Five Star Creators at Yellow Springs

Every year, Yellow Springs, a small city in western Ohio, holds a book fair at Mills Lawn Elementary School. This year, Larry Blake and Terence Hanley went to the fair to sell their own books and used books from their collections. It was a return to his old stomping grounds for Larry. He had a good time catching up with old friends, and he even sold a few books. Terence sold some books, too, including a few copies of Five Star Comics to the local comic book store. The weather was great, more like a day in June than a day in August. The crowds weren't especially big. We can only hope that word of the fair gets around to book lovers in Dayton, Springfield, Cincinnati, and Columbus and that attendance is up next year.

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Five Star Creators at the River City Comic Con

This was the week for the second annual River City Comic Con, and Larry Blake and Terence Hanley were on hand to sell their books and original art. Jordan Lowe was there as well, and it's a good thing because he was the man in charge. Attendance was good and the convention hall was a big change over last year. Everyone remembers the sweltering heat at the fairgrounds in Marietta last year. Despite the weather, everyone stuck it out and had fun. This year's show took place across town in the ballroom of the Lafayette Hotel, right next to the Ohio River. There was a river boat out front at the start of the show. The boat was so big it looked like someone had laid a building sideways on the water--a reminder of days gone by and why Marietta is called the River City. There's plenty of foot traffic in Marietta on weekends. Some of those people must have found their way into the Lafayette Hotel and its room full of art, artists, and comic books because attendance was excellent (and so was the atmosphere). There was even a celebrity guest, Ian Petrella, who played Randy, the little brother, in The Christmas Story (1983). And guess what--he had a leg lamp with him!

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Robert Sodaro Reviews Five Star on The Comics Examiner

Writer and reviewer Robert Sodaro has reviewed Five Star Comics #1 on a website called The Examiner. Mr. Sodaro's title is "Comic Book Examiner," and you could fairly say that he has examined Five Star Comics in depth. Among his comments:

If you are looking for a modern-day comic that delivers a Golden Age feeling, then you’ll just need to get your hands on . . . 5 Star Comics. In a comicbook world populated by mainstream sameness and Indie Wannabes, 5 Star Comics is a delightful breath of fresh air. . . .

Each of the five stories evokes a feeling of classic comics that this reviewer hasn’t had in years. Everything from the style of art to the storytelling itself evokes such an amazing feel that you wonder why other creators cannot successfully emulate this style and return to simply creating good comics. . . .

All throughout the comic, the reader is treated to the pure delights of rapidly-told tales that hit the ground running and don’t waste a single panel or line of dialogue. Each story has something to say and does it in a fashion that makes the reading of it quite enjoyable indeed. So, if you are looking for a good read, then you’ll want to check out . . . 5 Star Comics, you’ll be glad you did (we certainly were).

That sounds like a comic book we would like to read! In any case, you can read Mr. Sodaro's review in its entirety by clicking here.

Original text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Convention News Roundup

June was a good month for comic book conventions and Five Star creators Larry Blake and Terence Hanley. On Saturday, June 9, 2012, Larry and Terence drove to Huntington, West Virginia, for the Tri-State Comic Con. Held in a cavernous arena, the Tri-State Comic Con is the first comic convention to be held in Huntington in almost thirty years. The gang in charge of the convention did a good job advertising and promoting the show. The turnout was great and West Virginians showed once again that they know their monsters! Terence sold plenty of Mothman coloring books and the first issue of Five Star Comics, which features not one but two Mothmen on the cover. The Tri-State Comic Con is a go for next year. It will take place on April 6, 2013, once again at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington. See the website here.

Terence made a return to the Derby City Comic Con to end the month. This was his second time at the Louisville show. It's a family-friendly convention and there were plenty of kids on hand. Terence sold Five Star Comics, Lucky Girl comics, coloring books, posters, and original art. He also met a man who had a first-hand encounter with something strange and unexplainable, just like the people depicted in Terence's coloring books. The Derby City Comic Con will also return next year. The date is June 29, 2013, the place is the Kentucky International Convention Center, and the website is here.

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Secret Origins

Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension!
Part 3

Science fiction arrived on the newspaper comics page in January 1929 with the debut of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., written by Philip Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins. Five years to the day after Buck Rogers awoke from his centuries-long nap, Flash Gordon, written and drawn by Alex Raymond, premiered on the Sunday comics page, halfway through what comic-strip historian Ron Goulart called "The Adventurous Decade." On the road between those two comic strip milestones, in August 1933, Brick Bradford made its debut. Guided by writer William Ritt and artist Clarence Gray (later by Paul Norris), Brick Bradford would last for more than half a century, thrilling and intriguing its readers with storylines that ran on for months or even years.

