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[MarkWarner]

This week's anonymous choice is a a truly bizarre and worrisome comic. I have actually read this in the past!! SO I believe this is a familiar book for most of not all of the reading group. But, at some point we needed to "officially" run our eyes over it, and this is the week!

Picture Parade can be found at https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11684, and there is only one story "Andy's Atomic Adventures".

BTW If there is ANYONE who has not read this, then NOW is the time!

[73042helloworld]

I haven't been reading along with you, but I watch for what you read and sometimes read some of the books during the week.   However, this book is part of my favorite series of series.

The cover story was reprinted as the opener of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED 138A SPECIAL ISSUE.  Some other issues had this experience as well since both titles were published by Gilberton Co.  I never saw an issue din school, which was the distribution site, but have been quite happy to download all that have been posted here.

I realize copyrights on CI and CI products are claimed by Jakk Lakke (sp) in Canada, but I question that.  However, I believe he only acquired those that were published by companies contracting reprint rights for given periods of time, so these books should be fine.  I also believe CI and others that haven't been reprinted since 1969 or so should be PD.  Those reprinted by Jack Lake Productions and Papercutz would be more questionable.  Approximately 30-35 titles were replaced using new art before 1965, so the originals of those issues should be PD.  Eleven of those have 64 interior pages, 10 have 56 and the rest have 48.  If Mark needs more info, we cn  arrange to  contact off-line.  Paw Boone should have my e-mail addy.

[SuperScrounge]

Not much to say for or against it. It was an okay educational comic.

[Morgus]

YEAH, that's what this one reminded me of...Classics Illustrated. Thanks for the background 73052helloworld. It reminded me of SOMETHING....I thought it might be a comic book made by the same people who put out a comic against smoking..(the cover had two guys in the bedroom trying out cigarettes, but the look on their faces made you think it was more then just tobacco...)
I had seen the cover in the Scott Shaw ODD BALL COMICs trading cards collection, but I don't remember the comic making it here to Canada...this was my first time reading it. 
For it's era, it's well done. The art is good. The pacing works. I read it all the way through. Reminded me of Donald Fagen's song "IGY (What a Beautiful World it Will Be)" There's that upbeat can do attitude that was typical of the time.

Now that we know more, everything sort of looks skewed in retrospect. Like the picture of mom getting her "treatment" on her forearm. You get more protective gear to wear just for a series of x rays today. (Anybody else, by the way, remember those x ray machines they had in front of the shoe stores that would show you your foot bones...all you had to do was stick the foot in, right there in the street?)

I can only assume the makers thought this was all true at the time.

[crashryan]

Never having quite got over the Cold War A-Bomb scares, this comic strikes me as creepy. How naive we all were! The only cliche missing here is "electricity too cheap to meter." Apart from the rah-rah it's a decent introduction for elementary school students. Of course Andy and his neighbors are dead now of bone cancer, and they're still trying to catch the huge green beast Spot turned into following his exposure to the blast.

The art seems familiar; the skewed three-quarter faces remind me of Kurt Schaffenberger and Pete Costanza, though I don't think they were involved. The LeRoy letterer sure put a lot of leading between his lines.

[73042helloworld]

The art was penciled and inked by Pete Constanza and the Script was by Elenor Lidofsky.

I think Constanza may have done at least part of the art (if not all) on the "Lewis and Clark" as well as the "Francis Scott Key/Star-Spangled Banner" stories in later issues after PICTURE PARADE became PICTURE PROGRESS.  There are more of this series available in the files -- check them out 

[Morgus]

Good line about the huge green beast, crashryan...we'll always have the beast from Yucca Flats...say, how come Dr Clark reminds me of maybe Bela, especially on page 13? Really creepy vibe...the geiger counter scenes reminded me of the publicity photos that John Wayne and his kids had taken on the set of THE CONQUEROR. They were in bathing suits, in front of a rock with a geiger counter, laughing as the thing went off...and we all know how THAT came out...but man oh man WHO came up with the idea for the front panel, I wonder? As if to say;"All we need to stare down atomics are good Ray Bans, men!"

[narfstar]

Given the time period this would have been a great educational tool. The dog is covered in radiation, just give it a few days was just crazy.

[Mazzucchelli]

Oh, propaganda is dirty, isn

[Captain Audio]

They should have gone into the decontamination procedure on the dog, but I guess that might have scared the kids reading this.

Some radioactive fallout is very short lived, some has a ridiculously long half life.

At least poor old spot wasn't close enough to the blast to be bald and covered with keloid scars and tumors.

Next weeks issue "Andy Tours Chernobyl".

Really though Nuclear power had great promise, and still does for that matter, but Murphy's Law trumps all.

[narfstar]

France still uses lots of nuclear for electricity. US is just over regulated

[Lorendiac]

They should have gone into the decontamination procedure on the dog, but I guess that might have scared the kids reading this.

That was the main thing that bothered me about the "plot," such as it was. I kept thinking: "So the 'plan' is to just keep the dog sitting in a cage for few weeks until the radioactivity fades away on its own? Why not hose him down, at the very least, as a way to get a lot of that radioactive dust quickly removed from his body before it triggers a cancer or something? Heck, maybe even trim his fur to remove any radioactive particles stuck in it? Those basic precautions might accelerate the moment when the Geiger counter would scarcely even notice his existence."

Aside from that, I didn't find the comic nearly as "worrisome" as some others apparently did.

[bowers]

 I remember this one well, getting a free copy in elementary school. Growing up in a city about a hundred miles away from one of the nation's first nuclear plants, we were well aware of atomic power, yet mostly unaware of the possible dangers.
This book did present many facts designed to educate us. I don't believe whoever distributed this comic to us intended to mislead us about the dangers of radiation. They were trying to present it as a mostly benign tool, and in many ways it was. I just think they were still very unaware of the scope of the damage that could and did happen later. Scientists and the government at that time truly had no idea whatsoever what they were messing around with. The day I was born, the Hanford plant vented a very large amount of radioactive gas into the atmosphere. No explanation was ever given. Was it an accident or did some scientist just want to see what would happen? No wonder so many people in our city have thyroid problems and have filed thousands of "downwinder" lawsuits.
This is an important book for all to read. A real reflection of the times. Cheers, Bowers

[MarkWarner]

This will be my shortest ever review. Over here in England there is an old saying that goes summat like:

"Never discuss politics or religion in the pub".

I think that I would extended that ever so slightly to:

"Never discuss politics, religion or nucleur power and weapons in the pub on Comic Book Plus".

Verdict: REALLY SCAREY! HUGE HIT! VERY thought provoking. This is a MUST READ BOOK!!