Worldbeater & Unggh?

A brief divergence whilst the brain reboots...

Do ya know Worldbeater and Unngh (and later in the run, JoBlo, the Martian who learned to speak English by listening to radio commercials)? I'll forego giving you the set-up just now - it's laid out in most every splash page below.

Originally written and drawn by Fred Morgan, the fifth tale was drawn by Maurice del Bourgo, and then August Froehlich took over art chores on the strip. (Fred Morgan continued writing while also drawing other strips like Air Male and Flying Fist & Bingo. (Don't ya love those names?))

Usually when i'm doing one of the features, i only use the splash panels. But we're going to go with full pages today, simply because the bottom after the splash often recaps the weirdness ongoing in the series-

Some Odd is more odd than others, y'know?

page art by Fred Morgan, Maurice del Bourgo, and August Froehlich from Prize Comics #s 38-48, Headline Comics # 15 (1944)

Not Quite Saturday Solutions

Net connection working fine.
Computers working well enough.
Operator might be broken.

I thought setting things up so i'd have to post the next day would facilitate blogging while my head was entombed. It backfired, as you might have noticed. (But probably not)

Anyway - today's the 27th. 3 to the 3rd power. Surely my obsessions can feed on that, eh?

So...   On to our answers!

1>
Where did we see the mighty Thor flexing his pecs before he stopped for Hammer Time?





Kung Fury - a 1980s tv show about a super kung fu cop made in 2015.

2>
Yoyodyne has been a Growing Excited company for decades now, with multiple references. Where did we first see them?




The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension. You knew this one, right?
 

3>
Where did Jackie Chan invent the Human Centipede?





Winners & Sinners - the first of the Lucky Stars movies.

4>
Drax isn't the only one who likes to jump into the maw of massive space critters - where did we see Hulk doing it?








This one caused problems. I didn't make notes when doing screen caps and i thought this was an episodes of Hulk & The Agents Of SMASH. Nope.
It was from Avengers Assemble, season 1, episode 14 - Hulk's Day Out.

5>
What movie opened up with a parody of the language in Hollywood movies, and later gave us this exchange -









If your only familiarity with Turkish movies is old titles like 3 Dev Adam (3 Mighty Men - Captain America & Santo vs. Spider-Man) or The Man Who Saved The World (Turkish Star Wars), then it's time to catch up with the new state of Turkish cinema. Watch G.O.R.A. and enjoy how things have changed.

6>
Where did we see the greatest on-screen presentation of George Bush?







Ving Rhames is much too fun to be a Bush in the adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's tale of Florida madness - Striptease. (You also get Burt Reynolds as a crazed senator for extra credit.)
 

7>
From whence comes this pre-Austin Powers medieval mini-me? (and i don't mean under the lady's dress)



Way before Mini-Me, back in 1978, we got the dwarven double in Fairy Tales

8>
Doom Patrol has a new tv series? But - what about Doom Patrol Go! Where did we see it?




We're finally getting season 3 of Young Justice after years of waiting. You're watching it, aren't you? Gar Logan was watching Doom Patrol Go! in episode 12 of season 3. (The show is nothing like the toon he's watching)

...and, no - i wasn't making up the title -

Okay, let's see if this kickstarted things, eh?

screens from where they're labeled as being from

Friday (Evening) Fun & Games Returns

Yeah, still working to pull my brain out of the cave with only middling results. Let's try a short (if late) Friday Fun & Games Video Whatzit quiz -

1>
Where did we see the mighty Thor flexing his pecs before he stopped for Hammer Time?

2>
Yoyodyne has been a Growing Excited company for decades now, with multiple references. Where did we first see them?

3>
Where did Jackie Chan invent the Human Centipede?

(Extra comedy - note the first in line isn't on his knees)

4>
Drax isn't the only one who likes to jump into the maw of massive space critters - where did we see Hulk doing it?

5>
What movie opened up with a parody of the language in Hollywood movies, and later gave us this exchange -

6>
Where did we see the greatest on-screen presentation of George Bush?

7>
From whence comes this pre-Austin Powers medieval mini-me? (and i don't mean under the lady's dress)

8>
Doom Patrol has a new tv series? But - what about Doom Patrol Go! Where did we see it?

Answers tomorrow, eh?

stills from... nope. That would be telling.

Talkin' 'Bout Tuska

George Tuska is a name familiar to most comic readers of my generation. His work was everywhere for many years. Seriously - everywhere.

Major comics publishers for whom he drew included Archie, Charlton, DC, Fawcett, Fiction House, Fox, Harvey, Hillman, Lev Gleason, Marvel, Quality, St. John, Street & Smith, Tower, Warren, Western and Ziff-Davis. There were lots of others, too.

And he drew newspaper comic strips, including Buck Rogers, Superman, and World's Greatest Super-Heroes. Not to mention (because he was ghost penciling) his work on The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic. 

He was probably best known to old geezers like myself for his work on titles like Iron Man and The Avengers in the '60s & '70s, then crossing the street to draw books like Justice League in the '70s & '80s. But Tuska's work in comics goes way back much earlier than most of us realized back in those days.

He was working way back in 1939, and got his own feature right away - Zanzibar The Magician. In fact, he made such a solid impression starting out that the publisher began signing his name to other artist's work. That, of course, isn't very helpful to us. But it is a sign of how well regarded his work was from the very beginning.

Zanzibar ran in the first 24 issues of Mystery Men Comics with Tuska's name prominently featured in the splash panel -

Zanzibar's tales were generally quite short - only four pages each. So here's a trio of them to give a look at how his adventures ran -

Y'know - I'm sensing a pattern here...

page art by George Tuska for Mystery Men Comics #s 1-24 (1939-1941)