Showing posts with label Monsters Unleashed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monsters Unleashed. Show all posts

Monday, January 24, 2022

Monday Madness STRANGE TALES "Zzutak: the Thing That Shouldn't Exist!" Part 2

Sci-fi magazine cover artist Frank Johnson, desperate to top his previous efforts, tries out a set of "three-dimensional paints" offered by a mysterious sttanger, that cause whatever he draws to not only exist as a three-dimensional object...but also to come to life!
Accepting the paint set as a gift, he is suddenly-compelled to journey to a remote part of Mexico, where he paints his greatest monster of all, Zzutak, on a giant canvas!
But...why?
Now, all shall be revealed!
You'd think the colorist of the cover for Atlas' Strange Tales #88 (1961) didn't communicate with the colorist for the story itself, since he transposed the coloring for Zzutak and his unnamed adversary...
...except the two colorists were the same guy, Stan Goldberg!
I can only speculate the cover and interior were colored at two different times and, in the confusion, someone lost track of who was orange and who was green!
When the story was reprinted in Marvel's Fear #3 (1971), the unknown colorist got the second monster right, but still got Zzutak wrong!
 
When the story was reprinted in Germany, a new, painted cover got Zzutak's color right, though not all the details of his design/anatomy!
Poor Zzutak is postitively unreocognizable on his most recent reprint appearance in Marvel's Monster Menace #3 (1994), even though he's rendered by the guy who inked his story back in 1961...Steve Ditko!
(And he's portrayed correctly in the "character box" in the upper left corner of the cover!)
Zzutak was the cover-featured monster on #4 of Marvel's Monsters Unleashed (2017) with this superb Francesco Francavilla variant cover...
This mini-series featured a new character named Kid Kaiju aka Kei Kawade, an Inhuman who could control giant monsters he illustrates...including Zzutak!
Bur a decade earlier, Zzutak, Frank Johnson, and the Aztecs, returned in a never-reprinted adventure featuring a team of Marvel heroes!
You'll see that story next Monday!
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Friday, March 24, 2017

Reading Room TALES OF SUSPENSE "Creature from the Black Bog!"

Is this guy a "Kirby Kreature"?
Art by Francesco Francavilla
Read the story and judge for yourself!
While it's clear that Steve Ditko penciled and inked this Stan Lee-scripted tale from Atlas' Tales of Suspense #23 (1961), did he design the Creature?
It's unknown if the moody cover by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko predates the interior art.
But considering the differences in facial detail, I'd say it was done first, which would make this monster a Kirby Kreature!
The George Roussos version from Marvel's Monsters on the Prowl #19 (1972) follows the Ditko design pretty closely, but shows the elderly couple as teenagers/young adults!
Monsters Unleashed looks like a lot of fun, so get it at your local comic shop...NOW!
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Monsters Unleashed: Prelude
(which, sadly, doesn't include the Creature from the Bog's premiere appearance!)

Friday, February 17, 2017

Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Return of the Martian!"

Yesterday we brought you "The Martian Who Stole My Body"...
...and now, we continue his saga with a never-reprinted adventure!
Hmmm.
A seemingly-invincible Martian invader who had no resistance to our Earthly diseases.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, those Martians.
And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians--_dead_!--slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.
These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things--taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here.
But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance--our living frames are altogether immune.
But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and
fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.
Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro.
It was inevitable.
--War of the Worlds by HG Wells
So, plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Dick Ayers, took a concept that had been done to death by the time this story appeared in Atlas' Journey into Mystery #58 (1960).
By all rights, it shouldn't work.
And it almost doesn't.
But Kirby's artwork saves it, gives it enoough OOOMPH to allow you to overlook the cliched ending.
Oddly, though Zetora's previous tale had been reprinted in the 1970s, this sequel has never been reprinted!
(Which might be just as well, since it'd be hard to explain him coming back from the dead...)
Perhaps to make up for that oversight, Marvel's Monsters Unleashed #3 does, give him a beautiful Francesco Francavilla cover...
Monsters Unleashed looks like a lot of fun, so get it at your local comic shop...NOW!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
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Monsters Unleashed: Prelude
(which doesn't include either of Zetora the Martian's stories!)

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Reading Room JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY "Martian Who Stole My Body!"

The new Monsters Unleashed miniseries continues this week...
...with a Klassic Kirby Kreature who appeared twice!
Poor Zetora.
Not only did this tale from Atlas' Journey into Mystery #57 (1960), reprinted in Marvel's Fear #7 (1972), not get a cover appearance either time, neither did the sequel story, which we'll present tomorrow!
However, Marvel's Monsters Unleashed #3 does, finally, give him a beautiful Francesco Francavilla cover...
Plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by Larry Lieber, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers, it's an average story greatly-enhanced by Kirby's superb visuals.
Monsters Unleashed looks like a lot of fun, so get it at your local comic shop...NOW!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
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Monsters Unleashed: Prelude
(which doesn't include either of Zetora the Martian's stories!)

Friday, February 3, 2017

Reading Room TALES OF SUSPENSE "It Crawls by Night!"

The new issue of Monsters Unleashed is out...
...cover-featuring another retro-kool Kirby Kreature from the Atlas Comics days!
Written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers, the cover-featured story from Atlas' Tales of Suspense #26 (1962) has one of "the silliest premises done well" I've ever seen!
Think of Little Shop of Horrors without the comedic aspects.
It's certainly helped by a kool Kirby/George Klein cover that doesn't betray the creature's humble veggie origins, making him look more like Groot than a rutabaga...
When it was reprinted in Marvel's Fear #8 (1972), a new cover by John Severin downplayed the "conquer the Earth" thrills for a more Gothic/Lovecraftian image...
Monsters Unleashed looks like a lot of fun, so get it at your local comic shop...NOW!
Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...