In 1935, Ritt and Gray introduced an ingenious plot device to their comic strip. Originally a the eponymous device in a Sunday strip topper, the marvelous machine known as The Time Top descended into the Brick Bradford comic strip, and the redheaded Kentuckian went whirling away into multiple dimensions of time and space. Flip Falcon's Fourth Dimension Machine sounds suspiciously like a swipe of the Time Top. That's only one bit of evidence that Flip was based on Brick. Here's the clincher: in his first three adventures, Flip Falcon was called Flick Falcon--Flick to rhyme with Brick, and suitably alliterative for the comics. Don Rico drew the first few Flick/Flip Falcon stories (the writer is unknown), but by issue number four of Fantastic Comics, Flick became Flip, and the character's origin was obscured. And why was the name changed? If you have ever hand lettered a comic book story, you'll know why.

Flip Falcon starred in twenty-one issues of Fantastic Comics, his adventures finally coming to an end in 1941. Brick Bradford, the character that inspired Flip's creation, carried on for nearly half a century, with the last Brick Bradford strip appearing in newspapers in May 1987. The Time Top survives, and you can see it for yourself by making the trip to downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. There you will find a bronze sculpture of the whirling wonder, created by Jerry Pethick. As for new adventures of Flip Falcon, do what your friends are doing and read Five Star Comics!

Brick Bradford by Ritt and Gray in a British comic book. That's The Time Top in the upper left corner and at the bottom center. Brick is on the center left with one of his girlfriends. The alien creature on the opposite side of the page looks a lot like Rapuzzi Johannis' "Little Green Man" from the late 1940s. "Adventures in time and space"--so says the subtitle. You could easily replace Brick Bradford's name with that of Flip Falcon, hero of the fourth dimension!

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Secret Origins

Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension!
Part 2

The secret origin of Flip Falcon continues . . .

Comic book writer and store owner Jordan Lowe wrote the first script for the comic book that would eventually become Five Star Comics. Jordan enlisted Gary Gibeaut, creator of The Guard Dawgs, as artist, and after many months of labor, Gary drew his Flip Falcon story to a close. By then, Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, Terence Hanley, and Matt Marshall were on board and the first issue of Five Star Comics was in the works. Our comic book made its debut at the Mothman Festival in 2011 and has since received great reviews.

So just who is this character Flip Falcon and where did he come from? As I said in Part 1, Flip Falcon was drawn by the artist Don Rico (1912-1985) for the first issue of Fantastic Comics, a title published by Fox Publications. Then in his late twenties, Rico had gotten his start as an artist by engraving woodblocks under the tutelage of Hendrik J. Glintenkamp. In 1939, Rico began working in comic books. His pencils and inks for the first Flip Falcon story must have been one of his earliest efforts in the new art form.

You wouldn't know it to look at the black-and-white version in Five Star Comics, but Flip Falcon was originally a redhead. Unlike Superman and hundreds of other superheroes, he didn't sport a fancy costume, just a white shirt, regular pants, and, as Gary Gibeaut says, "sensible shoes." The thing that set him apart was his fantastic Fourth Dimension Machine. Red hair . . . ordinary clothing . . . a super-science gadget . . . that sounds an awful lot like another character from the 1930s and '40s, a character who was very popular in his day but is seldom remembered now: William Ritt and Clarence Gray's Brick Bradford.

To be concluded . . .

Jordan Lowe's and Gary Gibeaut's "Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension" from Five Star Comics #1.

Flip Falcon script copyright 2012 Jordan Lowe.
Flip Falcon artwork copyright 2012 Gary Gibeaut
Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Secret Origins

Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension!
Part 1

Flip Falcon, traveler across time and space, is back after seven decades in suspended animation. Created by writer and artist Don Rico (1912-1985), Flip Falcon appeared in twenty-one issues of Fantastic Comics, from the first issue in December 1939 until the twenty-first issue in August 1941. Using his Fourth Dimension Machine, Flip traveled at will across the space-time continuum, frequently doing battle with a creature known as Chongo and his devilish Demi-Things, inhabitants of another, nightmarish dimension. Now Flip Falcon lives again in the pages of Five Star Comics #1. In an adventure scripted by Jordan Lowe and drawn by Gary Gibeaut, Flip once again goes up against the Demi-Things, aided by his girlfriend, the always able Adele, and defeats them with the help of one of the most powerful forces ever known: American popular music!

Like all the other protagonists in Five Star Comics #1, Flip Falcon is a superhero in the public domain. So what does that mean? Well, after Superman made his debut in 1938, comic book companies popped up everywhere attempting to cash in on the superhero craze. Soon newsstands were loaded with ten-cent epics full of superhero adventures. Unfortunately, after World War II, superheroes went into decline and so did a lot of comic book companies. Fortunately for us, those companies and their successors never renewed their copyrights or trademarks and so hundreds of characters and titles fell into the public domain. Today, anyone, anywhere can use public domain characters without permission and without paying a dime in royalties. That's where Five Star Comics began.

To be continued . . . 

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics