Brief Oddities

We've got an extra post with a smattering of oddities, as mentioned above, and no real theme beyond having accumulated in the blog files. And, y'know... being Odd.

Here's a beautiful and mysterious first page from Omandu -

You may perhaps wonder where the figure absent from the white space in the middle has gone?

He escaped to the cover -

I admire an artist who is wholly committed to the work over the modern obsession for Branding. In fact, the only way to know that this is the cover for The Little Book Of Inner Space #1 is from the indicia box, hand written at the bottom of the first page -

Sadly, this seems almost completely forgotten today. The Grand Comics Database has almost no info, only the front cover.
Every time i put together a list of titles to update in their database, i lose it.
Somebody remind me after a bit and see if i've entered the particulars on this comic.

Elsewhere in Time and California...

What's this crowd waiting for...?

...the chance to party with Mary Fleener! 
Why me not there?

For a purely odd sidestep in time and space, yet somehow reminiscent of now, here's a one-pager from Look Magazine's second issue, just over 80 years ago...

And buried way down here is the single page comic that started this post going. A simple piece in every way, that works so nicely from the team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito...

Omandu say bye-bye -

pages from The Little Book Of Inner Space #1, Life Of The Party, Look v.1#2, and Get Lost #3 (1937, 1954, 1972, 1996)

More Flash For Your Buck

One last batch of Flash Gordon parodies, and we'll leave this topic alone for a bit.

Let's open up with a team-up from a classic comedy duo - Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. (If you're not used to thinking of them that way, take a look at Get Lost, Up Your Nose And Out Your Ear, Arrgh!, Nuts!, etc.,.)

Sometimes, it just got odd in concept, perhaps especially when you've got Wally Wood doing the artwork...

Frank Cho offers a bit of love for the original comic in his Liberty Meadows -

Bonus Flash!
In our adult content 'back room', we've got three Flash Gordon Tijuana Bibles / 8-pagers:

To check them out, visit the sister post over on The Other Voice Of ODD!

Meanwhile... if one looks hard enough, Buck Rogers parodies can be found, though few they may be by comparison...

...as previously noted, most of them focus on the Gil Gerard/Erin Gray tv show version...

But people forget!
While Flash Gordon may have famously Conquered The Universe, it was Rogers who Pacified it...

...um, okay....

maybe i got a little confused.

page art from Get Lost #1 (1954), Mad #57 (1960), Liberty Meadows #7 (1999), Myron Moose Funnies #2 (1987), and Crazy #65 (1980)

Losing Len

While i was recovering here, little attention was paid to the outside world. When peeking out again, i find we lost another one of the Greats on Sunday.
I'm sure you all have already heard Len Wein has left us, and many others have spoken on his huge body of work and lasting creations, ranging from Swamp Thing to Wolverine. Here's J.M. DeMatteis's personal remembrance of the man. He'll tell you far more, and fare more eloquently, than i could.
So, i'm not gong to try to encompass his career, or tell you how reliably entertaining his work was. I'm just going to point out that you've probably only seen a fraction of it. Besides the huge number of books he worked on at the Big Two, he wrote plenty for other publishers, such as Warren and Skywald, where we'll be going today. Here's the introduction to The Bravados by Len Wein from Wild West Action #1:

Sure, he was famous for writing Horror and Superhero books. Did ya know he wrote Westerns, too? And more. There was just one boundary limiting him.
He wrote good stuff.

The Bravados by Len Wein, Syd Shores and Mike Esposito for Wild West Action #1 (1971)

Friday Fun & Games 005 (King Kirby 069)

It's Friday, so it's once again time (in case the title hadn't clued you in already) for -

This week, it's time to test your editorial skills, or something like that. Whatever cheap excuse we need to play Spot The Difference. Below are two images, the first is Jack Kirby's cover for Fantastic Four Annual #3. I've done terrible things to the second image. You know how this game is played, right?
Spot the 27* Differences between the two images:

You're probably going to want to click & enlarge for easier spotting. Join us tomorrow for Saturday Solutions to see the answers if  you haven't found them already.

glorious cover by Jack Kirby and Mike Esposito for Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965)

===

*(Because 27 is 3 to the 3rd power, of course)

What phase is the moon?

NOTE: This post has been edited to conform to the blog's new status. Part has been moved to our Back Room with a link provided at the bottom.

At one point while growing up, we lived in a 'blue' county, so called because it was subject to old Blue Laws. Blue Laws was a term used to refer to attempts to legislate morality, usually by the highly unmoral seeking power or feeling guilty. On Sundays where we lived, the alcohol cabinets in the stores were chained shut, and bars closed. It was illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the county on Sunday, so you tried to stock up friday or saturday, and hope your friends did, too, so they wouldn't drink you dry before Monday came around.
This was Blue Sunday.

In general, this worked out for most folks with only minor grousing about the situation. But for the hard drinkers, the young partiers who get cut off halfway through the weekend, it was ... well, agonizing - according to them. This led to savagely overdrinking and hard partying on Monday - the kind that leaves you waking up naked and not being able to identify the naked person(s) next to you.
This was Blue Monday.

And so we have a name for our latest feature:

Here we'll take a look at what we'll call 'Blue' comics & art for the sake of the feature.
Sometimes we'll look at various 'adult' comics from around the globe, other times we'll just look at the pretty pictures. Like today.
Here's a news flash - many artists often draw naked things. From learning experiences to expressions of passion to desperate need, the reasons vary widely. Some hide it, some flaunt it. Some do it for pleasure, some for attention, some only for money or to please others. Sometimes, it's the most obvious artists whose work is nearly erotica anyway, other times it's the last artist you might expect. (See our next Blue Monday for a potential example)

For our inaugural episode, let's not focus on any one artist - let's go with a theme. Superman Artists. I'm sure there's lots more out there. It's a new feature on a new blog, so no lengthy research is involved. Just 3x3 pics from 10 Superman Artists, ranging from Joe Shuster to Bruce Timm - the artists who brought us the first Superman, and the modern animated Superman. These are two of the most famous blue art creators among the comics pros - Joe Shuster due to publication of a book not long back calling attention to his fetish art, and Bruce Timm due to the publication of his own collection of paintings and drawings. I'm only using one example from each artist here, and zero context information for this quick review.

This post contains adult material and the remaining contents have been moved to The Other Voice Of ODD! - please follow this link to continue reading.