Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 34

Gil Elvgren's beautiful painting this week is a NAPA Advertisement oddly dated 1968-1981 -

art by Gil Elvgren (1968-1981)

3-Day Weekend Matinee - Robot Revolution

Since we're running the same features all weekend, it's obviously no surprise that we've got another tale from Look-In magazine's Buck Rogers comic, based on the Gil Gerard/Erin Gray tv show. But first, of course, we have our ongoing serial - the classic newspaper strip Twin Earths by Oskar Lebeck and Alden McWilliams -


Previously on Twin Earths: Vana, a defector from Terra - Earth's twin planet opposite Sol - has allied herself with the FBI and has helped them to design a detection system for the space based operations of her observers from her homeworld. Meanwhile, her FBI liaison, Garry Verth, has led a team investigating a piece of Terran technology - the telvisphone - a portable teleconferencing unit. With it, they contacted the Terran agents and learned that they were based in Washington DC. In the process, they have revealed their knowledge to the operatives from another world and a bomb exploded in their headquarters soon after...

Twin Earths - Chapter 14:

To Be Continued...

As with the previous two Buck Rogers entries, this tale - Robot Revolution - is written by Angus P. Allan and illustrated by Martin Asbury, his last in this sequence, though he returned to the strip by year's end...

art from Twin Earths newspaper strips (1952) and Look-In v11 #s 5-11 (1981)

3-Day Weekend Matinee - Full Colour Buck

Our weekend matinee continues, as one might surmise from the title. We're continuing with the same features all weekend, so let's keep the introduction to a minimum and head right into our stories. Our ongoing serial, Twin Earths, was created by Oskar Lebeck and Alden McWilliams, and today's Buck Rogers tale comes from Angus P. Allan and Martin Asbury. (I have no clue if he was doing his own colours, or if another artist was involved)

Previously on Twin Earths: FBI agent Garry Verth is liaison to Vana, the defector from Terra - another world orbiting the sun opposite the Earth. He and his team have just tested a telecommunications device captured from agents of Terra, and in the process they have discovered that the operatives from the Twin Earth are based in Washington DC!

Twin Earths - Chapter 13:

To Be Continued...

On to the first full colour episode of Look-In magazine's Buck Rogers comic -

art from Twin Earths newspaper strips (1952) and Look-In v10 #s 50-52, v11 #s 1-4 (1980-1981)

Sincerely Flattering Flash

We previously looked at a few Flash Gordon parodies from back in the 1940s & '50s, but we only stopped due to the growing length of the post, not lack of material. Satires continued over the decades, sometimes tucked away in odd little corners, like this tale from the 2nd issue of Drag Cartoons back in '63. The story was published without art credits, but when the original art showed up for auction it was attributed to Mel Keefer -

From the 1970s, let's look over in one of our favorite old fanzines, the Rocket's Blast ComicCollector. In RBCC #134, Ron Wilber took part in the Flash Gordon celebration that filled the issue with his own satirized take...

Even as 1980 rolled around, Flash was still getting spoofed, as here by Dave Angus & Kevin O'Neill in 2000 AD -

Of course, once the Sam Jones/Queen version of Flash Gordon hit the theatres later that year, parodies naturally experienced a resurgence in popularity once more. Here's Paul Kupperberg and Bob Camp's version of the film, sporting a cover painting by Bob Larkin...

By the way, that story from the RBCC that we opened with came with a pretty cool Flash Gordon illo from Steve Fabian (Whom we somehow have yet to get around to featuring even though i started tucking things away for posting over a year ago) on the cover -

We'll be back this afternoon with another batch, and even a little bit of Buck Rogers, too.

page art from RBCC #134 (1977), 2000 AD #181 (1980), Drag Cartoons #2 (1963), and Crazy #75 (1981)