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[Andrew999]

As there have been a few new uploads recently (thanks, guys) and some discussion, I thought for this edition of the world-famous reading group, we would go for Alan Class Comics - and my particular choice is Creepy Worlds 61:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=77614

Alan Class was an amazing entrepreneur, able through force of personality to strike deals with a wide range of American publishers - helped by the import restrictions that existed for a time in 1950s Britain.

As a ten-year-old customer, the best thing about his reprints was that they would pop up in the most unlikely of places - beachside cafes, Woolworths, railway stations, as well as traditional newsagents. The issues were numbered but never dated so they were never removed from the shelf - nor, I suspect, were they even issued in numerical order.

The titles of the magazines were irrelevant - the contents came from wherever - so you might find next to a Steve Ditko masterpiece some crummy story drawn by what appeared to be a six-year-old - but when you found those gems, oh boy!

Although the titles had no real meaning, I did feel Creepy Worlds leaned a little more towards the supernatural so that was always my favourite.

I've chosen this edition pretty much at random but the contents look good - I would be interested in what you have to say!

There's so much good work out there from the 50s, 60s and 70s - I don't understand why there aren't more reprint anthologies available in the UK. In Japan, you can pick up tomes of up to a thousand pages of reprinted material from the sixties in monochrome - so why not here? I don't know what it's like in Oz or the States but I would imagine it could be a quick way to make a few pennies from old material - especially if undated.

Here's more info on Alan Class:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Class_Comics

[gregjh]

It may well be great, but there's something about the ink and lack of color that stops me being able to focus on it. A shame because the plot looks like it could be a lot of fun.

[Robb_K]

It may well be great, but there's something about the ink and lack of color that stops me being able to focus on it. A shame because the plot looks like it could be a lot of fun. 

Your point is quite understandable, because this book suffers from too many pages with too much whiteness, and large bare patches, because they were drawn and inked in preparation for inclusion in a coloured book.  Had they been prepared for a black and white book, they'd have had much more crosshatching and dotting to create different gradations of shades of gray to provide enough contrast, to better distinguish objects and living animated figures, as was common in many daily black and white newspaper comic strips, especially during the first seven decades of The Twentieth Century.  Unfortunately, these British books used prints made from the plates made from the original inked pages for US ACG coloured comic book series, without adding the gray shading gradation, because adding the cost of such labour would have made the UK series unprofitable.

Actually, for me, only a couple of the stories in this book (2nd and fifth of the seven) lack enough shading to make them easily readable.  I'm well used to that level of whiteness, for having read many of World War II period, Canadian Whites, when the importing of US comic books was prohibited, and Canadian publishers published their own series produced in black and white, only. 

I've always liked colour strips and full-sized comic book stories much better in colour than in black and white, which is why I really enjoyed the coloured versions of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Daily Strip adventure stories, when a few of them came out in US Walt Disney's Comics & Stories in the 1940s,  and later, many others were printed in the Dutch Mickey Mandblad (monthly Magazine) in the 1970s and early 1980s.

[paw broon]

As there are a lot of ACG strips in Alan Class reprints, I feel sure I've read many in the original comics. And as they are in b&w here, they're not so appealing to me. As has been said a few times, comic fans in the UK were used to b&w comics, I certainly was.  But the Alan Class titles never appealed to me which is odd as other reprint comics were on sale in b&w, incl. Mr. District Attorney; Flash; Mandrake; Justice Traps The Guilty and British originated  titles Avengers; Mark Tyme and other titles from that publisher, all in the same format. But up to about late '59, American comics weren't available here to any great extent.
In this case, I'd much prefer to read these stories in the original comics.

[The Australian Panther]

   Unfortunately, these British books used prints made from the plates made from the original inked pages for US ACG coloured comic book series, without adding the gray shading gradation, because adding the cost of such labour would have made the UK series unprofitable.

