Wednesday Worlds of Wonder CHILDREN OF DOOM "Part 3: The Final Hour"

We Have Already Seen...

Cover of the 1978 reprint which left out one page. Which one?

Returning to an Earth already devastated by man-made disaster, a pair of astronauts inadvertently doom the entire planet by using their atomic engines to land safely, causing a Doomsday Weapon (which activates when it senses any uncontrolled radioactivity) to awaken and begin it's lethal countdown...

Shortly after this issue came out, editor Dick Giordano went to DC Comics, taking a number of people including Children of Doom creators Denny O'Neil and Pat Boyette with him.

O'Neil stayed at DC, helping to revitalize several series including (with Neal Adams) Batman and Green Lantern, and carving out a long, multi-award-winning career as one of graphic literature's finest writers!
Boyette did several stories at DC, then returned to Charlton, where he continued to be one of the mainstays of the art staff until the company shut down.

For more about the highly-underrated Pat Boyette have a look HERE!

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980

which reprints this story

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder: CHILDREN OF DOOM "Part 2 The Last Countdown..."

When Last We Visited Our Planet...

The world ended.

But not by nuclear war, since a Doomsday Machine that would destroy the planet if any atomic explosion was detected, ended even the testing of nuclear bombs!

Instead, a European power (implied to be an Iron Curtain nation, likely the USSR) manages to re-direct two meteors to strike Earth, ideally affecting only the USA!

Unfortunately, an attempt to divert the meteors using missiles results in the space rocks fragmenting and hitting all over the planet, creating devastation on an unparalleled scale!

With the Earth apparently doomed, a pair of astronauts in orbit, believing themselves the only survivors, decide to head for the nearest habitable planet...Venus!

But they don't know people have survived...but not unscathed...

The Story Concludes
NEXT WEDNESDAY!

Scientific note: In mid-1967, it wasn't yet known that Venus was covered with clouds of sulfuric acid and the surface was barren, so heading there instead of Mars wasn't an unreasonable concept.

As this issue’s “Postscripts From The Editor” (Dick Giordano) explains: “This issue may reach the stands a little late.

We had an entirely different issue ready for press, cover and all, and lost it on a legality.

We then had to get this one together in a big hurry.

We’ve always liked the idea of a black and white comic book but have been afraid of doing one in a format where everyone else is in four color.

So we mixed it up in this one! Some four color, some black and white. We like it…do you?"

The “we” was writer Denny O'Neil (under a pseudonym) and artist Pat Boyette, who produced the entire 25-page tale from concept to script to camera-ready art and color guides in less than a week!

Boyette did all the penciling, inking and lettering.

Rumor has it that O'Neil also assisted with the color guides.

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980

which reprints this story

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder: CHILDREN OF DOOM Part 1 - Prologue..."

Presenting a comic the legendary Alan Moore considers "wonderful"...

Quoth Alan Moore from the ninth issue of the must-read mag, Comic Book Artist...

"There's still one of the books, Charlton Premiere—sort of a Showcase title—and I remember in the second or third issue of that, there was this wonderful thing called "Children of Doom" by Pat Boyette,

It was an incredibly sort of progressive piece of storytelling.

He was obviously, I'd imagine, looking at artists like Steranko that were coming up and messing around with the form and sort of experimenting. 

Pat decided to pitch his own hat into the ring, apparently."

 The story continues

Next Wednesday!

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Art in Time

Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980
which reprints this story

Reading Room UNLIKELY TALES "Expedition"

Exploring jungles in "deepest, darkest Africa" was a common sci-fi/fantasy trope...

...even into 1968, when this never-reprinted story appeared in Charlton Premiere #4 an anthology under the banner Unlikely Tales.

All the stories in the issue were written by up-and-comer Steve Skeates with a different artist on each tale.

This particular one was rendered by another up-and-comer Pat Boyette with the rest of the tales illustrated by vets Steve Ditko, Rocke Mastroserio, along with another newcomer, Jim Aparo.

Trivia note: all the artists in this issue inked their own pencils, a rather uncommon occurrence in the deadline-driven comics business where the need for speed and high-volume output tended to preclude allowing artists to do both.

Reading Room COSMIC BOOK "UFO and the Perts vs Experts"

Feeling just a wee bit paranoid?

Feel like the world just doesn't make any sense at all?

Well, you ain't alone, kiddo!

While it's been reprinted several times, this version from Wandering Star Press' Cosmic Book #1 (1986) is the only time it's been presented in color!

The Cosmic Book was a personal obsession for Pat Boyette who packaged it (as well as doing the covers and a couple of tales inside), then shopped it around to numerous publishers until Ace Comics agreed to co-publish it.

Though there were rumors of a second issue, it never appeared.

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Cosmic Book

Reading Room SPACE ADVENTURES "Surrender Earth!"

Now this is the way to tell a high-adventure space opera story...

...quick synopsis, then jump into the action!

A rather nasty variation of the "rabbits in Australia" story that classic Star Trek treated humorously in "The Trouble with Tribbles"!

Sadly, this Joe Gill-written, Pat Boyette-illustrated tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N4 (1968) has never been reprinted, but I think it's make a helluva episode of a sci-fi anthology TV series or portmanteau movie, keeping the retro-50s/60s look but using current makeup and sfx technology!

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Charlton Arrow #1