Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Sunday, December 14, 2025

Christmas Creepiness WEB OF HORROR "Santa's Claws"

 Besides traversing the Earth distributing gifts, Kris Kringle  protects the innocent...

...from threats both real and imagined!
Story and art for this tale from Major Magazines' Web of Horror #3 (1970) were by Frank Brunner, who would go on to major successes in sf/fantasy including acclaimed runs on Dr Strange and Man-Thing comics, and character design work on the 1990s X-Men animated series.
BTW, the spider-like host of the book was named (what else?) "Webster"!
We'll be back in 2026 with more stuff your grandparents didn't want your parents to read...
Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Christmas Creepyness MARVEL TALES "Third Ghost"

This is basically Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"...
...but with a plot twist you'll never see coming!
Written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Larry Woromay, this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvel Tales #112 (1953) turns the classic Yuletide ghost story on it's ear with the Scrooge surrogate triumphing over the specters!

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Christmas Creepyness MYSTIC "Help Wanted!"

A Christmas tale that begins just before Easter...
...proves it doesn't pay to be a Scrooge!
Mort Lawrence illustrated this tale of Xmas justice from Atlas' Mystic #19 (1953) including a rather...unusual-looking...demon.
This proved a tad problematic when editor Roy Thomas made the tale the cover feature for an issue of Marvel's 1970s horror reprint anthology Vault of Evil!
Penciller Gil Kane and inker John Romita Sr followed the demon's design perfectly...but someone forgot to tell the cover copywriter what the story was about!
There's no story in #6 (1973) even vaguely-related to insects!
And detail-obsessed Roy Thomas is the last person you'd expect to allow such a mistake!
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Monday, December 20, 2021

Christmas Creepiness SPELLBOUND "When You Believe..."

Considering A Christmas Story was directed by the guy who did Black Christmas (1974)..
...it's almost a miracle the holiday classic about a kid and his toy gun didn't end up like this Xmas tale of a kid and his toy gun!
Rendered beautifully by Bill Everett, this Yuletide tale from Atlas' Spellbound #16 (1953) appeared during the height of the horror comics craze of the early 1950s.
The identity of the writer is, sadly, unknown.
When the story was reprinted in Marvel's Weird Wonder Tales #3 (1974), the first panel of the opening page was slightly-modified, eliminating almost all the text!
I have no idea why!
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Monday, December 18, 2017

There's Nothing That Says "Christmas" Like LUST!

"She was greedy, heartless and calculating.
She knew what she wanted and was ready to sacrifice anything to get it"
Before Gil Kane's Blackmark, before Will Eisner's A Contract with God, there was It Rhymes with Lust, considered by many to be the FIRST Graphic Novel!
Created in 1950 by writers Arnold Drake (Doom Patrol, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Leslie Waller (numerous crime novels) under the pseudonym "Drake Waller" and artists Matt Baker (Phantom Lady) and Ray Osrin, the digest-sized b/w comic was a pulp noir potboiler about a steel-producing town (like Pittsburgh) and a manipulative woman named Rust who will use ANY means to control it. (It's a rather adult book, though not pornographic! Think "soft R" rating!)
Trivia: Leslie Waller, besides writing numerous crime novels, also penned the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind!
The "Picture Novel" series (Lust was the first title) published by pulp/comic company St. John Publications, only ran for two books before being cancelled due to poor sales.
The book has been reprinted twice in recent years, first by Fantagraphics in the magazine The Comics Journal #277, then, in it's original format by Dark Horse Comics with a new intro by Arnold Drake.
Why do we tell you all this?
Because we at Atomic Kommie Comics believe that other companies occasionally produce kool collectibles, and in the Spirit of Christmas, we want to promote stuff that we ourselves would want under the tree. (Significant Other, please take note...)
Of course, the fact that we ourselves also produce It Rhymes with Lust collector's items like mugs, mousepads and mens'/women's clothing that would make great accompanying items in a themed gift package for a loved one who's into Graphic Novels this Yuletide never occured to us!
Nope, never!
Didn't even cross our minds!šŸ˜‰
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