Interesting. Gordon and Gotch in Australia used to reprint all of the DC books in BnW in 100 page giants.The only way we could get DC's books. But they were all clear and easy to read. I can't say what process they used.   

[Robb_K]

I feel as if I am reviewing a mid-to-late 1950s ACG book.

When The Earth Was Young
The idea that an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation from a far-off planet, visited Earth millions of years ago, is a good one, albeit oft-used.  I can't recall that a dinosaur eating a modern-style, advanced technological man-made instrument, only to be found by modern Earth=bred Human scientists millions of years later ever being used before.  I was disappointed that the artist didn't research the structure of a Tyrannosaurus very well, as the well-known head shape was conspicuously inaccurate, and, so, obviously wrong-looking.  Otherwise, the artwork wasn't bad.  A hand gun that can set off a blast that would produce a many megaton explosion, the equivalent to one of the earliest atomic bombs is a bit hard to believe.  Who would ever want to use it, knowing they couldn't propel it far enough away from themselves to not become burnt to a crisp and evaporated almost instantly after its firing?  The artwork was adequate in style, but the reproduction of the inks was not good, and there was little shading for gradation of darkness, and less detail than needed for a black and white only printing.

The Gravy Train
This morally-correct story about a person who gets a bad break at birth that sets the whole tone for his life, and demonstrates that if one does his best to do what is right in life, he or she will be rewarded in the afterlife, was entertaining if not unexpected.  It is ironic that his act of doing his good deed gets him killed, which is his ticket to the gravy train of his endless pleasurable, heavenly afterlife he always desired, as well as his ticket for leaving the miserable existence he had in his life on Earth.  The artwork on this story was quite good.


Clem Never Does Anything Big
This is a commonly used theme, that a ne'er-do-well rises to the occasion when everything is on the line, either through moral fortitude, selfless dedication to do what is right, a never-give-up attitude, or just plain luck, to do what is really important in life, rather than go by Human society's taught selfish values, to do something important, with a lasting, positive effect.  The not-so-bright hero, although basically honest, is driven by his lack of knowledge and country folktales about The US Federal Government's actions ALL being detrimental to them, to accidentally scare off technologically superior extra-terrestrial invaders from invading The Earth.  And he never learns what a great act he performed for Humankind.  It's a story that's been told many times (including a silly version starring Disney's professor Ludwig Von Drake); but THIS version has a reasonably clever and tight plot, and is an entertaining way of making that result happen.  The artwork was fine.

Ina's Intuition - 2 Page Text Story
This is a typical twist ending driven scenario story which uses a ghost town and old legends to try to develop some suspense.  But that fails, as 2 pages of text is much too short to really develop  a scary or suspenseful mood, do any character development, or do much more than provide the bare bones of explaining what happened with no details.  Of course, given the living in a cursed house near a ghost town setup, the hero doesn't get the quiet place to write his book.  But, luckily for him and his wife, their falling prey to the cabin's curse ends with the lucky twist that they find a gold mine (or vein) under the collapsed floor of their cabin.  And the newly-rich couple live happily ever after, with his not needing to write the book, or ever work again.  Not much of a story.  Not very imaginative.  More proof that 2 pages of text isn't really long enough to do much more than tell a joke, or write a 2-page story scenario.


