everest. “But you are different from the other Earth-people in my world monitor screen. You are encased in protective armor. Who are you?”

“My real name is unimportant,” answered Stark. “They call me Iron Man, the Avenger.” He waved at the humming machine, still awed. “And just who are you? Did you build this supermagnet‘? And Why?”

The stranger drew himself up regally, and spoke in lofty tones. “I am Karzz, the Conqueror!”

“I imagine I’m supposed to tremble at the name,” said Iron Man sarcastically, “but you might as well have said Joe Smirch, for all the name means to me. Where do you do your so-called conquering?”

“All over the universe, my mocking friend. World after World among the stars has fallen before my invincible legion of space warcraft. I am not a native of earth. l am from a far-off World of superscience beyond your imagination.”

Iron Man would have put him down for a harmless crackpot, except for one thing—the supermagnet. You couldn't laugh that off. And after all, it was a well-accepted theory that the universe was full of other habitable worlds, many of which might be further advanced than earth, to the point; of having achieved interstellar spaceflight.

“All right, you’re a denizen of another distant solar system,” agreed Iron Man. “I see that evolution on your world produced the same human species as earth did.”

“You are mistaken,” denied Karzz. A "faint smile played about his lips. “Prepare for a shock, earthling. We control metabolic transformation of our body tissues at will. Watch...this is how I really look.”

Before Iron Man’s eyes, the human form began to subtly and steadily alter, like a man melting down and changing into something else. The face and other human attributes faded into an amorphous mass, over which a new face and form began to superimpose themselves.

Iron Man’s eyes kept widening at what he saw materializing, portion by portion, until there stood before him a shocking monstrosity. He was in general still semi-man-like, and not changed in general size. But all else was utter madness....

A face with blotched purple skin...ghastly green lips...hair of a poisonous blue...and eyes that were fiery red like hot coals. The arms had changed into boneless tentacles with ten slender “fingers” that writhed. The two gnarled legs ended in hooves instead of feet.

It was a surrealistic creature beyond the imagination of a Dali...a nightmare beyond the wildest phantasmagorias of the human mind. Iron Man recoiled as if from a loathsome monster—yet there was intelligence in the creature’s face. Superintelligence, in. fact; and clammy fear clutched at Stark’s ailing heart. Earthmen could expect no mercy or pity from such coldly inhuman intellects.

“Appalled, Earthling?” mocked the alien. “But let me hasten to inform you that nausea strikes me when I gaze upon your horridly repulsive human form.” Letting that sink in," the alien began reversing the process, his monstrous form slowly metamorphosizing back to the human “disguise” he had worn before.

“It is not to spare your eyes that I adopt human form on Earth,” Karzz commented, “but because in my own form I am dangerously unadapted to the earthly environment. On our native planet, we breathe chlorine gas. And only in human guise can I breathe this horrible oxygen in your atmosphere, poisonous to us.”

Karzz shrugged and went on.

“To satisfy your curiosity as to why I can speak your language fluently, I have been on your world a week now. During that time I tuned in radio broadcasts and learned all languages.”

“All of them on Earth?” gasped Iron Man.

“Including all local idioms,” nodded Karzz. “In Americanese, for instance, I dig how the cats talk. Crazy, man.”

With a wry face, he turned haughty. “I know everything else about Earth. from my long-range sensors, scanners and monitors—the continents and oceans, mountains, rivers; also cities, subways, cars, trains, planes. And people, pets, and politics.”

“You absorbed all this in one short week!” marveled Iron Man, aware of the superintelligence facing him.

Then, bracing himself, he asked the next logical. but rhetorical question:

“You have come, I suppose, to conquer Earth now?”

“No, Earthman.”

Prepared for the affirmative, Iron Man was staggered, his head whirling.

“But you boasted of how many other planets you had conquered. Then what else could you be here for?”

“To destroy Earth!” hissed the alien, his eyes seething in ferocious hatred.

In America, the Avengers’ colorful Memorial Meet played on to a rapt TV audience.

“We have honored past members of the Avengers,” announced Captain America. “We will now review the current Avengers, giving a broad resume of their origin and special. abilities. First, a man. who sits nine feet tall in the saddle, and I’m not exaggerating. Here he is, the man mountain...the modern Gulliver...the walking skyscraper...Goliath!”

The spotlight limned the huge ten-foot form and a gasp sounded in every home in America that had television. The Wasp had flitted off his shoulder. '”This is your show, Big Boy. I’ll go press the button for the elephant to come on stage.”

Flying to the podium, the Wasp darted down and jammed the button with her descending feet, just before Captain America’s finger got there. She, grinned impishly at him.

Out on the stage of the auditorium, a big door flew open and a moving platform. came into view, on which stood a huge bull elephant with one end of a heavy rope wrapped in its trunk. Goliath picked up the other end. The rope tightened as he braced himself and the trained elephant began to pull.

“A tug of war between Goliath and a five-ton elephant,” sang out Captain America. “Don’t bet too soon on the wrong one!”

