Freedom! Think You Can Keep It?

50 years ago, give or take a couple of months, a full century after the end of the Civil War, Denny O'Neil stood up and asked a question that was LONG overdue...

It might seem odd to focus on a white man on Juneteenth, but it's not without reason. Denny died last week - another timely reminder and warning. 

Meanwhile, another white...  well, no - i can't lie and call that weak child a 'Man'. Our fake pres has clearly established he's anything but, and far to weak to Ever man up. So -

Meanwhile, our fake president is leading primitives who would gladly see slavery re-established. (No, modern corporations aren't working to bring back slavery - they know serfdom is much cheaper, and easier to apply to all 'races' ... Equality!) All part of his push to make America great again by taking it back to the days of a Mad King, before Americans died to free themselves from the whims of one deranged individual.

We've reached a point where we're not moving forward, and evil, greedy addicts are working desperately to drag us back and shove us down. They're already selling the notion that the "Middle Class" was a fleeting accident that shouldn't really have happened, not the result of Americans fighting for their fair share and being gunned down in the streets by government troops working for the corporate owners. 

Of course, since we give power over to Addicts and Sociopaths, it's no surprise that they take everything they can grab as well.

Black Americans are on the forefront. They experience the Boot every day and know how terrible it can be. And worse, they're viewed as disposable - as are we all to varying degrees.

We're at one of those tipping points where things could actually get better, but you can be damned sure that the money junkies are going to do everything in their considerable power to make it worse instead.

All Lives Matter.

You may have heard that from some who are trying to deflect from Black Lives Matter. The statement is true - but it means that all of us - Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White, Green, Blue - All Of Us have an obligation to defend and protect All Lives.
Otherwise, none are safe and all of us are diminished.

And, dude - if you think your white ass is safe and secure... Where's your weekend?
The simple concept of "Working For The Weekend" has already been taken away. In most cases these days, the company now owns you around the clock, seven days a week.

As the junkies keeping sucking up an ever increasing share to fill that need fore MORE, the lines between black & white flat out disappear. 

Don't be a fucking idiot.

Protect and support your black sisters and brothers - or nobody's going to be left to support and protect You.

panel art by Neal Adams from Green Lantern #76 (1970)

Bad Weekend, Continued

Still feeling down and uptight about the news of losing two favorite creators... Harlan Ellison and Steve Ditko.

Those mixed feelings of sadness and anger at the loss. Harlan was better at letting that stuff out...

I think i'm going to spend the day meandering through some of their works to say goodbye, though of course, they'll never truly leave us. Not with all they left behind. I'll be back later in the day to share. In the meantime...

Sergio Ponchione offers us this view of Steve Ditko from his book, DKW, on the Holy Trinity of comic creators - Ditko/Kirby/Wood -

art by Neal Adams from Weird Heroes #2 (1975) and Sergio Ponchione from DKW (2014)

More Than Monster Times

Though a lot of the early work i've shown from The Monster Times was dated 1971, the cover date of the premiere issue wasn't until 26 January 1972. While we generally presume that comic books were published 2-3 months before the cover date, that's likely not the case with a purported newspaper. I'm inclined to think that it did ship to the stands on that date, or at least the week of that date.

A Note: Due to the larger size of The Monster Times, typical image size has been increased by 50% in width (125% in area) to help keep text readable.
Continuing on...

Let's bring back that first issue cover from our previous post:

King Kong and Frankenstein (yes, that's his name. He's Adam, not Victor, but he's the created son of Victor Frankenstein, so he shares the name) was not a radically new combo, but it was always cool to geeks back in those days. Didn't know yet who this Gray Morrow guy was drawing the cover, but could definitely dig it.
Mushroom Monsters? Sure - we knew that one!
End of the World? Pick One!
But Frankenstein a "fake"? What was that about?
Monster-Sized Color Poster Inside? Well, this thing is folded in half... what's it look like if we check the interior of the fold...?

Okay - decision made. Gimme! Gimme!
Again - no clue at the time who this Wrightson guy was, but gimme more!

And that's before we even opened up to the table of contents.

Let's pause and take a closer look at that credits box bottoming the Almighty Editorial (which i trust you read?) -

That's a pretty damned impressive line-up, and only the first issue. The list of contributors would grow only more distinguished over time, and it wasn't uncommon to see early work from future stars in multiple industries.

It was immediately clear that The Monster Times was going to be about more than just monsters. The editorial promise a slew of science fiction features and the comics influence was very evident, with both old comic coverage and comic stylings sprinkled throughout the issue. As we proceed, i'm going to run the first page of several articles to give a better feel of the overall publication.

First up was Nosferatu... What Ever Happened To The Vampyr?

That's a question fans often ask almost a half century later, eh?
Even from the first article, they had a comic sidebar:

The Nosferatu comic from Izzo & Wrightson that ran yesterday was also from this issue.

Der Golem told of Rabbi Loew's* Golem and the influence on Victor Frankenstein's flesh golem -

The Men Who Saved King Kong spoke of how King Kong was almost never made -

The Mushroom Monsters on the cover blurb turned out to not be Matango (AKA Attack Of The Mushroom People) as we were thinking, but a generic term to refer to creatures created by the mushroom cloud of the Atomic bomb. This inaugurated an ongoing series, as was the book review section sharing the spread -

Back in those days before home video, The Shape Of Things To Come was a movie that existed mostly in legend. This was one of the first looks i go of the film -

Again, the comic sensibilities arise with a photo-comic from the movie -

We skipped past the biggest comic highlight from the first issue. It dovetails nicely with The Shape Of Things To Come, being science fiction from the first half of the 20th Century - the classic Buck Rogers comics. Here's the full article -

That first issue was enough to hook young me. The second issue only increased the allure of The Monster Times - an all Star Trek special, including an interview with William Shatner -

Inside was a variety of features on the show...

...Trek parody photo-comics...

...and a bit on the cool UK Star Trek comics we've seen here before -

The first half dozen issues did a fine job of feeding a young comic junkie's addictions, making sure i'd be back for more. Issue 3 brought us an article on insect themed characters in the comics -

The 4th issue gave us an article on the new "relevant" comics -

For an ERBophile, issue 5's piece on Joe Kubert & Tarzan was pure delight -

Zombies were all the rage back then, too, and issue 6 looked at zombies in the comics -

Yeah, it was The Monster Times - but that wasn't all it was.

Sadly, the bi-weekly publication schedule didn't last. After a little over half a year, it switched to monthly and then eventually to bi-monthly. The last few issues were published on an erratic schedule and distribution seemed poor on them. Issue 44 was the last i had, though another 4-5 issues were released.

Not quite 50 issues, but a whole lot of geeky goodness packed into them.

pages from The Monster Times #s 1-6 (1972)

===
*(Yes, i know they spell Loew as Leow in the article. 2 + 2 ≠ 5.)

Blue Monday, not Monday Blues

Fighting the urge to draw back deeper into the cave today. Nearly Monday Blues instead of

Instead of withdrawing, how about we dig something up out of the darkness? Say maybe an Un-comic with a Frank Frazetta cover for a Neal Adams comic strip? That work for you?
Hope so...


NOTE: The images from this post contain nudity, and thus have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics. (Fair warning, there's not a whole lot of nudity, but a lot of oddity. And you do get a naked cover from Frazetta)
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Ah, 70s....  how we miss you.

Dragula by Tony Hendra and Neal Adams from National Lampoon #20 (1971)

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.