The Opal of Ali Khar
This is a story of magic and ancient Middle Eastern legend of The Jinn.  I am very surprised that this particular legend and Jinn's entrapment was written to only have been a paltry 300 years before.  ANY deviation from science's laws of nature is fair game, no matter how unbelievable.  Being trapped inside a gemstone, as opposed to a glass bottle is a little different, but not enough to make a significant improvement on the most common version.  Use of the convex vs. concave faces of the lens to explain the flinging outward force for releasing, and the pulling/sucking in force for trapping a victim, adds only the slightest (not significant) additional credibility/plausibility to the story's explanation.  I was expecting an analogous ending, with a similar result.  I think this story, like ALL the others in this genre of ACG comic book, suffers from it's short length, with far too few pages to develop setting, characters, mood, motivation, and have an adequate buildup of suspense.  If I were writing such a story, I'd want at the very LEAST, 20 pages, with a full 36-page book's 28-30 pages as what I'd prefer, to do a really good job on it.  That would be enough to have room to provide great elaborate detail to the legend, to provide the reader with the feeling of the legend's ancient times (which I'd make at least 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, rather than 300.  Those times were much more different from the present, and so, more exotic, and thus, impressive, having long been hidden in the midst of time.  We could then also develop the Jinn's character much more, providing at least a sketch of his history tied to the gemstone and his entrapment, and feel his hatred of Mankind leading to why he is so angry and belligerent.  This story is way too tame and benign for its basic plot and possibilities.  The artwork was adequate.


The Sky Beast
Having been brought up near the edge of The Canadian North Woods, I was intrigued with this story's beginning and potential.  It's a typical story about a tall tale teller, who brags and exaggerates a lot, who encounters something legendary and/or unbelievable, and even (for the first time in his life) rustles up here-to-fore untapped courage, and becomes a hero.  However, ironically, or based on his karma, there are no witnesses.  He has potential proof, but people would think that isn't real proof, but rather something he concocted.  I like the idea that he uses the monster's own unique attribute to trick him into trapping himself.  It's a little bit unbelievable that sentient extraterrestrials that have the intelligence to develop the technology to travel through a galaxy (at least from one solar system to another), haven't developed anything to control such a beast, and need to depend upon a local being from a civilisation far less developed than theirs, to capture the alien monster.  The poor trapper lost his dog.  How will he travel by sled to carry supplies.  How will he keep up his body temperature on the coldest winter nights?  I feel sorry for him.    The artwork was adequate in style, but the reproduction of the inks was not good, and there was little shading for gradation of darkness, and less detail than needed for a black and white only printing.



A Journey To Oblivion
This is a very common ghost story, which had no surprises or twists, and because the ending was not different from what direction the plot pointed, it was totally expected, and there was no suspense.  It would only be interesting to a reader who was unfamiliar with this genre.  More pages would have allowed more room to develop the characters' back stories, to provide fodder for adding suspense and an unexpected twist based on motivation for an unexpected act, with an unexpected thread between characters, and a satisfying story ending.  the artwork on this story was quite good.  It stands up well in black and white, unlike a few of the others.


The Girl Who Became Queen
Another story involving an extraterrestrial alien society having a visit to Earth.  And this is another story about a person who is unsuccessful at his station in life, and who gets a chance to redeem himself, and become worthy.  This time, unlike the story of the French-Canadian trapper, it is rather one of the extraterrestrials who is the star.  However, this is a fairly boring story, because it follows the path of Cinderella, with no sidesteps, and really, no villain.  The idea of a girl and later, young woman, who dreams of becoming a queen, and a king from another planet crossing her path, and both of them ending up with what they want has possibilities for ending up with an excellent story.  The large problem of the comet threatening all life on the king's planet adds a great element to the story, leading to lots of suspense.  Having the many spaceships of the endangered civilisation go on separate searches for a livable planet and expect to all meet millions or possibly billions of miles away at the first one found, after radio contact, within the same lifetime, sounds impossible.  But, that isn't the main problem with the story.  Unfortunately, everything points to the expected ending that the Human woman will be everything the alien king was looking for, and will accompany him to wherever he goes, and become his queen.  Not only does that happen.  But, because of having such a short page count, it happens without any small, or even any tiny roadblocks, along the way.  The artwork on this story was adequate.

[narfstar]

I may be in the minority but I like the black and white. I can better appreciate the art in many stories. I posted these to give others a chance to see some artists were better than given credit. Charlton's Nicolas/Alascia team is often looked down on. I found their work in black and white to look good. Not perfect by any means but they put effort into it for Charlton wages. I tend to like Richard Hughes work and found the first three stories very enjoyable. First actually had a nice twist to it. The second was predictable but done interesting as was the third. There are no new stories, so it is the little twists that provide the entertainment. I have not read the others yet.

