This is a great collection of an unfortunately neglected example of the post-Zap explosion of underground comics - this features work by many stalwarts of the Zap! crew (Crumb, Robt. Williams, Spain Rodriguez, and S. Clay Wilson alongside Tim Boxell), as well as a slew of fine-but-forgotten artists and writers.

The wild, WILD West! Spurs Jackson and his Space Vigilantes bravely defended the frontier against Martians, Venusian spies, Meteor Men, moon bats, and of course, Hitler and his space Nazis. Oh, and dinosaurs! With stories by Walter Gibson, famed creator/writer of The Shadow pulps, and art by John Belfi, Stan Campbell, and Lou Morales, Space Western Comics were one of the weirdest, most fun comics series of the '50s and are collected and restored here, including a "lost" story! Profusely illustrated intro by Eisner-award winning comics historian Craig Yoe. To Arizona . . . and beyond!

With the queasy U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance long dissolved into mutual suspicion, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched aggressive investigations of alleged communist activity in the Hollywood film industry in 1947--and again in 1951. Studio chiefs, terrified of scandal, scrambled to display their patriotism by producing anti-communist films, from melodramas to thrillers to animated cartoons. Twenty-one lively new essays by film historians examine the aesthetics and politics of more than 40 remarkable films of the McCarthy era and the chauvinism that spawned them.

Mars has long served as a blank canvas for illustrating society's aspirations and anxieties--a science fiction setting for exploring our "future history." Covering a wide array of films from Soviet propaganda to Hollywood blockbusters, the authors examine a range of themes and concepts in motion pictures about Mars--attitudes about women, fear of government, environmental issues--and how these depictions changed over time. A complete filmography provides a concise summary of each film discussed.

"Red Scared! offers valuable lessons from the vault on how to identify Communists, media reports on the jolly side of Stalin, guidelines for bomb shelter chic, and much more. As they did in their other lively pop-culture histories, Teenage Confidential and Wedding Bell Blues, Michael Barson and Steven Heller once again bring the nearly forgotten details of American culture into full relief with Red Scared!"--BOOK JACKET.

Television journalist Lech Hammond flies out to Mars to investigate rumors of a Soviet discovery of an alien artifact, but discovers that the Mars-based KGB is not talking.

One of the world's most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital-and post-9/11-age. This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like Andr Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema's most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Jia Zhangke to WALL-E, Avatar and Inception.

Not long after the Allied victories in Europe and Japan, America's attention turned from world war to cold war. The perceived threat of communism had a definite and significant impact on all levels of American popular culture, from government propaganda films like Red Nightmare in Time magazine to Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This work examines representations of anti-communist sentiment in American popular culture from the early fifties through the mid-sixties. The discussion covers television programs, films, novels, journalism, maps, memoirs, and other works that presented anti-communist ideology to millions of Americans and influenced their thinking about these controversial issues. It also points out the different strands of anti-communist rhetoric, such as liberal and countersubversive ones, that dominated popular culture in different media, and tells a much more complicated story about producers' and consumers' ideas about communism through close study of the cultural artifacts of the Cold War. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, thats for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate powerplays, a generous dollop of seduction¾both in and out of the boardroom¾and money, money, money! Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a _clubÓ or billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. But these are men and women who are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line, and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody elses dreams come true. But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regarhes a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. But its going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage¾and get a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet. The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to humans on Mars¾or die trying! At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Mars, Inc.: _. . .perfectly enjoyable as an SF book (could Bova write anything that wasnt enjoyable?), Mars, Inc. has that torn-from-the-headline vibe thats obviously intended for a larger audience. . . . the bottom line? Mars, Inc. has inspiration, excitement, thrills, romance, a dash of satir¾and is a good, fun read . . . .Ó¾Analog "The Hugo winner returns to his most popular subject: the quest for Mars."¾Publishers Weekly

Looks at a wide variety of popular American fiction genres, including comic books, mystery novels, historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction, and westerns.