My Favorite Caveman

I started building towards this topic a little over two years ago. Regular readers know the struggle, but we've finally wrangled the beast back around this way...

One of Jack Kirby's many great concepts was the inception of the Inhumans (and similarly the Eternals & Deviants). Highly advanced alien races experimenting on emerging Humanity to see what they can make from the raw clay of Man. (the species, not the sex)

In 1975, over at Gold Key Comics, a new caveman comic crawled up on the shore - Don Glut and Jesse Santos teamed up like peanut butter & chocolate and brought us Tragg and the Sky Gods. Engaging the same basic concepts, they didn't jump ahead thousands of years to see the results. Instead, they told the tale of the new Humans resulting from their experiments, and their interactions with the primitive world of cavemen and dinosaurs. (It's comics, not science)

After two issues, they switched to painted covers. Still Jesse Santos and still looking mighty fine, but i really prefer the psychedelia infused feel of his inks. Here's the other drawn-not-painted cover -

Tragg only had 8 issues, plus a Gold Key Spotlight comic. Some will tell you that there's also that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor, but that's a single panel lacking even name designations, so it's a cameo at most. That's not a whole lot of comics, but they were fairly densely packed. The first issue has 25 pages of story - let's ago ahead and dive in rather than have me try to break things down for you...

Let me pause to say how much i enjoy the way Don & Jesse play together. Beyond Tragg, they also teamed for the aforementioned Dr. Spektor, and for Dagar The Invincible, too, along with a smattering of Mystery tales.
I rather thought that we'd have covered some of them by now, but we'll get there.

Meanwhile, let's cover the rest of this series, shall we? 
Here are Jesse's painted covers for the run of Tragg -

...and, what the heck - here's the cover to that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor that has the single panel in it. Just because...

I expect we'll be back to check on Tragg and Lorn's progress. But i also expected we'd be here two years ago...

page art by Jesse Santos for Tragg And The Sky Gods #1 (plus covers) (1975)

Tass Times In Sunuria

Back in 1975 one of the more unusual fanzines emerged. 

Charlton Bullseye, rather obviously devoted to Charlton Comics, lasted for only 5 issues in its original incarnation. But those few issues were packed with talent. Editors included Bob Layton and Roger Stern, and the first issue credits alone included "John Byrne, Nick Cuti, Steve Ditko, Jeff Jones, Dave Kaler, Sanho Kim, Frank Maynerd, Allen Milgrom, Jim Starlin, Joe Staton, Roger Stern, Howard Siegel, Tom Sutton, Barb Weaver, Phil "Lester" Wesner, and the Big Cheese-George R. Wildman."

For a quick peek inside today, let's just look at the story that goes with that first issue cover. It's a two-parter, continued in the second issue, but E-Man got the second cover. I can't complain about that - i dig E-Man and Joe Staton. 

This tale picks up after an 8 year gap, with words by Roger Stern (using the name Jon G. Michels for part one) and art by Steve Ditko and John Byrne!

When i look at the clean black & white on some strips and covers like these, i think of having some fun colouring.
That might not make a bad post, eh? 
A collection of things to print and colour for some fun while trapped inside by Trump Flu in the air.

Hmm... 

page art by Steve Ditko and John Byrne from Charlton Bullseye #s 1 & 2 (1975)