[The Australian Panther]

I may be in the minority but I like the black and white. I can better appreciate the art in many stories.

No definitely not in the minority. A lot of drawing art looks better in Black and White.
But good printing does help.
Many Black and White movies don't need colour, they were in fact composed to be viewed in BnW, and adding colour doesn't improve the movie. Colour movies are composed for colour.  The original Twilight Zone series needed Black and White. The later revival series [and the terrible movie] all were in colour and all lacked atmosphere. 
Cheers!

[crashryan]

The sad things about Alan Class comics is that some of the best stuff came from Atlas/Marvel and can't be seen here. A lot of nice Williamson, Morrow, Wood, Doxsee, Heck, Maneely, etc. etc. that is hard to find elsewhere. In this case we're only missing one Gray Morrow story.

This issue of Creepy Worlds is a gallery of typical ACG "weird" stories (I call them that because I can't think of a better label). Despite cover claims that the stories inside were "tense," "amazing," and "shocking," Richard Hughes' stories were almost always quiet, pleasant, you might say polite. Most of them were set in an idealized late-1940s midwestern America populated with decent small-town folk. As most of you know, Richard Hughes wrote all these stories under different pseudonyms so it's inevitable he'd repeat himself occasionally. A couple of persistent themes underlie most of his weird tales: a misbehaving character gets his comeuppance or a goodhearted loser finally wins. A couple of these appear in this comic.

"When the Earth was Young" is the old Ancient Astronaut story with a really fake Tyrannosaur. The ending, in which the Russians pass off the disintegration of their exploratory team as a nuclear test, raised a smile. I can't decide whether or not I like John Rosenberger. He was a competent artist and some of his work, like on ACG romance books, is better than average. His cover paintings for those romances came as a pleasant surprise to me. More often he is agonizingly bland like he is here.

"The Gravy Train," one of Hughes' downtrodden-finds-redemption stories, shows another of the author's fixations: trains, specifically steam engines. So many Hughes stories glorify "great big wonderful train(s) that went like the wind" blowing their lonesome whistles. Johnny Craig's art is okay but he did better elsewhere. One thing bugs me. On our page 18 Dexter finally sees the wonderful train he's spent his life waiting for. Surely this would be the place for a big romantic wide shot of the Gravy Train with its four smokestacks. Instead Craig draws the train's nose and cowcatcher. Incidentally, when he does draw the entire train on the final pages, it has only one smokestack and four steam domes.

"Clem Never Does Anything Big" is a common variant on the downtrodden-redemption theme. The hero saves the earth without knowing it. How many times did Stan Lee recycle that plot at Atlas? This time it's played for laughs and ends up being a fun story.  I enjoyed the alien leader's admission that everyone calls them quarrelsome and destructive because in fact they are. A Klingon would never admit to that. Ogden Whitney's art works well with the story. He (and Rosenberger) sure draw the most generic spaceships, though.

"The Opal of Ali Khar" is a harmless story. Rosenberger's art is better here than in the lead story, probably because it's not s-f.

"The Sky Beast" reminds me for some reason of the mechanical giant in The Mysterians, though they don't look alike. The story's okay but the resolution doesn't convince me. I think it's because I've never associated bottomless bogs with the North Country. This reminds me of the stories in Jack Schiff's weird comics over at DC. Whitney does a workmanlike job.

"A Journey into Oblivion" is a story that's been retold countless times with countless variations. This version is pretty good. I'd always associated Pete Costanza with cartoony C.C. Beck-style artwork. However at ACG he often worked in this more realistic style. It's reminiscent of Kurt Schaffenberger, another alumnus of the Captain Marvel studio.