At first, the powerful beast began to back up, dragging Goliath forward. But then the towering Titan planted his feet, rippled his muscles, and began a slow, steady pull that first halted the elephant, then—incredibly—dragged him forward foot by foot, and finally brought him across the dividing line.

Panting, Goliath took a bow in the spotlight as the other Avengers‘ applauded. “You know it’s not muscle but sheer weight that wins a tug of war,” said Hawkeye maliciously, eyeing the Wasp. “It’s a good thing that cloudscraper has plenty of fat—between his ears.”

“Fat or not,” said the Wasp sweetly, “it can outthink whatever stuffing they put in your skull...probably

rocks "

Captain America cleared his throat as Goliath sat down.

“Now listen to the strange story -of Goliath, alias Giant Man, alias Ant-Man. He is a famous biologist in private life and one day, some years ago, he devised an astounding bio-serum which could shrink the human body down to insect size. He then became the Ant-Man for a while, cleverly using his tininess to outwit certain evil-doers.”

The spotlight now swung to the Wasp, again perched on Goliath’s shoulder.

“Dr. Henry Pym,” said Captain America, giving Goliath’s real name, for his “secret” identity had been revealed to the world at large, “eventually let his girl friend, share the bio-serum, a variation of which shrank her down to small size and gave her some of the characteristics that account for her name—the Wasp.”

The audience was listening raptly to Cap’s commentary as he continued. “The Wasp has shared in many Avenger adventures, doing her part in confounding our foes. Originally, like Ant-Man, she had to take the reducing serum each time, then an enlarging serum—a sort of antidote—to regain normal human size. But eventually with enough bio-serum in her body to last a long time, she developed a mental way to shoot down to small size, and back to human size. By will power alone.”

The spotlight under Cap’s control. swung back to Goliath.

“Let’s return to Ant-Man. Dr. Pym one day took an overdose of the enlarging serum, and instead of stopping at human size, he kept growing and growing to the tremendous height of twenty-five feet. He then joined the Avengers as Giant-Man. But in time, he found his Cyclopean stature too much of a handicap.”

“Probably,” Hawkeye murmured to the Wasp, “because too many people kept asking him, ‘Hey, how's the weather up there?’”

The star-spangled MC went on before the cameras. “Dr. Pym finally revised his formula so the bio-serum kept him below fifteen-feet tall...for a while. Even this was an unwieldy bulk to maneuver—especially into buildings made for people not much over a third his size-so he settled on a more modest ten feet, as he is today. Having been on a leave of absence from the Avengers for these experiments, he returned to us in a new uniform and with his new name of Goliath.”

Cap went on in a deadly serious tone. “Needless to say, this giant Avenger has helped us out of many a tight spot—tighter than if he himself tried to squeeze into a telephone booth.”

“He got himself into tight spots worse than that,” drawled Hawkeye for -the Wasp’s benefit, “like that time he got stuck in a narrow cave and the rest of us had to figure out some way of working him loose...before a load of nuclear bang-bang stuff went off and blew the place to bits. You weren’t there that time, Wasp.”

“Were you all blown to bits?” she asked innocently.

“Into a million bits,” growled Hawkeye. “But the same guy who put Humpty Dumpty together again came along and serviced us, see?”

“They never did put Mr. H. D. together again,” the Wasp reminded him. “So that explains why you’re scatter-brained at times.”

Hawkeye was about to make a sarcastic retort when the spotlight fell on him. He bounced to his feet and bowed in the grand manner, with the TV-camera lens aimed at him.

“Robin Hood, they say, could split arrows,” came Cap’s buildup. “But now you’re going to see a demonstration by Hawkeye, our third Avenger member, that would make envious Robin Hood put away his bow and retire.”

Hawkeye strode to the middle of the floor, where an attendant stood with a pistol, facing a target fifty. feet away. Hawkeye stood beside him, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and notched it to his bowstring.

Hawkeye pulled back the bowstring with deceptive ease; It would have taken two other strong men to do the same, one holding the bow, one pulling the string. His firing hand poised, Hawkeye snapped: “Fire!”

At the same instant that the attendant fired his pistol, Hawkeye’s bowstring twanged. A bullet and a sleek light-weight Wooden. arrow sped to the target in motion too fast for the TV eye to follow. '

But the TV camera could record what happened in the next milli-second, as described by Captain America. “See, folks? The arrow arrived first and the bullet split it!”

The thunderous applause all over America could not be heard, as Hawkeye, acting nonchalant, returned to his seat.

Cap’s voice resumed. “This super-archer's repertory of arrows includes unique kinds of his own devising to perform ingenious feats. To name but a few—the blast-arrow that can blow open a locked door, the stun arrow for putting enemies out of action, the rocket harpoon to spear flying criminal craft, the bolo arrow to twine around a running man’s ankles before he can escape, and the sneeze smog arrow which both throws a smoke screen for an Avenger's escape and causes pursuers to sneeze violently and ruin their aim with weapons. There are many more.”

“Especially the bombast arrow,” whispered the Wasp, “which carries a recording of Hawkeye bragging about himself and bores the enemy to death.”

