12 May 2020

My Favorite Martin

We lost another fine creator, damnit.

I find myself wondering - is it harder losing folks that we watched break into comics and followed over the years? Or does it feel weightier when they're about our own age?

With Marty Pasko, both factors were present.

If you've read comics for any length of time, you've likely seen his name. I'm not really going to talk about Marty's works right now - i'm sure plenty of folks are doing that on the net this week. Instead, i'm going to let Marty talk about comics. 

Martin Pasko loved comics. He loved them so much that editors wound up naming him Pesky Pasko because he was always giving them feedback, letting them know what he thought was right or wrong about their books. (And prepping himself as a story teller along the way)

Long before Marty was writing comic book tales, many of us were reading his words in the letter pages -









In fact, Marty was seen so often in the letters pages, he became a subject of the letters as well as his own missives appearing...










By yon by - lest you think that he only wrote to DC...





That said, i mostly remember seeing him in the Distinguished Competition's lettercols. All over the place in their reader mailbags; Green Lantern...



...Plastic Man...


...Strange Sports Stories...



...and most especially, The Flash...


Sometimes he appeared so often one might think that Marty was the regular writer on the book. For example (and note that there was only a 1-2 issue gap beforehand) his letters appeared in #s 198, 199, 200, and 201...







Sometimes Life enjoys being amusing. A couple years later this letter appeared in The Flash #226 -


The very next issue, it was Pasko's MP signing the editor's replies -



Julie finally got even.

letters by Marty Pasko from Action #s 359 & 391, Atom & Hawkman #s 42 & 44, Daredevil #s 60, 63 & 70, Detective #s 383, 389, 401, 402, 404, 406, & 408, Green Lantern #s 69 & 73, Justice League Of America #82, Plastic Man #9, Strange Sports Stories #4, The Flash #s 195, 198-201, 209, & 226-228, and World's Finest Comics #s 201, 203, 205, & 207 (oh, man - you didn't want all the years, did you? I want to post this today. Um... 1960s, 1970s)


11 May 2020

Did You Think I Meant Calrissian?

When we started talking about Landor this weekend, i made reference to Lando. Most might naturally think it was a reference to Lando Calrissian - after all, Billy Dee Williams makes him almost too cool.

But, no. I was talking about another running around in comics close to the same time and with a greater name parallel. Now that we've seen Landor, Maker Of Monsters, meet Lando, Man Of Magic -


Lando appeared in the first six or seven issues of World's Finest Comics, depending on how you count. The first issue was World's Best Comics, with World's Finest starting at #2. So you work the math.

Here are the splashes for his adventures to give you a feel for the strip...






...and to wrap things up for this short peek, here is Lando's final adventure - despite the promises of the blurb at the end...
 

Perhaps it was the loss of a regular artist after the first three tales, or maybe it was the fact that the more famous wizard, Zatarra, was also appearing in the same title. Lando was seen no more...

page art by Howard Purcell, Chad Grothkopf, Louis Cazeneuve, Mike Suchorsky, and Lee Harris from World's Best Comics #1 and World's Finest Comics #s 2-7 (1941, 1942)