Beam Beat Monkee Loving

I've made no secret of my fondness for The Monkees, (Words is playing now, and Randy Souse Git just finished - but Goin' Down is still my fave) and neither did DC.

Yeah - that's Joe Orlando's signature up there.

At the height of the Groovy Age, the folks at DC decided they should expand from comics and try their hand at the teen magazine game. But, not glossy print magazines. The idea was to use the existing set-up to create a cheaper comic book style printed magazine and offer it for only 12¢.

It was an experiment, down to the title - half of the run was called Teen Beat, half was labelled Teen Beam though the basic logo design remained constant:

You might have noticed that it changed from Beat to Beam on issue #2. So, yeah - that was the complete run of the series. The Monkees were featured on the cover of both. (As the blurbs indicate, the insides were packed with a ton of groups and stars of the day.)

The first issue featured a big article on fears that the boys would follow those other guys and break up with lots of photos. Unfortunately, comic book presses weren't really the best thing for photographs - that's probably one of the things that kept the book from catching on. The second issue featured a spread of tour photos, and a most odd little feature on The Monkees drawn by Joe Orlando! (from which the (slightly modified) image at the top of the page originated as well)

To show you what i meant about the photograph quality, here's the spread that followed the Family Album:

And, just because, here's that article from the first issue:

Gonna Buy Me A Dog is playing now. You know what's coming up, of course - Listen To The Band.
(And it's not even LJ)

art by Joe Orlando, articles from Teen Beat #1 and Teen Beam #2 (1967, 1968)

Not to be confused with Tony Hale, Captain Zep, Lance Lewis, or the upcoming animated movie from Swamp Media Group.

Once upon a time in the 1950s...

Though many have claimed the title over the decades, Rod Hathaway is my Space Detective. Well, technically, he's the secret identity and Avenger is the Space Detective. Teena is Teena - she doesn't need the extra name.
Together they starred in four issues from Avon in 1951:

Their first adventure was written by Walter Gibson (creator of The Shadow), and drawn by comic legends Joe Orlando and Wally Wood. That's some serious pedigree papers.
Let's go ahead and take a look at that story:

The title also featured back up tales, like this one starring Lucky Dale, Girl Detective with art from Warren Kremer:

There was also the occasional bit of silly fun...

(Actually, that was a reprint from 1938's Cocomalt Big Book of Comics)

Orlando and Wood didn't stick around long on the title, just the first issue and the frontpiece for #2. Somebody did a nice job taking over for them, but nobody knows who drew most of the remaining stories. Greg Fawcette did some nice work, as seen in the 3rd frontpiece at the top of the page, but most tales are uncredited. Up until less than 10 years ago, they had been attributed to Wally Wood, but that has since been established as incorrect. Here's a short tale from #3 for a look at the work:

If only we could hire Space Detective to investigate the mystery artists...

pages from Space Detective #s 1-4 (1951)