Hawkeye had to keep smiling. He was on camera.

“Hawkeye’s history is somewhat like that of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch,” Cap informed the audience. “He had been a bitter and resourceful foe of Iron Man for a while. But not by his own choosing. In reality, he had been wrongly suspected of crime by the police, which led him to join forces with a notorious girl-spy, the Black Widow. This enmeshed him in intrigue that further got him in bad with the authorities. Hunted like .a criminal, he was forced. to battle for his own life and freedom.”

“A poor, misunderstood, downtrodden slob,” murmured the Wasp, wiping away a false tear. Then she brightened. “But there’s justice after all, and today you’re a heroic, honored, and respected . . . slob.”

Hawkeye kept smiling into the TV camera, but his hand, which was off-camera, moved around to where he could reach toward the tiny tormentor on Goliath’s shoulder.

But when Hawkeye flicked his finger to give her what would amount to a good slap, he met nothing. Then a larger form grew rapidly nearby until the Wasp was her normal girl size.

“Did you forget,” she smiled, walking away from the frustrated Hawkeye, “that I was to take over and tell about Captain America himself?”

On the podium, the Wasp whispered to Cap: “Actually, Iron Man was supposed to get the build-up bit before you, Cap. What do you suppose is holding him tip?”

“Oh, maybe he met the Man from Mars,” said Cap, trying to sound blithe, and not knowing how close his quip had come to the grim truth….

A "Grim Truth" We'll Learn About on Monday at Hero Histories in...
Chapter Four: Earth Death!
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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder GRAPHIC SHOWCASE "Eyes of Mars" Part 3

2026-07-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

When Last We Left an Earthman (not named John Carter) on Mars...

...well, now that you know what's going on...jump in!

Sadly, there was no fourth installment!

Happily, writer-artist Michael Kaluta went on to become a full-time comics/sci-fi illustrator, becoming the definitive comic artist for The Shadow...

...as well as working on actual Edgar Rice Burroughs interplanatary fantasy, but not John Carter of Mars...

...but Carson of Venus which you can read by clicking HERE!

Next Wednesday...a new World of Wonder!

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH WRECKER "Chapter Two: Mount Everest Mystery"

2026-07-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

Read the Previous Chapter HERE!

Chapter Two: Mount Everest Mystery

But Captain America was wrong.

Far across the world in the Himalayas, a golden-armored figure glinting in the sun was soaring through the azure sky, circling, darting, swooping among the tallest mountain peaks on earth.

“Treacherous downdrafts and updrafts here are the best test for the new transistorized jet-propulsors in my boot-heels,” he thought, zooming at 500 miles per hour toward a mountain cliff, then veering sharply upward to sail safely over its jagged edge. “It’s all working fine.”

To any watcher, it would have been an unbelievable sight—a heavy metallic form gliding through the air with buoyant ease. The steel suit was gilded over the arms, legs, and face-plate, while the torso, gloves, and boots were tinted crimson. In general appearance, it was nothing like a knight of old, but more like a modern manlike robot.

Yet this was no mechanical being. Within the iron “uniform”—unknown to the world at large, and even to his fellow Avengers—was Anthony Stark, millionaire playboy and weapons inventor. His armored costume was not only an outer protection against harm, but an inner protection against death. Without his steel suit, except for brief periods of time, Anthony Stark would die…of heart failure!

It was a strange story…

During a visit to the Vietnam war theater, to demonstrate a transistorized super-weapon, Stark had fallen prey to a Vietcong booby trap—a buried land mine. The blast mangled his body, but skilled surgery by the enemy saved his life and restored him to normal activity—except for his heart. Pieces of shrapnel had lodged so close to his heart that the surgeons could not remove them. And they had warned that any strenuous move on Stark’s part might dislodge the bits of metal to pierce his heart and bring death.

Bitterly, Anthony Stark had resigned himself to face a lifetime as a near-invalid…if he lived any kind of lifetime.

All this while Stark was an enemy prisoner. They had saved his life in order to wrest from him his scientific secrets and gain newly invented weapons. By a stroke of fate, a famous oriental biologist was also a prisoner at that time, in the same stockade. In secret collusion with him, Stark devised a daring plan—to build a magnetized iron suit that would continually pull outward at the pieces of shrapnel within his body and keep them from working inward toward his heart. Also, the knight-like armor was planned as an aid toward their escape from imprisonment.

Pretending that they were collaborating and building a fantastic new weapon for the Vietcong to use, the two prisoners were given free rein in a laboratory to carry out their ruse. Finally, one day, Stark had stepped forth in an iron suit, suitably magnetized to save his heart from puncture, and ingeniously powered by transistorized technology to allow Stark to walk, manipulate his arms and carry on all other normal human activities—plus one other that was unique. By means of miniaturized power-packs in his boots, he could jet-propel himself into the air and fly at supersonic speeds, faster in fact than any jetcraft known. Through this, he had escaped from imprisonment and returned to America.

In order to join the Avengers and battle science renegades and their insidious weapons, Iron Man had later incorporated a wide variety of rays, forces, and devices as his own built-in weaponry.