"The Girl Who Became Queen" is the weakest story in the book because every step of the way it's painfully obvious how it will turn out. The artwork puzzles me. The hero's face looks like Ogden Whitney but not the rest of the art. Anyhow it's a capable job.

A few random observations about ACG weird comics. Consistency (sameness? monotony?) was the ACG hallmark, all the way down to the lettering. The ACG letterer--someone must know his name--always lettered titles and sound effects with serifs on the top of the A's, R's, B's and P's. You can recognize his story titles anywhere. Richard Hughes used KER-POW! as a sound effect for everything from spaceships blasting off to the turning worm punching out the bully. Almost every ACG comic has at least one KER-POW in it.

In sum, reading this issue of Creepy Worlds was like reading a typical ACG comic. Not bad, not great, just...polite.

[Captain Audio]

I may be in the minority but I like the black and white. I can better appreciate the art in many stories.

No definitely not in the minority. A lot of drawing art looks better in Black and White.
But good printing does help.

Cheers!

I can certainly agree that poor printing can ruin a finely done Chiaroscuro drawing. Some of the Thriller books here demonstrate that.

As for Film noir, look up the TV Series "T.H.E. Cat".  Practically every frame is a masterpiece.

[Andrew999]

Never come across this series before - truly amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YfbubM-7Yc

[paw broon]

"Some of the Thriller books here demonstrate that."  Captain Audio
I should have pointed this out before. Some/many of the TPL books we host have been scanned/photocopied from facsimile issues.  There was a cottage industry for a few years of people scanning or photocopying original TPL books and selling them on ebay and other sites. The results were patchy.  You got nice, white paper but often a lot of the detail was lost or fudged. Hence the apparent bad printing.  The originals were much better with art designed as b&w.

[The Australian Panther]

There was a T.H.E. Cat comic book - Dell 4 issues 1967

https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/the-cat/pcww/

And then Moonstone teamed the character with Honey West. So there were two more.
Honey West
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=honey+west+tv+series+full+episodes
Great Series. Deserves to be better known. An American 'Avengers' Only went one season.       

Thanks for the link Andrew 

Cheers!

[paw broon]

Panther put me onto Honey West.  Highly entertaining.
T.H.E CAT is a good show.  It's a pity the quality on you tube isn't very good.  I recommend the comics as well.
Another , this time British show on youtube is Adam Adamant.  Again the quality isn't the best but the shows are entertaining.  A sort of poor man's Avengers.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adam+adamant

[mopee167]

crashryan said: "A few random observations about ACG weird comics. Consistency (sameness? monotony?) was the ACG hallmark, all the way down to the lettering. The ACG letterer -- someone must know his name -- always lettered titles and sound effects with serifs on the top of the A's, R's, B's and P's. You can recognize his story titles anywhere. Richard Hughes used KER-POW! as a sound effect for everything from spaceships blasting off to the turning worm punching out the bully. Almost every ACG comic has at least one KER-POW in it."

The letterer for ACG was ED (Edward?) HAMILTON (1900-1979):
http://www.bailsprojects.com/bio.aspx?Name=HAMILTON%2c+ED

*****
paw broon said: "Panther put me on to Honey West.  Highly entertaining."

I liked the Honey West TV show with Ann Francis, but I liked the novels even better.
At least until the author switched her from a PI to a female James Bond type in the 1960s.

[gregjh]

It may well be great, but there's something about the ink and lack of color that stops me being able to focus on it. A shame because the plot looks like it could be a lot of fun. 

Your point is quite understandable, because this book suffers from too many pages with too much whiteness, and large bare patches, because they were drawn and inked in preparation for inclusion in a coloured book.  Had they been prepared for a black and white book, they'd have had much more crosshatching and dotting to create different gradations of shades of gray to provide enough contrast, to better distinguish objects and living animated figures, as was common in many daily black and white newspaper comic strips, especially during the first seven decades of The Twentieth Century.  Unfortunately, these British books used prints made from the plates made from the original inked pages for US ACG coloured comic book series, without adding the gray shading gradation, because adding the cost of such labour would have made the UK series unprofitable.

