Philip Athans > Recent Status Updates

Kind of a jarring change starting with issue number 34 when the covers were taken over by Joe Kubert. This issue also marks the entrance of Gerry Conway as editor. Creeping up to the end of Jack Kirby's time at DC.

“Death Pours a Toast” by Robert C. Blackmon opens with:

“Tonight, my dear friends, ends our Last Man Club—with me the last man!”

If you're thinking maybe you already know the ending… yeah, you probably do!

People made mistakes and the computer would repeat them.
—Doris Piserchia, Mister Justice, 1973

I feel like I need to stop taking little bites out of this book and spend a few hours just devouring.

"jack the Ripper" was terribly creepy, but is the title a spoiler…?

We’ll have to talk about COINCIDENCE as a storytelling tool… and as a storytelling crutch… but damn is this a fun ride!

from: The Razor of Gaston Dubrois by Charles Green:

I knew I had to break that cramp—or die!

From the first chapter of Mister Justice:
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Dec. 12, 2034, a New York court: The trial of the five hippies was completed; the verdict was guilty.
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Good to know hippies will be back in only nine years, even if they're murder-hippies.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a short but deeply unsettling story.

"I Am THE WOLF" was SF legend Henry Kuttner's ninth of twelve short stories to see publication in 1937, which shows what a solid pro could churn out back in the days of ready markets for genre fiction.

This was impossible—impossible, unless one granted the reality of ghastly legends of another age!

This fun werewolf story seems to have been written to what I'm easily sensing was Thrilling Mystery's house formula.

“When the Black Fiend Fed” by Hal K. Wells was another fun read, though it was rather overtly formulaic in its rushed, “telly” set up and inevitable Scooby Doo ending. Entertaining, for sure, but not a great example of the short story form.

Kamandi meets Jaws!

“The Story We Used to Tell” felt rushed and incomplete, as though it was more an idea for a novel than a fully realized story.

This stuff is crazy--got to the issue that riffs on The Exorcist. Kirby is grabbing stuff out of the pop culture and news of the time and making it nuts as hell.

In a modern world, neither superstition nor tragedy can for long delay the march of progress.

So ends George E. Clark’s “Holocaust of Hell.”

Only the mighty Lester Dent could write this massively over written a sentence:

They would sleep thus until the administration of a chemical which was capable of reviving them from the thing which had made them unconscious.

Every single sentence is a unique surprise.