The Sandman Saves Christmas

A campy good time awaits in this rare Kirby Christmas story!

Unusual Heroes: Dell's Dracula

Dell's Monster turned Superhero gimmick is campy fun.

Horror-Mood: On A Pale Horse

How would you like to have the Grim Reaper's job? Zane finds out!

Mystifying Marvels: Krull #1-2 (1983)

A forgotten 80's Sci-fi movie and it's forgotten comic adaptation!

DC Diversions: EKKO

Dr. Hawks dons the Ekko suit as murderballs and mayhem await!

Spotlight: Gene Day's Black Zeppelin

A plethora of hidden gems await in Day's dream anthology.

Unusual Heroes: Captain Zilog! #1

Ride the rails of insanely outdated computing technology with Captain Zilog!

Rockin' Bones #1

Monsters, Aliens and Punk Rockers...oh my!

Goin' Underground: Monolith

A couple of Larry's turn out an underrated comix gem.

Cult Classic Comics: Freakwave!

Get your Fog-Mask on, it's time to ride the Freakwave!

The Phenom of Phase

Fanzines never had this much firepower!

The Skull Killer

Pulp Fiction + Underground Comix = Classic

Saga of the Victims

70's exploitation at it's best.

The L.I.F.E. Brigade

Cheesy characters flourish within an underground art style.

Light Comitragies

A strange relic from the psychedelic era.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Spotlight: Gene Day's Black Zeppelin, Part One


Gene Day was one of those rare creative minds where if you blinked...you missed him. Getting his start in Canadian fanzines and Skywald magazines such as Psycho and Nightmare, Day eventually moved into his dream job -- working for Marvel primarily as an inker for Master of Kung Fu, Star Wars and many more.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Hidden Gems: Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz's Godhood Continuum


Hidden Gems is another new feature which will focus on rare work and appearances by popular writers and artists in obscure or lesser known publications.

Cravin' Kirby: The U.F.O.


This is the first of a few new features planned for OTBP. Cravin' Kirby will be a weekly examination of Jack Kirby's fantastic artwork, from panels and splash pages, to concepts and interesting "King Kirby" stories.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Unusual Heroes: Captain Zilog! #1 (Zilog, 1979)


It's time for another Unusual Hero, so let me introduce you to Captain Zilog, who became the face of Zilog Inc., the microcontroller manufacturing company. It was 1979, and Zilog had just released the Z8000, a 16-bit microprocessor for computers, and wanted to come up with an eye-popping brochure for their latest product at the upcoming Wescon conference.

And from the looks of things, they found the right guys to make it. Lou Brooks wrote and designed the idea, while the legendary Joe Kubert provided the pencils, and by adding a rich amount of four-color brightness Captain Zilog was born.

The first part of the comic details the origin of Captain Zilog as we watch programmer Nick Stacey get eaten by a glowing CRT screen, where he is given a microprocessor which shall be the "beginning of a new freedom for man's imagination!"


Before we know it, Cityville is invaded by a giant spaceship inhabited by the diabolical Dr. Diabolicus, who warns the citizens that he is now the SUPREME MASTER! Nick finds a restroom to turn into Captain Zilog and the battle begins.


The Cap uses his innate knowledge of microprocessing power to trick Dr. Diabolicus into faster, more lethal moves!


It's very strange reading about the kind of technology we had way back in 1979. To see 8 megabytes of computing power as the godsend back then is a thing to behold. I mean, take a look at some of this tech!


The second part of the story focuses on Dr. Diablolicus' plans for revenge. He decides to use his miniturization process to shrink down to microscopic size, allowing him to infiltrate Captain Zilog's computer! But as you are about to see, the Z8000 is one computer not to mess with!


The Zilog Z8000 CPU went on to become one of the first true multi-user systems that could share resources before networking became common, but was soon overshadowed by Intel brand microprocessors in the early 80's.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Science Addiction: Alpha and Omega (Spire Christian Comics, 1978)


It's been awhile since I've posted a Spire Christian Comic (the last being In His Steps), so how about we take a look at possibly the coolest Christian comic ever conceived by Spire and Al Hartley? That comic would be Alpha and Omega, a sci-fi take on Adam and Eve from the Book of Genesis.