Ditko's Darkroom

One more lazy reprint post, if only to get "the Sensual Santa" off the top of the page. This one's a tasty little Steve Ditko number from 1957, with some really nice black and white linework at play. This is one of my favorite periods of Ditko's work, and I really dig the last couple of pages in particular. Enjoy!

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"From All Our Darkrooms..."
Originally printed in Out Of This World #4, Charlton,1957
Script (?) Art: Steve Ditko

A Very Again With the Comics Christmas

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"The Sensual Santa" from Eightball #14, by Dan Clowes

If Again With the Comics seems to be chock full of public domain reprints and lazy posts lately, you can blame Santa Claus and his stupid birthday for eating up all my free time and depriving you of my insights once again. Indeed, every year, valuable bitching about old comics time is lost to the annual time and money vacuum known as Christmas.

Illustration From Neat Stuff #10, Peter Bagge

Sign the cards. Mail the cards. Buy the gifts. No, she already has three of those. Return the gifts. Buy other gifts. Mail the gifts. My God, the lines. Great Mammon, the crowds. Put up the decorations again. Then take the decorations back down! And what all this has to do with begging the magic giant in the sky to please, please bring the sun back, is beyond me. Bah, humbug to Christmas, sir! Humbug indeed!


But now that the big day is here, my heart has grown three sizes, Xmas spirit, magic of giving, etc... In that spirit of sharing and brotherhood, enjoy a cornucopia of holiday reruns, courtesy of Again With the Comics:

Spider-Man gets a lot more action South of the border! Check it out in:
The Sexy Bikini Adventures of El Sorprendente Hombre-Araña

Fit to be tied? There's "knot" a problem Golden Age Wonder Woman can't "whip"!
Ask Golden Age Wonder Woman

Agitated? Enjoy some soothing, highbrow artwork:
Thing Versus The Hulk Gallery

Co-produced by my 7-year old son, you've never seen anything like...
The Purple Golden Age Hulk

Meet Ace Bandage, Mummy P.I., star of:
Weird Mummy Detective Tales

I hope no one Seuss me for....
One Hulk, Two Hulk, Red Hulk, Blue Hulk

Assuming anyone still cares, here is:
My Red Hulk Theory

When not attending classes at Veidt High, OWLBOY, KID RORSCHACH, SPECTRA, JOHNNY COMEDY, and MANHA-TEEN have banded together to protect the world that their ancestors saved! Holy crap, its...
Young Watchmen: The Animated Adventures!

Anticipating his return to the pages of Brave and the Bold, we have:
An Open Letter from the Web to J. Michael Straczynski

Superman is a mean drunk!
The Drunken Abusive Superman!

Gloom, despair and agony on me, its..
Hee Haw Comics!

Whatever your flavor of Saturnalia, Happy Holidays from Again With the Comics!

Batman: The Black Casebook TP to Feature "The Batman Creature"

Collected Editions has listings for all of DC's trade paperback collections for the first quarter of 2009, and as I've been hoping/expecting, a Batman: The Black Casebook trade is in the wings, reprinting stories referenced in Grant Morrison's recent Batman run. Collected Editions details the contents of Batman: The Black Casebook as follows:

Collects: Stories from BATMAN #113, 134, 156 and 162, DETECTIVE COMICS #215, 235 and 267 and WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #89
$17.99 US, 144 pages

- Batman #113 is the story "Batman: The Superman of Planet X," which features the alien Zur En Arrh; Batman #134 is either the story "The Rainbow Creature," "Batman's Secret Enemy," or "The Deadly Dummy"; Batman #156 is "Robin Dies at Dawn"; Batman #162 has Batman turning into the King Kong-like "Batman Creature"; Detective Comics #215 features "The Batmen of All Nations" also seen in Batman: The Black Casebook; Detective Comics #235 tells of "The First Batman," Thomas Wayne; Detective Comics #267 is the first appearance of Bat-Mite; and World's Finest Comics #89 also features the Batmen of All Nations. I can't tell you how excited I am about this trade; the best thing about writer's reinterpreting old stories are these collections where we can cite the original source material.

All of these stories have been referenced in recent issues of BATMAN, all but that Batman Creature story, that is. Long-long-longtime readers will recall that I covered the saga of the Batman creature in loving detail way back in 2006, then later trumpeted Morrison's introduction of the Black Casebook into continuity as proof positive of the Batman Creature's having "happened" in continuity. Who knew that in 2009 the "real" Black Casebook would include, out of all possible wacky-ass 1950's Batman stories, "The Batman Creature" in its lurid pages? Maybe someone out there was paying attention. Needless to say, Batman: The Black Casebook would have been be a "must buy", but I especially recommend it now. Next stop: The Batman Creature 64-page hardcover Graphic Novel by Morrison and Quitely!

A Dizzy Dame Named Moronica!

