UNDER THE INFLUENCE – Vince Colletta and Wally Wood

Here are two cool sci-fi stories from the fifties by two great artists – Vinnie Colletta and Wally Wood. After you read them both you will see that clearly one of them was *ahem* under the influence…of the other! All you need to really know is that the Wood story came first. Wood, who likely was the greatest sci-fi comic artist from the fifties (or all time), drew the typically wonderful “The Precious Years” for EC’s WEIRD SCIENCE #19, May-June 1953.

Atlas’ UNCANNY TALES #18 hit the newsstands in March 1954, and featured a story titled "The Machine Age" by a young artist named Vince Colletta, who would one day become possibly (in the opinion of some) one of the greatest romance comic artists of all time ( and who would one day become the object of controversy). It wouldn’t be long before Colletta would find his niche, but here he seems to be under the influence of Wood’s style for sure, if not the particular story, and throughout those influenced panels you’ll find trademark Woodisms such as the faces on the wall (in the splash panel), and faces with dual light sources (ex: page 1 panel 3), etc!

[Ironically, history has revealed that each artists trademark style was really the antithesis of the other -- Wood the master of solid blacks, bold lines and shadowed 3D-like figures, and Colletta the master of feathery cross-hatching and light, airy thin-lined ink strokes, perhaps exemplified best in his inking over Jack Kirby on silver age The Mighty THOR. But, although this particular Colletta story is virtually bereft of women (as depicted throughout his many romance comic artworks), both Colletta and Wood could sure draw some mighty fine female forms!] 

-The Apocolyte speaks

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(click image to enlarge)

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There you have it!

Two different stories,

one sci-fi theme, 

two different artists, 

one artistic master's style obviously heavily influencing the other...

Comic art legend Wallace Wood is still an influence upon knowledgeable students of the craft to this day, and Vince Colletta went on to simplify his style from the very detailed work shown here to his more basic depictions of romantic themed stories, to be highlighted here in the near future...

Although the details of the future as foreseen back in the Fifties was a bit hokey,

one aspect was truly captured with uncanny prophetic clarity...

that is the cloying dependence of modern humanity upon an ever intruding technology!

Hope you enjoyed it!

More soon!

- The Apocolyte

THE DAY BEFORE DOOMSDAY! and DOOMSDAY!

As a young boy, I can recall playing ouside in my yard when suddenly the still of the day was shattered by the thunderous resonance of a massive sonic boom, the tremendous clap of which would rattle the windows of all the houses in the neighborhood. I would look up to see the supersonic jets flying high overhead, contrails and exhaust streaming behind as they would make their way to a nearby military airfield. I can also recall my friends and I riding our bikes to the nearby Nike missile base, where we would often go and play army, using some of the then-abandoned concrete bunkers as our makeshift headquarters and shelter from fantasy 'enemy' gunfire.

As children, my friends and I had no real concept of the actual dangers posed by the threat of nuclear devastation, as we had been born into this 'cold war', but as yet had felt no effects from it, aside from being trained to "duck and cover"in school, and the weekly air-raid siren tests. Still, to this very day, for all of us who live on the face of the earth, the threat of imminent worldwide nuclear destruction is a constant reality, as it ever has been since the last days at the end of World War II.

Today our enemies are perhaps not so clearly defined as in the 50's and 60's, when the watchword of the day was 'communism', and the enemy that we in the USA most feared was Russia. For younger readers, it may be difficult to relate, but your parents and grandparents had to contend daily with the dark cloud looming omnipresently overhead with the threat of likely nuclear extermination. The Super-Powers were poised in a stalemate stare-down, watching and waiting for the other to flinch as their fingers teased shakily on the big red button. Youngsters were given a whole new vocabulary as words and terms once reserved for the scientific community became more common in daily usage, words such as radiation, strontium 90, fallout, half-life, roentgens, neutrons, gamma and beta rays. Tenets like situational ethics became more predominate in direct correlation to the increasing concerns where human life may be put at risk, especially in consideration of life and death motivations as caused by the imminent fear of death by atomic or nuclear bomb. Fallout shelters were constructed in inestimable numbers throughout the United Staes, Russia, and every other nation with the capabilities to do so. The world was preparing for the apparent inevitable destruction to come, and humanity was grasping at straws in an effort to find ways to somehow survive intact in the face of global obliteration.

That is the era from whence these comic stories were born, the era of the realization of the possibility of actual and complete worldwide destruction. 

This therefore is that day,

THE DAY BEFORE DOOMSDAY!

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Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Originally published in STRANGE TALES # 99, 1962 

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Quick question...

What is the day after "the day before Doomsday"?

What do you call it?...Oh yeah, I know...

DOOMSDAY! 