Now he was proving out the latest advanced design in his flying system: “Mount Everest is the final test,” he thought to himself. “Braving the chilly blasts and roaring winds around its peak, piercing six miles high into the air, will prove whether I really have the all-weather flying ability I want. So, here goes….”

Iron Man jetted upward as the majestic peak reared before him…higher…higher…higher. A fierce canyon gale knocked him 500 feet sideways, but he recovered. A sudden downdraft, like a smashing blow, made him gasp as he plummeted a thousand feet down toward jagged ice blocks. But with a surge of his drumming boot-blasts he jetted back upward into the teeth of the howling downwind.

Next an updraft flung him like a cork, straight up for a mile, way beyond the tip of Everest. He fought his way down from the numbingly cold heights, agilely aiming for the summit. When a vicious whirlwind of air mixed with snow spun him around in a relentless grip, Iron Man turned himself broadside and maneuvered into the quiet “eye,” then safely sped out of one side of the whirlpool.

The next instant, something yanked him downward again, with staggering force. How many tricks did the mighty mountain have to try against puny man?

“Wait, there’s something different about this,” he said to himself. “It’s not a downdraft at all. It feels more like…Magnetism?” The last questioning thought brought a gasp of startled surprise from his lips.

Since when did Everest display magnetic force? It had never been reported by the various expeditions who had reached the top and conducted scientific experiments there. Iron Man poured more jet power into his boot propulsors, but the powerful force kept pulling him downward.

“I can’t break out of it,” he thought, and panic crept into his mind. “If my downward speed keeps increasing at this rate, I’ll smash into the peak at a thousand miles an hour!” He didn’t dare finish the thought that even his intricate, super-reinforced steel suit could never survive that frightful impact.

As his golden form hurtled downward, in the grip of an incredible magnetic force, he suddenly spied something at the tip of Mount Everest. There, in a flat stretch of bare wind-swept rock, was something unbelievable.

“Am I having hallucinations from oxygen starvation?” he thought wildly. “I see a gigantic machine! It must be a powerful electromagnet!”

More details came out as he spun lower and closer. Banks of huge horseshoe magnets ran side by side, on top of a framework support, below which lay a bulging sphere of riveted steel, obviously the power plant. A violet purling glow surrounded the sphere, the telltale sign of a nuclear dynamo. But it must be of enormous power to feed the electromagnets and create enough magnetism to pull Iron Man down from a mile high.

Iron Man read his multiple-data wrist gauge and his eyes grew wide.

“One billion gauss?” Even his thoughts babbled now. “Why, that’s thousands of times stronger than any magnet ever produced in a research lab! That’s enough magnetic pull to tow all the cars on earth after it, or to pull apart a skyscraper beam by beam. It could lift twenty-five ocean liners like the Queen Mary a hundred miles high into orbit. It could, if aimed at the moon, even begin to pull it steadily out of orbit.”

Anthony Stark was not imagining wild things. He was a scientist. He knew exactly what this unprecedented magnetic force could do—the unthinkable.

Now Iron Man’s amazed thoughts turned to other burning questions. How had this supermagnet come here? Who was behind it? What was its purpose?

All this lanced through his mind in lightning rapidity as he fell like a stone, straight down toward that inescapable giant magnet. He noticed several meteorites whizzing past him, also attracted to the huge horseshoe device. They were meteors that had been sailing past earth and were simply yanked out of their age-old space trajectory!

Iron Man saw that arriving meteors did not wreck the supermagnet. Ten feet above the device, they met an invisible cushion and bounced away harmlessly. What sort of superscientific “force field” protected the magnet?

Iron Man rolled up his eyes, breathing a last prayer, as he plummeted down the final hundred feet at meteoric velocity.

Across the world at Avenger headquarters, Captain America glanced at the clock with a slight frown. “What’s with Iron Man?” he thought worriedly. “Why isn’t he here yet?”

He then turned to look into the TV camera, and spoke for the benefit of their vast unseen audience. “This is a special event in the Avengers’ annals. We decided to hold this Memorial Meet in honor of former members of the group in past years, those who are now engaged elsewhere in their own solo activities. But they will never be forgotten for the great services they performed as Avengers in past years.”

The star-spangled Avenger paused to stab his finger at a stud on the podium’s control board. The lights dimmed in the great hall. Then an automatic spotlight swung down to limelight a huge statue standing in an arched niche in the wall.

Neon letters blazed forth—

Thor, God of Thunder

No doubt a vast cheer went up from millions of homes. But the Avengers sat silently, honoring a former Avenger with an unvoiced accolade. Captain America then spoke their official eulogistic tribute:

“Mighty Thor, the immortal god who journeyed from Asgard to Earth to join the Avengers when we needed him most. Who will forget his mighty hammer, with which he could shatter steel or stone? Or the thunder-and-lightning storms he created to confound our enemies? Or his magnificent courage battling villainous foes who wielded awesome dark powers that even nullified Thor’s magic? Or….”

