Beam Beat Monkee Loving

I've made no secret of my fondness for The Monkees, (Words is playing now, and Randy Souse Git just finished - but Goin' Down is still my fave) and neither did DC.

Yeah - that's Joe Orlando's signature up there.

At the height of the Groovy Age, the folks at DC decided they should expand from comics and try their hand at the teen magazine game. But, not glossy print magazines. The idea was to use the existing set-up to create a cheaper comic book style printed magazine and offer it for only 12¢.

It was an experiment, down to the title - half of the run was called Teen Beat, half was labelled Teen Beam though the basic logo design remained constant:

You might have noticed that it changed from Beat to Beam on issue #2. So, yeah - that was the complete run of the series. The Monkees were featured on the cover of both. (As the blurbs indicate, the insides were packed with a ton of groups and stars of the day.)

The first issue featured a big article on fears that the boys would follow those other guys and break up with lots of photos. Unfortunately, comic book presses weren't really the best thing for photographs - that's probably one of the things that kept the book from catching on. The second issue featured a spread of tour photos, and a most odd little feature on The Monkees drawn by Joe Orlando! (from which the (slightly modified) image at the top of the page originated as well)

To show you what i meant about the photograph quality, here's the spread that followed the Family Album:

And, just because, here's that article from the first issue:

Gonna Buy Me A Dog is playing now. You know what's coming up, of course - Listen To The Band.
(And it's not even LJ)

art by Joe Orlando, articles from Teen Beat #1 and Teen Beam #2 (1967, 1968)

GAUKTV Solutions

Here's the solutions to yesterday's puzzles - hopefully all accurate.
I caught a couple of errors in the published answers and corrected them. (For example, one down below was listed as "ROUNDER" not "ROUNDS", which neither makes sense nor fits in the squares provided) 

 Hopefully, i didn't miss any others.

While i didn't correct the answer to #3 on this last one, i am calling BS on their answer.
A&B are equal length, and C&D are equal length. But A&B are not equal to C&D.
Somebody got confused.

puzzles from TV Action Holiday Special '73 and TV Comic Annual '68 (1968, 1973)

Post-Groovy Heroes

...and then they came...

As the Groovy Age wound down, society turned an eye inward to reflect upon what we learned, if anything, during this time of turmoil and growth. With all the radical changes, what was the new "normal" in our world?

We've seen before that Esquire will gaze upon the comic world upon occasion, even tapping great talents like Jack Kirby to create for them. So it's not a great surprise to find them looking at comics and superheroes, and calling upon some great talents to do so. Their suggested new heroes for the new era in this month of 1972 featured creations by (in order of published pages) Berni Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Mike Ploog, Barry (no Windsor yet) Smith, Ralph Reese, and Alan Lee Weiss. Each was given one page to present their options to fill the void left

...and so it went...

pages by Berni Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Mike Ploog, Barry Windsor Smith, Ralph Reese, and Alan Lee Weiss for Esquire (1972 Mar)

Friday Fun & Games - GA UK TV

Once again, it's time for

We haven't skipped across the pond for a bit, so let's return to the UK for a trio of puzzles from the Groovy Age today. These puzzles range from 1968 to 1972, so consider your answers accordingly.

Of course, the big puzzle here is how they managed to turn one of my favorite old shows into a movie so wretched that even John Woo wasn't able to drag me back into the series after that first abomination.
(We'll skip entirely past why anyone would watch Tom Cruise in pretty much anything other than South Park)

Yeah, feeling cranky this morning...

 solutions on Saturday, of course

The Bad Rocketeer

Sometimes artifacts from the Groovy Age were lost or hidden at the time, only surfacing at a later date. Today's strip is such a beast.

Paraman Vs. The Rocketeer didn't see print until 1978, several years after its creation and after Al Milgrom became a notable writer/artist/editor for Marvel, DC and Warren. (and probably others, too)

Of course, we're more used to The Rocketeer being a hero, not a villain, but this comic appeared 4 years before Dave Stevens gifted us with his amazing creation. (BTW - have you heard that Disney has both a sequel and an animated series for The Rocketeer in the works?)
Since Al was off in the deep end of his professional career, he never returned to Paraman to my knowledge, nor did Bill Whitcomb team with anyone else to continue the character. At least, not to my knowledge.
So here's Steve Vance inking Al's layouts for the only appearance of...

Paraman written by Bill Whitcomb, page art by Al Milgrom & Steve Vance for Visual Wonders #1 (1978)

Belated Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 13

My apologies, yet again.
Current constraints have kept me considerably more distracted than even my hermit usual, and here we are on Wednesday without yet providing your Monday calendar. This might be more forgivable if i wasn't withholding a lovely Gil Elvgren painting in the process.

This week's painting is actually a repainting, recreating an image from 3 years prior - Repainting Of A Perfect Pair from 1947 with a stop in '44 -

On the plus side for you, now i feel all guilty like and i'll wind up doing a feature on Gil Elvgren for repentance.

Repainting Of A Perfect Pair by Gil Elvgren (1944/1947)

Shazam! Up In The Sky!

It was 40 years ago at the American Nostalgia Convention in Dallas, in 1978? (Or was it '77 and i didn't see it reported until '78? I'm not entirely certain.)

I know in the main ballroom of the convention, the Public Address system suddenly erupted with "SHAZAM!" and Jackson Bostwick emerged in full costume. Back in the 70s, Bostwick was the man who brought Captain Marvel to life on TV. The crowd, of course, erupted at the surprise of having the costumed superhero suddenly appear.

Moments later, the PA sang out again - "Look! Up In The Sky! It's A Bird! It's A Plane!" and from the wings a fully costumed Kirk Alyn appeared - the first man to play Superman in the movies. The crowd at this non-comics convention were treated to a legendary comics encounter that has yet to be repeated (though that may soon change) - the meeting of Superman & Captain Marvel -

Somehow, this odd encounter has been forgotten, it seems, and lost to modern memory. But not, i'd wager, forgotten by those who were there for this legendary meet.

Kirk Alyn & Jackson  Bostwick getting their hero on at Dallas (1978)

Love In The Groovy Age

Still quite distracted, and looks like things will be keyed up for the next couple of weeks yet. Apologies for the erratic schedule on the postings, and it's going to be quite minimal today.

Just a quick observation: Love & lust could be pretty strange back in the ol' Groovy Age...

Swing With Scooter starts to take on a weird different meaning...

Stanley & His Monster cover by Bob Oksner & Tex Blaisdell, Swing With Scooter covers by Joe Orlando with Mike Esposito (#4) and Tex Blaisdell (#12) (1967, 1968)

California Love Tree

Last week we saw a couple of covers from California Comics in our Non-Verbal Blue post. in our adult content back room.(Images shown in full post linked below)

These beautiful covers by Ed Watson come from a title most never encountered. California Comics is another of those books published by a comic shop with limited distribution. These came from Bob Sidebottom's shop in San Jose which, i believe, was also named California Comics. He also published Barbarian Comics and Barbarian Women Comics. Ed did some pin-up work for them as well, some of which appeared in that same post linked above.

The subject featured on the two covers above is the wizard Love Tree, who also starred in strips by Ed in all 3 issues of California Comics. I'll bet you can guess where this is leading, hm?
To this week's edition of

Meet Love Tree in the full post in our Back Room.


While Ed Watson also provided the painted cover to the 3rd issue, it didn't feature Love Tree.
It was Pure California - 

There is an Ed Watson doing comic artwork these days, but i get the impression that he's too young to be the same Ed Watson.

artwork by Ed Watson for California Comics #s 1-3 (1974, 1975, 1977)

Groovy Grass

Okay. I promised more Grass Green and those early fanzine parody strips, and Sunday Funnies seems like a fair place to drop them. Seeing Roy Thomas's  Bestest League Of America comics inspired Grass and ignited his passion for comics.
So, only 3 issues after Bestest League wrapped up in Alter Ego, Da Frantic Four* appeared -

Not long after, over at Komix Illustrated...

It didn't stop after Grass turned pro, either. He got to draw his version of the Bestest League of America and have a Marvelous time, too, for Go-Go Comics -

Damn shame we lost Green just as the world was beginning to rediscover him in this century.

art by Grass Green from Alter Ego #6, Komix Ilustrated #13, and Go-Go Comics #6 (1963, 1965, 1967)

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*(Da Frantic Four was actually inspired by The Frantic Four, a single panel toon by Ronn Foss that ran in The Comicollector #8:

 )