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Art by Paul Reinman

Originally published in STRANGE TALES # 75, 1960

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Whether by inter-continental ballistic nuclear missiles, or by poisonous gas, or by a plethora of other man-made instruments of mass death, the people of the earth continue to exist in a limbo of impending destruction. The sense of doom is perhaps not so acute as it existed decades ago, and most of humanity dwells in a numb and impervious state of denial when it comes to such dark possibilities. We mostly live with a sense of apathetic ignorance, wrapped in an ever-growing cocoon of complacent and casual continuity of existance, possessing a "so far, so good" attitude. Like Lynn and Walter, the two scientists in the second tale, some find hope in a supernatural Divine Power beyond our human purview, whereas some cling to only what can be seen and heard and felt by natural means alone. If such a Doomsday is in fact coming to us soon, as the banshee of constant media around us wails in it's dire warnings, we can choose to be like scientist Walter and cry "There is no greater power!", and gnash our teeth as we relegate our doomed and useless lives to oblivion. My hope is we would be more like Walter's comrade Lynn, trusting in a greater Wisdom to lead us.

The next time you stand beneath a star-filled sky and look up, or watch the glorious colors of a majestic sunrise or sunset, or witness the birth of a baby, or hold your child in your arms, or look into the eyes of one you love, and feel the beating of your own heart, I hope you will know, just as Lynn, that there exists a supernatural power beyond our full comprehension, greater than we can know in and of ourselves alone. 

Even if these are just corny comic book stories.

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Now clicky-click here and head over to

BLACK 'N' WHITE AND RED ALL OVER

to find out what happens

THE DAY AFTER DOOMSDAY!

The Origination Of CROP CIRCLES - "THE HIDDEN HEX!"

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Cerealogy, the study or creation of the phenomenon widely known as 'CROP CIRCLES' was not heretofore known before it's widespread emergence during the late 1970's.

While the origins of Crop Circles can be traced back with some degree of dubious relativety to at least 1678 by linking the phenomenon to the publication of "The Mowing Devil", a pamphlet featuring a short story describing a dispute over crops and an invocation of the devil, the link is tenuous at best. While crops are shown to be cut down in an ostensibly circular pattern, the intricate geometric designs that are predominantly associated with the modern practice of crop circles are nowhere to be found in that volume.

It wan't until approximately 300 years later, in 1978 when these unusual and mysterious crop circle formations began appearing in the fields and the countrysides of England and surrounding locales.The causes and the creators of these crop circles are still widely debated to this day, but is a safe statement to affirm that prior to 1978 the anomalous spectacle of geometric crop circles was virtually non-existant.

That is what makes this particular comic book story so intriguing. Today's story comes from Atlas comics' WORLD OF FANTASY #7, published by Stan Lee and company in May, 1957, a full 20 years before the bizarre circumstances of crop circles would catch the attention of the entire world.

In "THE HIDDEN HEX", written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Sam Kweskin, the implication is presented that there may be a correlation between crop circles and 'Hex Signs' which were prevalent among Pennsylvanian Dutch farmers of the mid 19th century, and can still be found in rural areas throughout the United States today. At the time when Wessler wrote the story we must remind ourselves that the curiousity of geometric circular crop patterns did not yet exist, insofar as historians can tell. That creates in the reader's mind the question, "If in fact crop circles are indeed man-made occurences, did the original creators of the first crop circle hoaxes read this particular comic book with this particular story, and did this story therefore influence them either consciously or subconciously?"

This is a question that needs to be addressed, and asked of the two men who claim to have started the practice of hoaxing crop circles in 1978, self-claimed originators Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. If there is any connection between them reading the comic book (and who is to say that if they in fact did see the story from 1957 whether they would even recall, if it possibly was in fact a subconscious influence), then we can ascribe ultimate creation of the modern crop circle phenomenon to Carl Wessler and Sam Kweskin.

In any regard, one certainly must admit an uncanny similarity between Kweskin and Wessler's 1957 vision of the crop circle and the post-1978 modern geometric crop circles that exist up until this very day.

Strange and perplexing.

Puzzling and fascinating, at the very least.

Wouldn't you agree? 

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Scanned from my own comic
(and cleaned up extensively by me in order to present to you)
for your enjoyment.

PS -

(Still to come, ROBOT WEEK...)

BACK FROM THE DEAD!

It's true.

I'm back.

Get ready for more of me...

Is it true that I have been involved in time travel experiments, and that the last fateful excursion went horribly awry? Could that be the reason my time sphere became encased in a trionic cocoon as I drifted helplessly on time ripples, all whilst being bombarded by pulsing zeegee rays emenating from the great Tempus radiation belt? Has my corporeal reintegration function therfore been compromised, in effect causing me to phase in and out of random time continuums uncontrollably? Is that the reason I haven't been able to post for the past several months? Huh, izzit?

All I can tell you is, "I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor at this time."

But who cares? For now, before I phase again, let me post a classic from Joe Maneely and Stan Lee. Now, I realize that this story has been posted on Karswell's blog previously, but I didn't know that when I scanned and cleaned up the pages from my own comic book months ago. So I figured I'd post it since I spent the time on it. So enjoy another beautifully drawn story by the late great Joe Maneely. The colors in this one are particularly vivid for a 1950's comic, making it very pretty to look at.

So, in lieu of any Christmas stories, here instead is a story stinking with the sulphurous stank of Hell itself...

BACK FROM THE DEAD!

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Hmmm...perhaps he is not a ghost after all, 
but merely a bit of undigested figgy pudding...hrumphhh!

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Tha--th--th--that's all, folks!

See you soon ...