Friday, October 3, 2025

Halloween Hospital Horrors ADVENTURES INTO TERROR "Body Snatchers"

We Begin Out Our Annual Halloween Presentation...

...with an Example of the Way Colleges and Teaching Hospitals Used to Acquire Specimens for Anatomical Study!
Illustrated by Al Luster and plotted by Stan Lee, this sinister story from Atlas' Adventures in Terror #24 (1953) was typical of the 1950s Horror Age material comics published until Dr Fredric Wertham almost destroyed the comic book business with his Seduction of the Innocent hysteria that inflamed the American Public into believing that "comics caused juvenile delinquency"!

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Friday, September 26, 2025

LINDA LARK: STUDENT NURSE "Introduction"

Writer/artist John Stanley is noted for a number of fascinating, unique, comic book series...

...including, most famously, the comic book version of the newspaper strip Little Lulu!

But he also dabbled in non-humor material creating the ongoing horror anthology Ghost Stories and the one-shot, oversized, Tales from the Tomb, along with this rather unique nursing series which played fast and loose with the genre's cliches and tropes...






With illustrator and co/creator John Tartaglione, John Stanley begins subverting the nursing strip genre from this never-reprinted introductory tale in Dell's Linda Lark: Student Nurse #1 (1961) onward.
She's not desperately-needy (and horny) like Nurse Helen Grant or the neurotic (and horny) Mary Robin R.N. and most other extremely horny comic book nurses!
She's hyper-competent, and actually has a (relatively) normal life outside the hospital!
During her eight-issue run, she was a student nurse, then a registered nurse (in just one issue)!
She also solved crimes, traveled into danger in foreign lands, appeared in a medical TV series...and became the first American woman in space!
Even when they did a story involving her former high school sweetheart who had become a doctor, the story didn't go quite like you'd expect!
And, she'll be replacing Doctor Dan Dazzler, whose series ends in November, as our ongoing feature!

But next week, it's the return of our annual...
Halloween Hospital Horrors Blogathon!
There's never a dull moment around here!

Friday, September 19, 2025

CONFESSIONS OF THE LOVELORN "Someone of My Own!"

Here's a never-reprinted tale that redefines "lovesick"...
...from ACG's Confessions of the LoveLorn #95 (1958)!
Writer Richard Hughes and illustrator Sam Citron add a new twist to the old "steal the doctor from the rich girl whose father is financing his research" plot so common in romance comics!
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Friday, September 12, 2025

HARVEY "Raquel in 'Socking It to Uncle' "

We Ran Medical-Themed Archie Comics Stories HERE & HERE...

...and though this tale looks like an Archie comic, it ain't!





This never-reprinted final story of the final issue (#6 in 1972) of Marvel's Harvey was the last gasp of the legendary House of Ideas' attempt to keep Archie Comics from total dominance of the teen humor genre!
In fact, artist Henry Scarpelli moved to Archie after this book and Millie the Model were cancelled!
He remained there, working steadily on both their comic books and the Archie newspaper strip until his passing in 2010.

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Friday, September 5, 2025

Marvel Comics, The American Cancer Society and the Story So Nice, They Told it Twice!

Actually, it wasn't a "nice" tale, but we wanted an alliterative title...

In 1982, Marvel and the American Cancer Society co-produced a giveaway comic against under-21 smoking starring Spider-Man, Storm of The X-Men and Luke Cage: Power Man vs the villain called...SmokeScreen!
In 1998, they reprinted the comic, but the response from medical offices was poor, with kids not interested in the "old-fashioned" artwork!
So it was decided to keep the script (almost verbatim) and redraw it, start to finish!


Here are both versions for you to "compare and contrast"!

Which do you prefer?

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Halloween Hospital Horrors ADVENTURES INTO TERROR "Body Snatchers"

We Begin Out Our Annual Halloween Presentation... ...with an Example of the Way Colleges and Teaching Hospitals Used to Acquire Specimens fo...