Actually, for me, only a couple of the stories in this book (2nd and fifth of the seven) lack enough shading to make them easily readable.  I'm well used to that level of whiteness, for having read many of World War II period, Canadian Whites, when the importing of US comic books was prohibited, and Canadian publishers published their own series produced in black and white, only. 

I've always liked colour strips and full-sized comic book stories much better in colour than in black and white, which is why I really enjoyed the coloured versions of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Daily Strip adventure stories, when a few of them came out in US Walt Disney's Comics & Stories in the 1940s,  and later, many others were printed in the Dutch Mickey Mandblad (monthly Magazine) in the 1970s and early 1980s.

I appreciate the explanation. I'm guessing you've worked in the comic or printing industry at some point, as you seem very knowledgeable about the process.

[Robb_K]

It may well be great, but there's something about the ink and lack of color that stops me being able to focus on it. A shame because the plot looks like it could be a lot of fun. 

Your point is quite understandable, because this book suffers from too many pages with too much whiteness, and large bare patches, because they were drawn and inked in preparation for inclusion in a coloured book.  Had they been prepared for a black and white book, they'd have had much more crosshatching and dotting to create different gradations of shades of gray to provide enough contrast, to better distinguish objects and living animated figures, as was common in many daily black and white newspaper comic strips, especially during the first seven decades of The Twentieth Century.  Unfortunately, these British books used prints made from the plates made from the original inked pages for US ACG coloured comic book series, without adding the gray shading gradation, because adding the cost of such labour would have made the UK series unprofitable.

Actually, for me, only a couple of the stories in this book (2nd and fifth of the seven) lack enough shading to make them easily readable.  I'm well used to that level of whiteness, for having read many of World War II period, Canadian Whites, when the importing of US comic books was prohibited, and Canadian publishers published their own series produced in black and white, only. 

I've always liked colour strips and full-sized comic book stories much better in colour than in black and white, which is why I really enjoyed the coloured versions of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Daily Strip adventure stories, when a few of them came out in US Walt Disney's Comics & Stories in the 1940s,  and later, many others were printed in the Dutch Mickey Maandblad (monthly Magazine) in the 1970s and early 1980s.

I appreciate the explanation. I'm guessing you've worked in the comic or printing industry at some point, as you seem very knowledgeable about the process.

I've been a storyboarder and cover sketch artist and storywriter for Dutch Disney Comics (Oberon/Geillustreerde Pers/V.N.U./Sanoma Uitgevers) on mainly Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and Gyro Gearloose stories, from 1985 till today, and also worked in those same capacities for Danish Disney Comics (Gutenberghus/Egmont Serieforleget) from 1989-1995 and 2003-2018. I also worked in animation in layout, storyboarding, in-betweening, animation checking, ink and painting, and cell scanning on 4 feature films in USA, and 3 in Europe, and on several Dutch, German, and Danish independent comic book productions over the past 40 years.  My avatar and signature blue pencil drawing of Goofy crying, on my posts on this forum, are original drawings by me.  I also participated in the filming and photo reproduction of many of Carl Barks' original inked drawings in preparation for auction, which taught me a lot about comic book page image printing quality.

[Andrew999]

Yeah, Honey West and Adam Adamant were cool - in fact, I have both the DVDs!

[SuperScrounge]

When The Earth Was Young! - Okay. Plenty to nitpick, for instance, usually Eskimos in the arctic are in Alaska or Canada, so why would the Russians think they could enter someone else's country and claim the bones?

The Gravy Train! - Eh, I guess the writer's heart was in the right place, but only a so-so story.

Clem Never Does Anything Big! - Hard to believe there was a time when sci-fi hillbilly stories was practically a sub-genre of science fiction. This was not one of the better ones, but like most examples I've read, was kind of amusing.

