Moon Madness With Buck & Wilma

We haven't seen nearly enough of Gray Morrow's works around here as yet. Let's use our recent look at Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers parodies as an excuse to fix that a little bit. (Actually, if i could have found my frelling copy of his Amora, we could have slipped him into the parodies proper.)

This tale from Heavy Metal magazine, written by Jim Lawrence with art by Morrow, isn't a parody, but it is an odd piece that feels like a distorted reflection in some ways, due to the weird world in which they find themselves...

page art from Heavy Metal (Sept 1979)

Blue & Gray

Today's post in our 'back room' for adult content takes a quick peek at a short tale by an artist famed for his work on Tarzan, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, among others in this edition of

 Most readers are likely to be familiar with Gray Morrow's adult themed strips like Orion and Amora, created in traditionally inked comic strip style. While i enjoy those, and we'll likely wind up running some strips eventually, there's one odd tale done quite differently rendered, and written by his then-wife, Betty.

If you're interested in this story (The Journey) from Wally Wood's prozine, Witzend, follow the link to this post on The Other Voice Of ODD!

 The Journey by Betty & Gray Morrow for Witzend #7 (1970)

Groovy Age Walls

I recently had one of those dark spots where memory has dropped through one of the gaping holes in my head unveiled, much to my delight. We'll get into details a bit more soon, when we get to the title itself.
But this is going to be another one of those annoying tease posts heralding more to follow, so let's skip those important details for the moment.

Instead, like the title says, let's go to the walls and what covered them in my room way back then. In the early 70s an oversized newspaper publication emerged, and from the first issue they used that size to cool purpose - providing big posters for the readers. And, even better, being an un-stapled newspaper centerfold, you didn't even have to destroy the issue to display them.

After being reminded of the existance of this publication, i went digging into the forgotten archives with much joy as i rediscoverd over a dozen posters that used to hang upon my wall. (And a treasure trove of cool stashed inside the pages)

So, here's some of what covered my walls back in the later days of the Groovy Age. (A few have been edited to remove identifying text.)

This was way back in 1971, before Wrightson's famous Frankenstein work.

Star Trek by Gray Morrow!

Wendy Wenzel's rocking this Valley Of Gwangi poster - an old favorite film.

posters from... but that would be telling (1970s)

Famous Creepy Eerie FreakOut

We're running out of year pretty soon, did you notice that?

Any 50 years ago in 1967 sort of things must be tended to in the next several weeks. There was a lot happening in '67 - in fact, it was A Happening in '67. But i'm not in an overly wordy frame of mind, so let's take in something visual - I trust not too abysmal. And let's intersect with another subject i've had on the back burner for quite a while - Warren magazines.

We'll later be talking about what goes on inside the magazines, but today, let's just take a look at Warren's '67 covers. As they developed over the years, their magazines often sported some of the coolest and most interesting visuals on the magazine rack.

Their Big 3 comic magazines were Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, with a host of other titles supporting them over the years. But back in 1967, Vampirella was still a stirring in Forry's... imagination. So, instead of Vampirella, here's his other magazine - Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Not a comic magazine, but just around the genre corner:

There's a reminder - Christmas Is Coming! That sounds somehow very different in a post Game Of Thrones world...
Meanwhile, back at Warrens premiere comic magazines... Creepy is the Big Brother of the two titles, being a whole year older. So we'll honor the elderly and let them go first-

Frank Frazetta was a frequently featured cover artist on Warren's publications. Even when re-purposing a pre-existing illustration that many had likely seen before, it was still a good draw on the newsstand. A great number of other fantasy and horror artists' paintings were used on the cover, Warren seeming to splurge on the colour covers to offset the mostly black & white inner contents.
Worked for me, though these were before my time buying the titles. I was still living in Asia at this point, and Warren was having enough troubles with distribution in the USA.
On the cover's of  Eerie's mere five issues for '67 we had Frazetta once again leading off-

I particularly like that Gray Morrow cover on #10 above. So simple & clean compared to the typical offerings of the time, and a striking design that makes good use of the white space to draw the eye to the image.

Though perhaps not up to later levels at the peak of their covers, not a bad collection for the year of 1967.
Of course, this is The Voice Of ODD!, so we'd be remiss were we not to peek at the covers of Warren's oddest publication for '67 - Freak Out U.S.A.

Yes, the second issue is actually cover dated for 1968, but it was published in '67 and it was just too damn odd to leave out. I mean - how many of you looked at that and Austin drawled "Yeah, Baby!"?
You can expect to at least see a bit of The Monkees from the first issue (16 pages they got!), as might be expected from some of my previous indications of Monkee mania.

But the question looms in my mind - which covers make you want to look inside the magazine?

all covers from Warren publications (1967)