“Or,” muttered Hawkeye, fidgeting in his seat, “Thor’s pompous attitude and the lingo he used, half flowery and all square?”

“A philologist,” observed the Wasp in defense of Thor, from Goliath’s shoulder, “you are not, Archerman. Look it up in the dictionary….”

“I know,” growled Hawkeye. “Under Ph, not F. You mean Thor has word-skill, eh? That’s funny—under F, not Ph.”

“Does his ability make you Thor?” whispered the Wasp. “Under S, not Th.”

Hawkeye silently threw up his hands in surrender. Captain America was saying, “In conclusion, we can all cry Well done, Thor! At present, he has returned to his abode in Asgard.”

Cap pressed another stud and the searchlight shifted to a statue titled

Quicksilver

a man in a two-tone green uniform. His silvery hair stuck out at the sides as winglike tufts.

“Like his name,” said Captain America, “Quicksilver moved with fantastic speed, which came from his being a mutant variety of human being. Back in his Balkan homeland, Quicksilver’s everyday name was Pietro. He guarded his secret abilities well, but often used them as an Avenger.”

Cap’s eyes misted a bit as if looking into the past. “Quicksilver was a blur of motion, able to outspeed cars, trains, or planes as if they were stuck in mud. He could run circles around any Olympic track star. He won every grim race of life and death against Father Time himself.”

“Is Cap for real?” snorted Hawkeye in a low tone. “Methuselah there is giving us cornball jazz that went out with Ben Hur’s chariot. When will he catch up with the jet age? Can’t he dig plain English?”

“Shush!” spat out the Wasp. “Cap came from an earlier generation than ours. You can’t blame him if his speech is behind the times. But when it comes to a fight, he speaks absolutely modern clobberese with his fists, right? So we can forgive him being a bit of a square.”

“Square?” choked Hawkeye. “He’s a cube…cubed. Why, I…Ulk!”

Hawkeye’s whisper choked off, for the simple reason that Goliath’s huge forefinger and thumb around his throat had given a tiny squeeze…enough to make Hawkeye turn purple, unable to catch his breath, let alone talk for the next few moments.

Cap swung the spotlight to a third statue. Another girl like the Wasp was portrayed, but in a witch-like scarlet costume as befitted her emblazoned name that lighted up—

The Scarlet Witch

“Pietro’s sister, Wanda,” explained Captain America for the benefit of the TV audience, “was also a mutant, but her special ability lay in witch-like supernatural powers. For a while, both Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were pawns in the hands of Magneto, an unscrupulous mastermind. And originally, they were thus the enemies of the law and fought against a famed band called the X-Men, while carrying out Magneto’s sinister schemes. They voluntarily joined the Avengers later, to make up for their former misdeeds under duress.”

“So?” muttered Hawkeye. “I was also an anti-Avenger at one time, or at least I battled Iron Man time and again. Then, on my own, I reformed and became a good guy. So who pats me on the back? If you ask me….”

“We aren’t asking you a thing, William Tell-it-all,” came from the Wasp icily. “Besides, we current members of the Avengers all get a run-down later, addressed to the TV viewers. Wait your turn, Bow Twanger.” Hawkeye glared at the Wasp. Goliath glared at Hawkeye. Hawkeye decided to glare elsewhere.

The lights came on again and Captain America snapped erect. “In conclusion, let us salute the former Avengers for their deeds, always to be remembered as long as Avengers keep assembling.”

As they started to rise to their feet, a tiny voice buzzed in Goliath’s ear. “Careful, High Pockets…the ceiling, you know.”

Barely in time, Goliath bent his neck and stood half bowed as they all saluted the three statues and said in chorus, “Hail to Thor, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch!”

Captain America now smiled for the cameras, relaxing. But inside he was wondering, “When is Iron Man going to show up? What’s keeping him? Did he run into something unusual?”

The Answer to Those Questions Will be Found Right Here on Thursday in...
Chapter Three: Karrz the Conquerer

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by Otto Binder
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Monday Mecha Madness SHOGUN WARRIORS "Hand of Fate" Part 1

2026-07-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

Let's Have a Hand for the Little Lady in the Big Robot...

....is exactly what pilot Genji Odashu, pilot of the Shogun Warrior mecha known as Combatra, wouldn't want to hear at this point in time!

So we ain't gonna tell her!

Besides, she's pretty busy at the moment, between the mechanical hand and the Japanese military who've just shown up...and don't realize she's one of the good guys!

Writer Doug Moench, penciler Herb Trimpe and inker Jack Abel have put Genji in one heckuva dire situation in Marvel's never-reprinted Shogun Warriors #11 (1979)...which you'll see resolved right here, next Monday!

The RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon Continues...with AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH WRECKER!

2026-07-19T07:00:00.000-04:00

It's the over-half century old, never-reprinted novel...

...that introduced the Marvel Universe into prose!
Note: neither Quicksilver or the Scarlet Witch appear in the book, though they're referenced, along with Thor, as past members.

The Wasp and Iron Man are the other featured members of the team in this story!

The cover art is by James Bond movie poster artist Robert McGinnis!