Ina's Intuition - Cute.

The Opal of Ali Khar! - Eh, okay, although as a rockhound calling it an opal, while not necessarily incorrect, there are jelly opals which are translucent, but generally opals tend to be opaque. A ruby or sapphire would have been a better choice. Also opals are fragile, a hammer would have reduced it to dust. 

The Sky Beast! - Rook! Godzirra!  Yeahhhhh... Ignoring the obvious inspiration, the gimmick of the tall tale that was real felt like a DC sci-fi story. Okay, likable story.

A Journey Into Oblivion! - Okay.

The Girl Who Became Queen - Not bad.

[The Australian Panther]

There has been a lot said about the Black and White and the limitations of the printing process, so I will confine myself to the contents.
First, the Ogden Whitney cover. It just doesn't make sense. Is the guy with the Ray-gun dead or asleep? Is he floating in the air? And what does that have to do with the hole with the large bones in it?
When the earth was young.
So aliens look and dress just like us, except for the 'Uncle Martian' antenna. And you can set off an atomic explosion with a ray-gun. And survive.
The Gravy Train. 'Sorry to tell you but your son is mentally deficient.' That makes me shudder, I have spent quite a bit of time as a teacher or a carer of persons defined as 'Mentally deificient' And the guy blows every job he is given, but he can drive a train in an emergency. 
Clem never does anything big! Except save the earth by getting the aliens drunk - love the songs! - and throwing a bee hive at them.
The Opal of Ali Khar! By Shane O'Shea [Not Sergius by any chance?]  and John R Artist!
Notice how Genies come out of bottles where they have been imprisoned for thousands of years and can immediately speak English?
The Sky Beast. Note the self portrait of Ogden Whitney. Looks exactly like one of the characters he draws.
A Journey into Oblivion. Quite good art from Pete Costanza. Not a bad story - even if it is quite a cliche.
The Girl who became Queen. Corny and predictable.
This is the kind of comic you wouldn't want your friends to see if you were a teenager and you read it.
Could spend a few paragraphs cataloguing the silliness, but its all too obvious. 
As you can see, i'm not a fan of AGC's work.   

[Captain Audio]

There has been a lot said about the Black and White and the limitations of the printing process, so I will confine myself to the contents.
First, the Ogden Whitney cover. It just doesn't make sense. Is the guy with the Ray-gun dead or asleep? Is he floating in the air? And what does that have to do with the hole with the large bones in it?
When the earth was young.
So aliens look and dress just like us, except for the 'Uncle Martian' antenna. And you can set off an atomic explosion with a ray-gun. And survive.

Firstly he was not holding the raygun, it is the anti gravity device, though it was stuffed in his jacket pocket in the story. He had been shot so he was unconscious when he floated away.The Russian's did not survive the blast they set off. Not sure but I think the gun itself may have exploded.

[Robb_K]

There has been a lot said about the Black and White and the limitations of the printing process, so I will confine myself to the contents.
First, the Ogden Whitney cover. It just doesn't make sense. Is the guy with the Ray-gun dead or asleep? Is he floating in the air? And what does that have to do with the hole with the large bones in it?
When the earth was young.
So aliens look and dress just like us, except for the 'Uncle Martian' antenna. And you can set off an atomic explosion with a ray-gun. And survive.

Firstly he was not holding the raygun, it is the anti gravity device, though it was stuffed in his jacket pocket in the story. He had been shot so he was unconscious when he floated away.The Russian's did not survive the blast they set off. Not sure but I think the gun itself may have exploded.

The mistake making the invention of that atomic explosion gun illogical, is not whether or not the shooter survived in this situation, but a more pertinent question is how can a tiny hand-held pistol-shaped weapon propel an atomic bomb the minimum several hundred miles away, to keep the shooter safe.  Otherwise it is a Kamikaze weapon, which makes little sense in this story's context, not indicated in the text of the panel which included its firing.