With apologies to my female readers (if I haven't driven them all off already) today's politically incorrect selection comes from the notoriously titled Dizzy Dames #3, a delightful tale of a daffy damsel named Moronica!

Don't misunderstand, the rest of the issue was pretty dismal -and hair-raisingly sexist- stuff, but "Moronica: Miss Nit-Wit of 1953" has something the rest of the issue hasn't: the lively, wonderful cartooning of animation veteran Owen Fitzgerald! Also, and it may just be my fondness for the purty pictures speaking, but while Moronica is indeed moronic, none of the rest of the women in the story are especially "dizzy". Anyway, enjoy and/or be horrified!









"Moronica: Miss Nit-Wit of 1953"
Originally printed in Dizzy Dames #3, ACG,1953
Script (?) Art: Owen Fitzgerald

A Day of "Fun With Pop"

Sergeant Jones bided his time, lulling his captors into a false sense of security. Over the weeks, he fed them a few harmless secrets, allowing that he had given in and gone over to the red Commie side. Then, one fateful day, he innocently suggested joining his jailers on night patrol, citing a desire to spill Yankee blood. At the right moment, he would push them off the cliff's edge and make his break for freedom, and America....

Let "SANDY" Haunt Your Unquiet Dreams

"I have RUBBER WONDERSKIN!"

KIDS! Don't let "Uncle Bernie" corner you alone!

The Fire Apes Skulk Forward...And Death Is Abroad!

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Making the World Safe for Zombiocracy

Hello! I'm going to tell you about this dream of mine! It is only a dream, of course, but I have it a lot, night after night, the same dream, and maybe you'll find it interesting, too!

I first heard about this wonderful, awful, wonderful story years ago, so when I finally found a copy of "Corpses...Coast to Coast!" online at Golden Age Comics Downloads, why, I just had to share. Originally presented in Voodoo #14 1952, the author and artist of this creepy cornball classic are long forgotten. Perhaps, like the narrator, they were...ZOMBIES!!

Oh, crap-that spoils the ending. Pretend you didn't read that.

Anyway, this goofy/ghoulish tale posits an unconventional path to world peace, an improbable union of the undead of all nations under the banner of ... the United World Zombies!

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Here's a tip for neophyte comic readers: when someone says "Oh, I'm not crazy -heh heh- not at all!", the "heh heh" part means they are crazy.



...Like this creepy, pervert lookin' muthafukka here? He crazy, dawg.

Man, if I had a buck for every time my boss said "Don't do anything, you fat-head, just pile the bodies up and wait for orders!" I would be a very very rich man indeed.

You know, in most cities, you have to pay big money to ball the jack.
Also, it's nice to see Dick Cheney finds work after he leaves office...

At this point in the program, I should probably mention there will be none of that evisceration, disembowelment, and brain-eating you modern zombie fans are so fond of. These are old-timey, mindlessly obedient worker zombies, whose nutritional needs will receive no story attention whatsoever.

That's right, the zombie apocalypse was complete, but it wasn't all peaches and cream....




At this point, the writer obviously ran out of things to say about zombies and not-so-deftly slipped into a war parable. Suddenly, the zombies "can be just as stupid as so-called people!" and the Zombie United States is at war with the Zombie Soviet Union.

And thus, after the horrors of war was born a Zombiocracy. Now we have peace! No more fight! All is big brotherhood of zombies!

Pretty creepy, huh pals? I don't blame you if you soiled yourself out of fear, but I am laughing at you.

Meet J. Jonah Jameson's Dad...Or Not!

In Amazing Spider-Man #578 we got "the" Shocker, followed by "a" shocker in the form of an elderly gent who introduced himself to Spidey as J. Jonah Jameson...senior. But wait, haven't we already met Jonah's drunken, abusive father? Spider-Man's Tangled Web #20 presented us with "Behind the Mustache" a neat little one-shot tale by Zeb Wells and Dean Haspiel, focusing on the past of Jolly Jonah Jameson:

The story finds Jonah very reluctantly attending therapy at the Daily Bugle's insistence. Under hypnosis, he finally reveals that his father was an abusive ex-military man named David Jameson.

Of course, all of this is suspect, since Jonah, a biased source at best, clearly does not want to talk to the psychiatrist at all, and is fighting the doctor every step of the way. "David Jameson" may just be a fiction he carries around with him to explain away his obnoxiousness to various bleeding hearts and do-gooders he encounters in life...

Later, Jonah tells the therapist how he met his first wife Joan and picked up his lifelong cigar habit:



I'm not even gonna speculate how this fits in with what Mark Waid has in mind for JJJ Sr., since we'll find out soon enough. Waid has said that he is aware of "Behind the Mustache", and intends to weave it into into his plans for Jonah Sr. I just thought it might be fun to give you all a glimpse at the other J. Jonah Jameson's dad before we get to know J. Jonah Jameson Senior.