Written by long-time pulp/comic book writer Otto Binder (whose comic book credits include Superman and the original Captain Marvel, this never-reprinted tale is a rolicking, fast-paced adventure that would have made a kool flick back in the Swinging 60s!

Trivia: Binder co-created both Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes!

Though there had been numerous paperback reprints of Marvel comics by Lancer Books, this was the first prose novel...and an original story, not an adaptation of any of the comics tales!
There were three previous comic book prose novels before this...all based on DC characters!
George Lowther's Adventures of Superman, which, technically, was based on the radio show (not surprising since Lowther was the show's story editor and occasional scripter), and Winston Lyon's (William Woolfolk's) duo of books about the Dynamic Duo; Batman vs the Three Villains of Doom (based as much on the tv show as the comic) and Batman vs the Fearsome Foursome (a novelization of the 1966 theatrical movie).

Let's have a look at what the book is about!

Here's the inside cover hero lineup..
Monday, read the intro and first chapter of this lost classic at
Hero Histories!

Space...Hero??? Saturdays NORGE BENSON "Gang of Hoodlum Penguins"

2026-07-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Since We're Suffering through a Heat Wave...

..let's return to frigid Pluto for another interplanetary adventure with Norge Benson, as we discover that some penguins on Pluto speak perfect English, and others talk with Brooklyn accents...just like on Earth!

Think I'm joking?

Read on...

So, what'd youse tink?

Or for dose...I mean "those", who don't speak Brooklynese..."What did you think?"

I'll warn you now, future installments only get loonier!

Illustrated by Al Walker, who spent his entire comics career at Fiction House, this second appearance in Planet Comics #13 (1941) presents a somewhat less snarky (though no less humorous) version of the "Earthman on Pluto" concept shown in the earlier Cosmo Corrigan strip, mixing alien versions of both Arctic and Antarctic animals with total disregard to anything even remotely resembling exobiology!

But it is fun, and that's all that matters!

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Planet Comics
Volume 4
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Friday Fun BIG APPLE COMIX "Peep Shows"

2026-07-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

I can tell you from first-hand experience...

...this is, in fact, an extremely accurate look (except for the last four panels in the story)...

...at what visiting 42nd Street west of Times Square in the 1970s and 80s was like!

My high school was nearby (West 54th between 5th and 6th Avenues), and I discovered that, when you wore a sports jacket or leisure suit (which I had to wear daily because it was a prep school), you could pass as over 18, even if you were only 15!

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Big Apple Comix
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Reading Room STRANGE STORIES OF SUSPENSE "Beware...a Martian"

2026-07-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a tale of racism and innuendo involving an "illegal alien"...

...that all Reich-wingers should take note of!

Written by Carl Wessler, penciled by Al Williamson, and inked by Ralph Mayo, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Strange Stories of Suspense #14 (1957) uses science fiction to tell a civil rights parable, substituting a Martian (and the paranoia about his race) for a African-American, Hispanic, Japanese, or other minority group about whom equally-inane fantasies have been concocted!

Note: it's interesting that Nardo the Martian has the same appearance as DC's J'Onn J'Onzz: the Martian Manhunter (except for skin color), as well as MM's specific ability to shape-shift, not a talent usually attributed to inhabitants of the Red Planet!

Note: J'Onn had debuted almost two years earlier!

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Mars in the Movies

A History
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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder GRAPHIC SHOWCASE "Eyes of Mars" Part 2

2026-07-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

We Have Already Seen...

...disturbed that, due to the development of warp drive, Earth's scientists are bypassing the planets of the Solar System as uninhabitable, Lt Cezer Leason, a pilot in the Space Patrol, steals his scout craft and heads to Mars!

His ship damaged by a meteor storm, Leason crashes on the surface of the Red Planet and discovers it is, in fact, inhabited!
Rescued by two rebel warriors, he and his new-found friends are captured and brought before the beautiful Queen of Mars...

To Be Continued...Next Wednesday

As we explained previously; the Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired creator of this story from CCCS's Graphic Showcase #2 (1967) is none other than Mike (The Shadow) Kaluta!
The strip was probably intended as weekly installments in a high-school/college paper, but was repurposed for use in the fanzine.

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Michael Wm. Kaluta: Sketchbook Ser

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Volume 1
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The RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon BEGINS...with the ONLY MULTI-PART/MULTI-SERIES SuperHeroine Crossover in Comics History!

2026-07-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Yep!
You Read That Right!
Two Comic Books!
(Police Comics & Feature Comics)
Six Issues...in Three Instalments!

Police Comics #20

Feature Comics #69
This Wednesday!

Police Comics #21

Feature Comics #70
on July 22nd

Feature Comics #71

Police Comics #22

on July 29th

at our "sister" RetroBlog

Heroines!

It's two heroines (plus a hapless hero, The Raven), in a multi-chapter story arc with criminals, crazy coincidences, and catfights!

It took three months to tell the complete story during the Golden Age, but you lucky ducks will get it in three weeks!

