CoronaVirus Comics THE VITALS: TRUE NURSE STORIES "Story Two: Can't Stop"

Take a deep breath...

...and plunge into a graphic retelling of a real-life situation in the daily battle against Covid-19!

Marvel Comics collaborated with Allegheny Health Network (AHN) to celebrate real-life healthcare heroes through a comic book about real-life nurses and their heroism.

Each character and story stems from the experiences of real people who provide healthcare throughout AHN’s 13 hospital facilities in Western Pennsylvania, serving as amalgams of the dozens of nurses who shared their stories.

The limited-print run comic books are distributed to patients for free throughout AHN hospitals, with an e-reader version available on Marvel.com.

This tale of the never-ending struggle is written by Sean Ryan, and illustrated by Jose Carlos.

You'll see the final story from this collection next month.

NELLIE THE NURSE "Work Hard, Play Hard!"

After last week's rather grim (though "uplifting") tale torn from current real life...

...we thought you might enjoy a humorous "breather" from the 1950s, when men were doctors, women were nurses, and sexism ran rampant!

Pop Culture In-Joke: Both Dr Kildare and Dr Christian were popular 1930s-40s radio shows that spun-off into b-movie series, though they never crossed-over as shown on the movie screen in the last panel!

Writer Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett (doing a great Dan DeCarlo imitation) makes this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Nellie the Nurse V2N1 (1957) a quick, fun read by doing what reads like a classic vaudeville routine!

This was a reboot of the first Nellie the Nurse series which ran from 1945 to 1952 but aimed at a younger, less sophisticated audience. (You can see an example of that strip HERE.)

The revival didn't sell, and Nellie became a backup strip in Millie the Model to use up the inventory of stories created for the never-published #2 and 3!

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Night Nurse

CoronaVirus Comics THE VITALS: TRUE NURSE STORIES "Story One: Cut Through the Noise"

What Makes a Person a Hero or Heroine?

It's being willing to do what must be done...even when you're already at your limit, physically or mentally!

Real heroes don’t wear capes; they wear scrubs.

Marvel Comics collaborated with Allegheny Health Network (AHN) to celebrate real-life healthcare heroes through a comic book about real-life nurses and their heroism.

Each character and story stems from the experiences of real people who provide healthcare throughout AHN’s 13 hospital facilities in Western Pennsylvania, serving as amalgams of the dozens of nurses who shared their stories.

The limited-print run comic books are distributed to patients for free throughout AHN hospitals, with an e-reader version available on Marvel.com.

This lead-off tale is written by Sean Ryan, penciled by Marcio Fiorito, inked by Roberto Poggi.

You'll be seeing the others over the next few weeks.

Young Love PRIVATE DIARY OF MARY ROBIN, R.N. "No Cure for Love" Part 2

We Have Already Seen...

...Mary Robin, on her first assignment as a registered nurse, becomes enamored with young, handsome surgeon Will Ames.

But will he return her affection?

Mary Robin R.N. will return next month!

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Medical Comics and Stories

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Heart Throbs

Best of DC Romance Comics

(Which reprints this story)

Young Love PRIVATE DIARY OF MARY ROBIN, R.N. "No Cure for Love" Part 1

Let's jump into our new ongoing monthly feature...

...a series by Dr Pat co-creator writer Robert Kanigher and artist John Romita!

Actually, It'll be Concluded...

Tomorrow!

Yes, this introductory story from DC's Young Love #39 (1963) is quite different in tone from the Dr Pat series.
This is more in the vein of the various nurse strips we've presented, such as Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love, which were soap operas set in hospitals.
This particular series, which ran from #39 to #52 in Young Love was one of the best-illustrated, by John Romita Sr, who later moved on to Marvel, where he initially took over Daredevil and then Spider-Man, and later became the art director for the entire Marvel line, a position he held for over 30 years!
He also co-created several major characters including Wolverine and The Punisher!

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Medical Comics and Stories

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Heart Throbs

Best of DC Romance Comics

(Which reprints this story)

The Doctor is WAAAAAAAAY OUT! Tom Wolfe, Doctor Strange and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test!

The late "New Journalism" pioneer Tom Wolfe referenced Marvel's Doctor Strange in...

...a non-fiction book about the cross-country adventures of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in passages like

“Kesey is young, serene and his face is lineless and round and smooth as a baby’s as he sits for hours on end reading comic books, absorbed in the plunging purple Steve Ditko shadows of Doctor Strange.”

(BTW, dig that psychedelic cover by graphic design legend Milton Glaser!)

Several years later, writer Roy Thomas (a former English teacher and big fan of Wolfe), penciler Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer returned the favor in Doctor Strange #180 (1969)...

You can read the whole story HERE.

Strange's "...an old friend of mine...haven't seen him since '64..." line is a reference to the year Electric Kool Aid Acid Test was published.

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Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe

DOCTOR STRANGE in ULTRAVIOLET

The Doctor Strange story we ran for the past two days...

...produced not one...

...but two...

...classic blacklite posters in the early 1970s!

Third Eye Studios produced, using Marvel artwork, a line of fluorescent-ink posters, greeting cards, and puzzles that glow under ultra-violet ("black") light...

 

(Click to enlarge)

...all of which are now hard-to-find and expensive!

Ironically, the hardest to find and most collectible posters are the montage shown above and this one with new art by John Romita Sr...

(Click to enlarge)
...which were not for sale, just display!
There were three Doctor Strange posters, the two Colan/Palmer ones and a Dan Adkins piece.
Note: while all the puzzles repeated art from the posters, some of the greeting cards used art not seen on the posters, so while there are repeats, there are also unique cards that make the set worth collecting!
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This New Year's

Order This BlackLite-style Reproduction Poster!

Digitally-Restored and Remastered DIRECTLY From an Original Poster!

DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Conclusion

When Last We Left the Sorcerer Supreme...

...it was the end of 1968, New Year's Eve, to be exact.

After seeing a vision of the etherial Eternity changing into his old enemy, Nightmare, Dr Strange takes his alien love, Clea, to Times Square to experience New Year's Eve: New York City Style...where a pterodactyl crashes into the clock as it strikes midnight!

Yep, True Believer, it's another of Marvel's patented "continued stories"!

But our intent here is to present only the New Year's Eve part of the tale, since both parts have been reprinted recently.

So we're going to show you how Marvel itself got out of re-running the entire two-parter when it ran this tale from Doctor Strange #180 (1969) in Marvel Treasury Edition #8: Giant SuperHero Holiday Grab-Bag (1975)!

The editors took the Gene Colan penciled and inked presentation piece showing the finalized design for Doc's "superhero-style" costume that appeared as a pin-up in Doctor Strange #180...

...took out the final panel of the story and used the Doc figure with a new word balloon!

Sneaky, huh?

Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gene Colan, and inked by Tom Palmer, this tale is one of the koolest of the era's Dr Strange stories with pop culture references galore and accurate NYC locales!

The cover, btw is a combination of a Steve Ditko Eternity figure, a new Doctor Strange by Colan and Palmer and a New York City photo background (Marvel did several photo background covers during this period)

Tomorrow:

The Splash Pages that Became BlackLite Posters!

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This New Year's

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Marvel Masterworks

Doctor Strange

Volume 4

...featuring this tale and it's continuation!