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)

Len & Friends go Crazy, Crazy, Crazy

Sunday Morning Funnies time once again, and still dropping Odd bits from Len Wein after we lost him two weeks ago. So this time, let's go to Crazy #1...

Okay... That's not at all confusing. Just a little Crazy. Len's parody is in the 1973 black & white Crazy #1. But let's take the long way there, starting with 1953's Crazy #1-

The first tale in this Crazy features the only "Lace Cadet" i've ever encountered-

19 years later, we get another Crazy #1-

 

Oddly enough, the indicia in this issue gives copyright notice of reprints from the 1953 series, but the material seems to be all parodies of 1960s Marvel Titles. One might think they were reprinting from Not Brand Echh instead. The lead story from this version of Crazy #1 starred, as all the stories in this issue did, the ignoble Forbush Man!

A year later, they decided that really didn't work out any better than NBE, so they tried once more with the black & white magazine style of the other mental illnesses (Mad, Cracked, Sick, etc.,.)

Wait.... what..? That can't be...
GODHELL!!! That's a Kelly Freas painted cover to kick off the new title! How did this come about? In whose name do we burn offering for this?
Um...       excuse me.
I may have mentioned previously that Frank Kelly Freas, like Jack Kirby, was one of the Masters who inspired me to follow the path of the artist. (Artdo? YiShuJiaDao seems a bit unweildy... (and the combined brushwork on those 4 characters is overly busy and inelegant, too))
Y'know... I think i might be old man rambling again. And, speaking of old people - how many remember one of the first of the big Irwin Allen disaster movies that created the genre - The Poseidon Adventure?
I actually had the movie poster for this up on my wall, along with Planet Of The Apes and others. Back in them old days, you could just go to the theatre and ask the manager for the poster after the movie run was over. They were just going to throw it away, and you might get lobby cards and other promos, too. Develop a relationship with them, and you could even wind up with life-size lobby stand-ups.
I really don't think that happens much now. Not without cash changing hands.
Okay - rambling again...

Here's Len Wein's parody adaptation of the movie, with art by Ross Andru & Vic Martin, from our Crazy #1 number 3:

Bonus Oddity! Here's a satirical(?) view of the future from Harlan Ellison, with illustration from Basil Wolverton! They really weren't skimping on the talent for this first issue, were they?

And, simply because it took me this long to remember where this was and dig it out to prep for the VOO, and - what the heck - because Tony Isabella worked on this issue of Crazy, also, here's my favorite view of Len Wein as editor, from Giant-Size Chiller #3...

 ...and at the end of the book:

Another Oddly Enough remark - this issue reprinted the first story that Marvel published by Len Wein. (The Moving Finger Writes, from Tower Of Shadows #3 (1970))

Well, that was a long post.
And i'm all out of potatoes. Left them all in a barrel in Skyrim and they disappeared on me.

Here's a bear. They don't eat potatoes.

fun with bears by Frank Frazetta