APOCOLYTE'S WORLD OF COMICS: Wood

Sunday, May 11, 2014

THE MISFITS Origin Story - Wally Wood and Ralph Reese

I am

THE APOCOLYTE

and I am pleased to bring you more of the finest classic comic stories and art found on the web!

HEROES, INC. #1 was published in 1969 by legendary comics creator Wallace "Wally" Wood. Among the stories it contained was the first of two stories featuring an odd group of characters Wood called THE MISFITS. Without revealing too much of the details, the group of unlikely heroes consisted of a shapely female, an elfin alien, and a brutish hulk, ...er, or was that a hulkish brute?

Well, you'll see for yourself. Although the story and characters are pure Wood at it's best, Wood was assisted on the artwork by Ralph Reese, and to what degree, that is best understood by Mr. Reese himself, as the artwork retains more of the classic Wood style than the detailed finishes of Reese's later solo work. In any case, it is a wonderful and delightful example of Wood sci-fi work from this era.

"THE MISFITS"

- Origin Story-

- Digitally Restored Comic Art -

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The story of Wally Wood's THE MISFITS continues in HEROES, INC. #2,

and that adventure is posted at my other comics blog

BLACK 'N' WHITE AND RED ALL OVER!

To see it just click here or on the image below!

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Well, I hope you enjoyed today's post!

I know I did!

See you next time!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

ROBOT WEEK Day 1 - Wolverton's ROBOT WOMAN and more!

For almost as long as there have been comic books,

there have been ROBOTS appearing in their pages, teasing our imaginations.

Where did the first robots come from in popular culture?

By all best research, L. Frank Baum's 1907 children's novel OZMA OF OZ featured the first appearance of a humanoid mechanical creature, TIK-TOK, utilizing internal clockwork movements that needed to be wound by another in order for him to keep functioning.

The actual word "Robot" first was used in a play written by Karel Capek in 1920, "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)", which later came to New York (1922) and eventually was published in English in 1923. Capek actually credits his brother Josef with coining the term, derived from "robota", which in Czech means "drudgery", and in Slovak means "work".

Robots and other science fiction themes soon appeared throughout a variety of pulp magazines and novels throughout the late 20's and 30's. Brothers Earl and Otto (Eando) Binder published their tale of Adam Link, titled "I, ROBOT" in the January 1939 issue of AMAZING STORIES.

Isaac Asimov, who is responsible for creating the Three Laws of Robotics
had a collection of short stories focusing on robots,
also titled (against the author's wishes) I, ROBOT in 1950.

One of the first recurring robots stars of the comics was Hugh Hazard's Iron Man, later named BOZO the Robot, who was featured prominently in Quality 's SMASH Comics. First appearing in the premiere issue in August 1939, Bozo was essentially a walking tin can.

According to Grand Comics Database, BOZO creator George Brenner

"probably created Bozo from the golden robot Elektro,
which was made by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation
and presented to the 1939 New York World's Fair. It was 7' tall
and performed a variety of feats, but could not house a human being."