[Robb_K]

1) First, the Ogden Whitney cover. It just doesn't make sense. Is the guy with the Ray-gun dead or asleep? Is he floating in the air? And what does that have to do with the hole with the large bones in it?
2) The Gravy Train. 'Sorry to tell you but your son is mentally deficient.' That makes me shudder, I have spent quite a bit of time as a teacher or a carer of persons defined as 'Mentally deificient' And the guy blows every job he is given, but he can drive a train in an emergency. 
3) Clem never does anything big! Except save the earth by getting the aliens drunk - love the songs! - and throwing a bee hive at them.
4) The Opal of Ali Khar! By Shane O'Shea [Not Sergius by any chance?]  and John R Artist!
Notice how Genies come out of bottles where they have been imprisoned for thousands of years and can immediately speak English?   

1) Many ACG covers show scenes that don't occur on the inside pages.  Sometimes the show not even the slightest relation to ANY story on the inside.  So this isn't surprising.

2) Good point.

3) A silly story.  I can think of several funny animal stories with exactly the same plot and similar scenes.

4) This Jinn was imprisoned for only the last 300 years, which would place his imprisonment around 1660, which would have been difficult for him to have learned English in by osmosis Asia.  It would have been very possible 60-70 years later in India, and Baluchistan, and many other places in North Africa, and over much of Asia 150 years later.  However, we should give the author the leeway to have assumed that most readers know from reading previous stories, that aliens, superheroes, immortal godlike, and angellike beings use telepathy to read the thoughts of mortals, and speak to them through that medium, as different animal species do in a similar vein by instinct, with each other, using instinctive knowledge of body language, facial expression, eye shape, movement and glassyness, body odours, etc.  In addition, that choice is made by the author, to avoid adding the extraneous (to the story) asterisk footnotes stating ("This dialogue has been translated for the convenience of the reader", OR "Telepathic communication").

A pet peeve of mine is the very short, skimpy, 300 year period of his entrapment.  Most stories have it being 1000+, or even several thousand years.  That's much more interesting.  But, in those cases, the Jinn's clothing is always much, much more recent than that time from long before.  But, that is par for the course.  Being a historian, I am almost always finding details in films and books that are historically inaccurate.

[narfstar]

I actually remember having watched THE Cat as a kid. I can not say I remember anything so I need to check out the episode posted.

[Captain Audio]

There has been a lot said about the Black and White and the limitations of the printing process, so I will confine myself to the contents.
First, the Ogden Whitney cover. It just doesn't make sense. Is the guy with the Ray-gun dead or asleep? Is he floating in the air? And what does that have to do with the hole with the large bones in it?
When the earth was young.
So aliens look and dress just like us, except for the 'Uncle Martian' antenna. And you can set off an atomic explosion with a ray-gun. And survive.

Firstly he was not holding the raygun, it is the anti gravity device, though it was stuffed in his jacket pocket in the story. He had been shot so he was unconscious when he floated away.The Russian's did not survive the blast they set off. Not sure but I think the gun itself may have exploded.

The mistake making the invention of that atomic explosion gun illogical, is not whether or not the shooter survived in this situation, but a more pertinent question is how can a tiny hand-held pistol-shaped weapon propel an atomic bomb the minimum several hundred miles away, to keep the shooter safe.  Otherwise it is a Kamikaze weapon, which makes little sense in this story's context, not indicated in the text of the panel which included its firing.

Just skimming through it I at first thought the pistol had fired a nuclear charge, but reading and looking more closely the explosion was caused by the ancient weapon malfunctioning, the power pack exploded when they tried to fire it, like a cannon with a plugged muzzle.

Look up the "Davey Crocket" nuclear recoiless rifle . It was a man portable weapon that could fire a low yield nuclear warhead several miles. Its maximum range was little more than the blast radius. The military has always been a little bit crazy about new toys.