Covering Out Of This World

This machine is still limping along without hard drive, running off of USB sticks. But it's actually the least impediment to posting lately. My mind is scuttling away from the outside world, making focusing on the posts more difficult, but fighting my way past that, too.

And then there's Blogger's 'upgrade' and the thoroughly frelled image uploads. That's a killer. It was only on the last attempt before giving up for the day that it finally upped the images for this post.

So, my apologies for the gaps lately - i'm working on it, but others are working against it. Hopefully things will smooth out soon.

Meanwhile, since the brain doesn't want to focus on wordly bits much, lets take a look at some covers. Out Of This World only had 16 issues between 1956 - 1959. That run of fewer than a dozen & a half issues sure produced a number of nice covers, don't you think...?

Of course, it never hurts to have Steve Ditko on your team.

cover art by Bill Molno, Steve Ditko, Maurice Whitman, Pat Masulli, Rocco Mastroserio, Charles Nichola, Vince Alascia, and Dick Giordano from Out Of This World #s 1-16 (1956, 1959)

Random Post Day

I've been feeling rather disconnected from the outside world (even more than my norm), and very wrapped up in the painting and design work. So there was no blog post planned at all this morning. Oh, sure, we've got more Space Mice and things lying in wait, but the ol' frenemy brain wasn't going there just now.

So, i decided to just grab a random comic out the back corners of the cave and see what we got. It turned out to be Justice #23 from Atlas Comics back in 1951. The first page was the start of a sweet bit of art from John Tartaglione, a name familiar to old fans.

"Perfect!" thought i. 

We won't be seeing that today. (But soon)
The book ended with a tale from Bill Molno. Well, that's a nice bit of intersection - we just saw how Molno was ghosting for Jerry Shuster only a week ago.

Sometimes Random works pretty well. Better yet, i found two more tales drawn by Molno in a couple other random issues pulled from the same year. So, enjoy some random Crime and Romance comics from the brush of Bill Molno -

Oh - and if you're wondering about how the painting is going...   The current batch would have to appear in our back room, so we won't be going there just now.

Even Kelly is embarrassed to be there...

page art by Bill Molno from Justice #23, Lovelorn #14, and Crime And Punishment #37 (1951), paint art by -3- (2020)

In The Company Of Ditko

I noted last that i had been getting sidetracked a bit by the folks with whom Steve Ditko was co-working back in the period i was mining (the mid-50s). A good way to lead into that might be through a few of the stories drawn by others for which Ditko drew the covers.

For example, here's Steve Ditko's cover for This Magazine Is Haunted #16 -

...and for the story, we've got Shelly Moldoff...

On Space Adventures #11, we get a Ditko cover...

...for a story drawn by Joe Shuster and Dick Giordano!

And on rare occasion, we get it the other way around. On Daring Love #1 we get a cover from Bernard Bailey...

...for a tale drawn by Ditko...

Appropriate to the types of tales we've been looking at, it's time for an odd Twist Ending!

That's not Joe Shuster at all.
<Dramatic Fanfare>

According to One Who Generally Knows (Martin O'Hearn), that's actually Bill Molno ghosting for Joe. Here is Martin's article Joe Shuster's Charlton Ghost on his site, Who Created The Comic Books?.

Damn. Even when we get credits, we still don't know who did it.

page art by Steve Ditko, Sheldon Moldoff, and Bill Molno for Daring Love #1, Space Adventures #11, and This Magazine Is Haunted #16 (1953, 1954)