Atlas/Marvel covers are decorated with more giant monsters in January 1960: Rro! and Taboo! Another thing I’m noticing with Marvel stories from this era is that these anthological tales are now getting sequels, such as “Return of the Martian” features another tale of “Zetora the Martian” in Journey into Mystery #58. Clear indications that the […]
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In June 1955, DC premieres an important new anthology comic book: The Brave & The Bold #1. Starting off as an anthology series, the book features three new heroes plucked from historical fiction, the best of which is The Viking Prince. The other two were Silent Knight and the Golden Gladiator. The Viking Prince was […]
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In July 1952, EC Comics debuted a new comic: Mad! Filled with anthological stories from multiple genres with a silly bent, it eventually morphed into a satire magazine, rather than comic book and became the only surviving EC comic in just a few more years. One story is horror, one is crime, one is western, […]
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The Phantom Stranger makes his debut in DC’s Phantom Stranger #1 (June 1952) and was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. The character is unnamed and not given an origin, simply appearing across 3 different stories of people encountering supernatural events. In each story, he debunks the supernatural aspects as hoaxes and solves the […]
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Wow, my 500th entry! It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for almost two years! I’m happy to see that I’m well into what I am calling the “Early Silver Age”, where many of the horror and science fictions stories are interesting, even if superheroes themselves have faded down to just a few exceptions. […]
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In February 1951, Marvel (Timely Comics) sold their first issue of the comic book Strange Tales. It is a mixture of horror-sci-fi stories, but in later years it becomes the home of Doctor Strange and Nick Fury.
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Just a couple months after debuting its new lineup of anthology comic books, EC introduces Weird Fantasy #1 (March 1950) to keep Weird Science in weird company. I loved the stories in this book! One involved keeping a human brain alive, another involved time travel, and yet another featured inter-planetary space travel with a twist […]
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Rounding out EC’s new line of horror comics is Weird Science, an anthological science fiction comic taking over the numbering from “Saddle Romances”. The stories are very reminiscent of The Twilight Zone TV series (1959), including an alien that has a third eye :-).
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The very very last vestige of Timely (Marvel) Comics’ superheroes occurs with Captain America’s Weird Tales #75 (November 1949). The cover mentions Captain America, but the book is very clearly EC Comics-inspired (down to the left-hand vertical title bar) with anthological horror tales. The magazine probably needed to include “Captain America” in the title so […]
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In Marvel Mystery #92 (February 1949), the Human Torch‘s origin story is re-told, with a framing story of his creator, Professor Horton, passing away. This is also the last appearance for years of the original Human Torch. After this issue, Marvel Mystery Comics is renamed to Marvel Tales and becomes a horror / supernatural anthology […]
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