Monday Mecha Madness WEIRD THRILLERS "Menace of R Day"

2026-07-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

In the 1950s, it was believed that war could be ended by 1999...

...and that other menaces would threaten the Earth, instead!

This somewhat-hokey, but entertaining, sci-fi tale from Ziff-Davis' Weird Thrillers #1 (1951) was both penciled and inked by Ross Andru.

Andru would later partner with Mike Esposito with Ross as the penciler and Mike doing the inking.

Whether this was because Esposito was faster at inking than Ross, or Andru enjoyed doing only pencils is unknown.

Considering Andru seemed pretty damn good at inking, it's a pity he eventually gave it up.

BTW, the writer of this never-reprinted tale of mechanical mayhem is unknown.

Next Week: the Return of

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Taylor Illustrated History

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Patriotic Reading Room SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN "When Olsen Changed History!"

2026-07-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

We Have Already Seen...

...since this is the continuation of a story from the previous issue, I'll let the narrator clue you in as t what's going on...

Had ya goin' there for a minute, eh?

Written by Leo Dorman and illustrated by Pete Costanza, this never-reprinted tale from DC's Jimmy Olsen #127 (1970) was one of the last Silver Age-style stories of "Superman's Pal" as a radical change came only a half-year later as Jack (King) Kirby, coming over from Marvel, asumed writer-penciler duties with #133...

...the Bronze Age got fully under way, and elements of Kirby's Fourth World became part of the DC mythos!

Space Hero Saturdays LOST WORLDS "Man Who Didn't Know Venus"

2026-07-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

Nedor/Better/Standard Comics produced several sci-fi anthologies...

...none of which lasted more than three issues.

But it certainly wasn't due to lack of quality.

With a contributor list that included Alex Toth, Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Nick Cardy, and Jack Katz, you're talking some of the great and soon-to-be-great storytellers of comics history!

But, there was one other sci-fi creator who did a story for Lost Worlds, one of only four tales he did for comic books.

Jerome Bixby, novelist and short-story writer, as well as screenwriter whose credits include...

IT! the Terror from Beyond Space!
Fantastic Voyage

Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror"*, "By Any Other Name", "Requiem for Methuselah" and "Day of the Dove"

and the short story "It's a Good Life" which was adapted on both the original Twilight Zone tv series (by Rod Serling) and the 1983 feature film (by Richard Matheson).

BTW, around the time he wrote this, Bixby had just left his position as editor of the Planet Stories pulp magazine at Fiction House, where he also contributed a couple of text pieces to Planet Comics and Indians (his only non-genre text story)!

*The Mirror Universe created by Bixby in "Mirror, Mirror" has proven to be so popular that it has reappeared in almost all the spin-off series spanning almost all of Federation and StarFleet history!

And let's not get into the numerous (sometimes contradictory) novels and comics about the concept...

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Masters of Science Fiction Volume 2
Jerome Bixby
"One Way Street" and Other Tales
Note: "One Way Street's" concept of being transferred to another universe was the thematic basis for "Mirror, Mirror"!
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Friday Fun HENRY BREWSTER "Movie Madness"

2026-07-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

"Teen Humor" Used to Be a Lot More Than Just Archie Comics...

...as this never-reprinted tale from MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966) attests!

Golden/Silver Age icon Bob Powell was going for a far different look in this, his final ongoing comic book series, than we were used to seeing...

...while at the same time, deliberately avoiding the Dan DeCarlo Archie Comics "house style" almost everybody else was using for their "teen humor" books!

Sadly, the Henry Brewster series only lasted seven, never-reprinted, issues, which were entirely packaged (scripts and art) by Bob Powell and his studio!
This particular tale is from MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966).
Note: After MF Comics folded, Powell became Art Director at Prize's Sick magazine until he passed away in 1967.

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "What Went Wrong?"

2026-07-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

You think you've prepared for every contingency...but is that truly possible?

Can anyone always account for the "human" factor?

Illustrated by Bob Forgione, whose credits at Timely/Atlas included a number of sci-fi stories including an issue of Speed Carter: SpaceMan, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #1 (1956) is one of those "average guy inadvertently saves the world" tales that writers (in this case, unidentified) love to tell.

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Mars in the Movies

A History
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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder GRAPHIC SHOWCASE "Eyes of Mars" Part 1

2026-07-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

In the pre-Internet days...

...comic creator wanna-bes had to print samples of their work in "fanzines", then sell them at comic conventions and through mailing lists.

Here's the very first published efforts of a wanna-be who made good...

The Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired creator of this story from CCCS's Graphic Showcase #1 (1967) is none other than Mike (The Shadow) Kaluta!

The strip was probably intended as weekly installments in a high-school/college paper, but was repurposed for use in the fanzine.

Graphic Showcase ran three issues, with "Eyes of Mars" appearing in all three.

You'll see them over the next two weeks...

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Michael Wm. Kaluta: Sketchbook Ser

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Volume 1
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Reading Room LOST WORLDS "City That Escaped From Tomorrow"

2026-07-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

In the 1950s, the popularity of sci-fi in tv and in movies carried over to comics...

