Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 30

Last Stand (Fare Maiden) from 1961 is this week's painted lovely from Gil Elvgren -

You know that we're going to have to use a photo calendar next year, right?
It would just be cruel to make anyone else follow a year of Elvgren's beautiful works.

art by Gil Elvgren (1961)

Help! In The Bath

Net connection issues worsening. Lucky to have a few hours of net per day currently. Mind slipping down into that dark pit. But, hopefully fixed soon?

Meanwhile - a quick dose of Odd to help things along. Let's screw with your perceptions of Gloria Steinem, shall we? (I'm just going to proceed on the presumption that folks know who she is, and not even try to explain her position as a feminist icon)

Back in 1961...

Things continue, just slowly for the nonce...

Susan Perl, Gloria Steinem and naked ladies from Help! #9 (1961)

Saturday Solutions Fan Fest

As mentioned in the previous comments, some idiot thought spam for plastic surgery would fit naturally with yesterday's post. So, fair warning - we may have to implement human detection on comments before too long. But no plans on requiring registration, don't worry there.

Meanwhile, how about some of those promised solutions, eh?

Yes, i know that there's no 'M' for married on answer E in the puzzle above. But there's no 19, either.

BONUS FUN!
The first puzzle mentions that Julius Schwartz appeared regularly in a couple titles, so here are examples by Sidney Greene.

Mystery In Space -

Strange Adventures -

Now let's see if today's topic title brings on the spam for room cooling devices...

Quizzes from Alter Ego #2 and RBCC #s 74, 79, 80, & 90 (1961, 1970, 1971)

page art by Sydney Greene from Mystery In Space #69 and Strange Adventures #130 (1961)

Bestest Beginnings

Finally!
I'm missing the first part, but knew i'd seen it in one of the archives to which i have access. But small and arcane university archives can be torurous to search at times. We're talking internet access that was established before the Web took over the Internet. One had best be familiar with FTP and willing to digitally walk through obtuse data mazes laid out when directory names were limited to eight characters.
But at last, chapter one is here and we may proceed...

Way back at the dawn of the Groovy Age there was a young guy who loved comics.
Actually, there were a lot of guys like that at the time, but we're talking about one in particular who would go on to be one of the writers with the biggest impact of the decades to follow. But back in 1961 he didn't have anyone to draw his stories when he decided to put out his own fanzine.

That didn't stop him. And, Lo - A League Was Born....

Alter Ego was launched, as many of you already know, by Roy Thomas.  CORRECTION/EDIT: Alter Ego was launched, as many of you already know, by Jerry Bails, of Jerry Bails' Collector's Guide fame, with the aid of Roy Thomas.
It went on to become such a legendary fanzine that it was revived as a professional publication in this century by Two Morrows. But back in that first issue, Roy was doing it all  drawing it by himself:

A note before we continue. Way back in those days before common access to Xerox copy machines, we had to use mimeograph technology for duplication. This was rather crude, involving preparing your pages backwards, so the master pages had a carbon sheet affixed to the back to create a reverse image of whatever was typed, or drawn, on the front side. That reversed image was then reversed again during duplication and was prone to fairly rapid replicant fading. For large runs, multiple masters often needed to be prepared. Not a terrible thing for a typed page of text, perhaps, but pretty limited for hand drawn artwork.

Also, the pages printed purple. I considered removing the colour data to allow cleaner preparation of these pages, but decided that the purple look was better suited to this post. I could be wrong, but this is what you get for now -

Yep. Even way back then, Roy was already working to bring back some of those Golden Age greats. Eventually that became something of his trademark at DC, while over at Marvel he's perhaps best known for the epic Kree/Skrull war.

Two issues later...

Now we're talking Groovy! Grass Green drawing Roy Thomas parody of 1963 era FF?
And an actual printer? Distribution must be growing.

Stay tuned for the return of Grass Green!

pages & covers by Roy Thomas for Alter Ego #s 1, 2 & 3 (1961)

Saturday Solutions 006 (King Kirby 090)

You didn't come here looking for the answers to yesterdays' King Kirby 100 Crossword Challenge, did you? I said i was going to give you extra time to work on that one.

So, let's try to pierce the Veil and turn to The King for some other solutions, shall we?

Mr. Kirby - um....
How does one see so far, as You did?

Okay. That's not quite what i meant.
Your vision seemed so wide ranging - how do we perceive the worlds around us with the clarity You demonstrated?

All right. Obviously, this isn't the right line of inquiry. Let's take this in a different direction -
How can one live beyond death, as You have done?

Well, that's more interesting. Now You've got me thinking about some of Your other creations. After hearing this tale, i wonder what Captain America would have been like if it was a western, like BullsEye...

Well, that's pretty cool - An American Icon x 2. Makes me wonder what he would have been like if Cap had been around earlier - at the formation of the USA?

Ha! The Red Skull makes it glorious!
I don't think the Veil will stay parted much longer... One last answer -
How did Thor earn the right to weild Mjolnir? How did he prove he was worthy? Did he just walk up and grab the hammer, or were there some sort of trials?

all page art by Jack Kirby & co. from Classics Illustrated Special #165a (1961), BullsEye #6 (1955), Marvel Treasury Special #1 (1976), and Journey Into Mystery #100 (1964)

Missed it by THAT much! (King Kirby 012)

Looking back through Jack Kirby's days telling monster stories before Marvel shifted gears, you'll start seeing some very familiar looking names. (Sometimes very familiar looking concepts, but - another day)

I mean, sure, Groot's famous for having roots in the monster comics:

I guess it really shouldn't be any surprise to see this name used again... 

...but, they were having a bit of trouble working out the spelling for another:

This guy was so close, but just a commoner:

Of course, if Van Doom is close, how about-

Sarring Doctor Droom?

Yep - he's our hero. A rather unconventional hero... almost like victor might have been on different path? Let's look at just the beginning and end of his first story:

It seems the got the arrogant attitude right, at the very least.
And, with this guy, they got a lot more than the name right. You can almost see him thinking, "I need a helmet."

I'm sure there were more, and please do fill in the gaps in my ignorance.
Meanwhile, Jack will help us all and cure our ignorance of how to stop Groot if he were to go rampaging here:

Note that all of these occurred within just a year or two of the Marvel reinvention with the launching of the Fantastic Four. No point to that, just note it.

Kirby covers & pages from Amazing Adventures #s 1,2,3&4, Strange Tales #s 79 & 84, Tales ToAstonish #s 13, 16, & 17 (1960-1961)