UnEarthmanly Spectactulars!

Beneath the cover art of Joe Simon Jack Sparling featuring the lead character Jack Q. Frost, there's a small inset with some Wally Wood characters named Miracles, Inc. More on them later. One finds a bevy of tales in Unearthly Spectaculars #2. These books were put together by Joe Simon and are host to many really excellent artistic outings, but you have to know to look. 

Perhaps the finest is Earthman by Wally Wood. Earthman is an astronaut who has crashed on a distant world and overcome by amnesia who in short order becomes a hero to several populations because of his great strength and willingness to help. The story has that John Carter of Mars feel to it with a tinge of the modern dashed in for visual splendor. 

The eponymous "Earthman" defeats the villain and rescues the damsel, but as you can see from this final page wanders off for more adventures. Those adventures were apparently pending a demand from the fans and either the demand or the opportunity or neither was found and we have only this nugget from Wood to enjoy. 

Also tucked between these covers is a little lightweight superhero farce called Miracles, Inc. As you can see Wood is using his slightly more cartoony style to tell the misadventure of a superteam eager to prove themselves, but exceedingly willing to enjoy the comforts of hearth and home. The team is made up of  their leader Professor Who, Manlet, Thermo, Klank, Misfit, Reflex, and the lovely Una. They rate an appearance on the cover unlike Earthman.  

The Earthman story is collected up in Titan's Simon and Kirby Science Fiction tome from some years back. the Miracles, Inc. story is not included. Yet another story written by Wood but drawn wonderfully by Al Williamson is included, a piece dubbed Clawfang, a barbarian in the far future of a decimated world. 

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Record-Making Wood!

These are just plain cool. I well remember seeing them advertised in many a comic magazine along with other vinyl rarities. Over the years I've come into possession of a few of them, but to have them all would be delightful. I can find no evidence these have ever been put into any other format, but a CD featuring the adaptations of these Jules Verne and H.G. Wells classics along the Wally Wood covers would be a commodity I'd value and love to have. While vinyl is making a comeback, I'm no longer set up for it here at my hacienda.

This ad shows all of the Wood studio covers as well as some others of note. The King Kong and Flash Gordon are of particular interest to me. The latter featuring some of Al Williamson's finest artwork on the character. And that's saying something. 

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Blazing Combat Two!

Blazing Combat has always been considered a critical success and with the talent involved it's hard to see how it couldn't be. These are legendary artists assembled to put together both grand and small tales of war and service and bravery and other things too. Archie Goodwin gives us a broad spectrum of man at war with stories ranging from the American Revolution to the then current struggle in Vietnam. And it's that latter story in the second issue set in the land that America chose to stand up to worldwide Communism that the trouble for Blazing Combat really began. 

"Landscape" with art by Joe Orlando tales the story of war from the perspective of a villager caught between the armies that seek to slay one another in the name of their respective ideologies. And from where that old farmer sits the destruction that comes from the infiltration of the Vietcong or the flames of the American troops that come to seek them out is not really any different. It's this story which maybe suggests that American troops might've burned out a native village that put the American Legion and the U.S. Military on notice that Blazing Combat was not a magazine that was reliably tooting the patriotic trumpet.

On the opposite end of things is the second story featuring lush art by Reed Crandall which takes us to the American Revolution and shows how soldiers were unhappy with the classic style of war fought in Europe and instead embraced a new more aggressive approach led by the most surprising of war heroes.

"MIG Alley" tells us the story of fighter pilots trying to keep their nerve as they face down their Korean counterparts in an air war that is faster and more deadly than any to that point. One man is supremely confident and he is justified in that confidence until he's not. It's a dandy tale by Goodwin and Al McWilliams on the art chores.

Joe Orlando is up again drawing a Goodwin story about the Spanish-American War and the raw nature of combat and how fighting it "Face to Face" can change the way one sees the enterprise. The glamour of war fades when fear and death are looked square in the eye.

Al Williamson and Angelo Torres draw a handsome tale about brutal tank warfare which puts the reader in the seat of a tank which runs into the Panzers of Rommel in the deserts of North Africa. It's a sobering encounter as tables turn and then turn again.

Alex Toth is generally given a co-writing credit with Archie Goodwin on "Lone Hawk", a story of World War I flying aces which celebrates the ebullient bravery of one Billy Bishop as he strikes deadly streaks across the skies of Europe and all the while heroes die. Nifty twist in this one indeed.

The "Combat Quiz" in this issue was illustrated by Angel Torres.

"Holding Action" is a tale drawn by John Severin set in the Korean War and as Blazing Combat tales do so very very well puts the reader into the trench alongside the soldier. This time a soldier must confront his fear and what that transforms him into is scarier still. 

Archie Goodwin's tales in Blazing Combat seem to have a common bond and that is that war is fought by and around real human beings who are changed by the experience. Goodwin and his excellent cadre of artists make us experience those changes, make us feel, if only for a moment and in the most ephemeral of ways, the costs of waging war. It's no wonder the war makers of this country were bothered by this little comic book magazine. The powers that were started to boycott the magazine, in hopes of choking it out of existence, but not before two more issues were created. 

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