...with a plethora of sci-fi anthology titles from almost every publisher, most of which ran material equal to the bulk of pulp and paperback science fiction of the era.

This never-reprinted tale from Standard's Lost Worlds #5 (1952) was penciled by Ross Andru and inked by Mike Esposito and Jim Mooney.
The writer is unknown.

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Monday Mecha Madness UNUSUAL TALES "Where Does It Go?"

2026-07-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen a bus pass by that you're unfamilar with, and wonder...

..."Where Does It Go?"

This never-reprinted tale behind this never-reprinted Rocke Mastroserio cover offers one possibility!

While the concept is rather kool, I have to ask, why is the robot such an insulting s.o.b.?

Writer Joe Gill, penciler Bill Moino, and inker Vince Alascia probably could have provided the answer when they created this story for Charlton's Unusual Tales #29 (1961), none of them are around now to answer the question...

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Mysteries in Space

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Patriotic Reading Room SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN "Jimmy Olsen--Traitor!"

2026-07-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

Which of the Man of Steel's Besties Got into More Trouble?
Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen?

Don't answer until you've read this never-reprinted Silver Age story...

To Be Concluded...Next Sunday!

Written by Leo Dorfman and illustrated by Pete Costanza, this tale from DC's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #126 (1970) wasn't considered odd or unique enough to warrant being the cover story...

Hope You Had a Happy (and Safe) 4th of July!

Captain America Celebrates America!

2026-07-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

A Half-Century Ago, Marvel Did an All-New Tabloid-Sized Special Celebrating the Bicentennial...

Unpublished Page by Jack Kirby

...titled Captain America's Bicentennial Battles, written and penciled by Jack (King) Kirby, who had just returned from a tenure at DC Comics!

While it did show some of the flaws and blemishes of American History, the tale ended on an extremely-optimistic note...

Penciled page (from photocopy) by Jack Kirby

...and gave us an iconic image of the Star-Spangled Avenger congratulating Uncle Sam on making it to 200!

Bicentennial Bonus: the original art by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia!

Happy Birthday, America!

(Hope it isn't our last one...)

Friday Fun BIG APPLE COMIX "Token"

2026-07-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

In the early 1970s, there were a lot of underground / alternative comics...

Art by Larry Hama, Paul Kirchner, Stu Schwartzberg, Wally Wood

...but this HTF 1975 one-shot was one of the koolest, if only for it's awesome lineup of big-name New York-based comics talent including:

Wally Wood (who did the amazing cover above as well as a NSFW spoof of his classic "My World" strip, plus he wrote a second strip and inked a third.)!

Al Williamson, who illustrated a NSFW strip written by Wood, starring a Roy Thomas-lookalike nerd thrust into a world of barbarians, nude princesses, and monsters, becoming a loincloth-wearing, sword-wielding hero!

Plus: Neal Adams, Larry Hama, Ralph Reese, Paul Kirshner, Archie Goodwin, Marie Severin, Mike Ploog, Alan Weiss, Stu Schwarzberg, and Linda Fite.

Edited and published by Flo Steinberg (known as "Fabulous Flo" when she was Stan Lee's Gal Friday during the Silver Age), the comic was sold primarily in "head shops" and sleazy bookstores since the Direct Market was in it's infancy and there were maybe two dozen comic book shops in the entire country!

The comic was a tribute to New York City, the city we love, the city we hate, the city we love to hate and hate to love!
(Yeah, I was born and raised in NYC...Brooklyn, to be exact!)

There's lots of venting of cynicism and irritation, like the cover above with commuters just standing there with a "What now!" attitude instead of fleeing in terror as most populaces do at the sight of giant monsters tearing up the skyline.

And then there's the gentle, poetic, side as shown by the highly-underrated Herb Trimpe's visual treat...

BTW, the object in question is a subway token.
Its' use was discontinued over two decades ago in favor of "smart cards", so there are probably readers of this blog who have never used, or even seen them.

Penciler/inker (and occasional writer) Herb Trimpe, who fell into disfavor with Marvel in the 1990s, despite trying to adapt by becoming a Rob Liefield clone, was as much a part of their Silver and Bronze Age success as the Buscema brothers, Don Heck, John Romita Sr, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, or any of the other hardworking craftsmen of the era.

He passed away over a decade ago...another of the links to the Silver and Bronze Ages (and, according to all accounts, a heck of a nice guy) lost to eternity.

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Reading Room GIVE ME LIBERTY! A REVISED HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Part 2

2026-07-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, We Introduced You to...

...this fascinating underground comix by Gilbert (Fabulous Furry Freak Bros) Shelton, Ted (Air Pirates) Richards, Gary Hallgren, and Willy Murphy!

Let's continue with their...unique...look at Paul Revere and others...

As you can see, these guys took the approach in Rip-Off Press' Give Me Liberty! A Revised History of the American Revolution (1976) that the American Revolution was a truly-messy business!

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Give Me Liberty! A Revised History of the American Revolution

TPB with the complete 1976 comix, plus additional features about the mood of the era!
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