Tiger Boy By Gil Kane

Hey look, we've all gotta put food on the table...
Even Gil.

The Valley Of The Worm

One of Robert E. Howard's greatest one-off stories was actually adapted twice into comic form.
In 1975 John Jakes & Richard Corben opened up and expanded The Valley Of The Worm into the post-apocalyptic graphic novel Bloodstar, but Marvel got there a year earlier in this issue of Supernatural Thrillers.
Both versions are, of course, magnificent, so let's start with the short version, courtesy of Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Gil Kane & Ernie Chan.
Roy and Gerry, natch, absolutely catch the flavour of REH's prose and two-fisted poetry, and if I'd prefer, say, Dan Adkins sleeker inks over Gil's pencils, you can't deny Ernie adds a certain grittiness to the art.
Like a lot of REH's work, Valley Of The Worm works with the concept of ancestral memory and past lives, adding an extra edge to the tale, and James Allison / Niord is as doom laden as the best of his heroes. In fact, you can easily see Bran Mak Morn singing his death song before going into battle, as Niord the Aasgardian does here, not to mention sidekick Grom being an ancestor of Brule The Spear Slayer.

Adam Strange Adventures

Silver Age space hero Adam Strange had himself a little mini-renaissance in the early Bronze Age, when Strange Adventures briefly began reprinting his original stories from the early '60's, behind glitzy new covers from Neal Adams:

And Joe Kubert:

Much like John Carter, Adam is a great wish-fulfillment character. No tedious messing about with Gamma rays or radioactive spiders here; if you want adventure and excitement, all you have to do is figure out where and when the next Zeta-beam is going to pass over the Earth, stand in front of it, and hey presto, you're on the super scientific planet of Rann where alien beauty Alanna is waiting for you to save her world from alien invasion yet again.

Considering there is an alien invasion every single time Adam goes to Rann, and he's always sent home once he's thwarted it, never getting to enjoy the hem hem fruits of his labours, you'd think he'd get a bit cheesed off with the unfairness and arbitrariness of the Zeta-beam.

You might also think the good citizens of Rann might get a bit fed up with always being invaded themselves, and come up with some kind of planetary defence network, rather than wait for some random Earthman to appear every eight days and get them out of trouble.

Not a bit of it though, as here in a couple of new adventures at the time. In this Denny O' Neil, Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson piece, Adam is a bit more two-fisted and gung ho than he used to be, but then what's the point of getting Kane in and not having a fight scene or several?

The only other new piece at the time was this unusual illustrated prose piece from Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson, much more in keeping with Adam's usual Silver Age style, even if it is a puzzle why they went down the 'picture story' route.

Sword Of The Atom

How great was Sword Of The Atom? Well, even in an era of magnificent, groundbreaking mini-series' like Untold Legend Of The Batman, World Of Krypton & The Phantom Zone, it still stood out head and shoulders above everything else.
Hell, they even adapted the whole thing into an episode of Batman: The Brave & The Bold.

One of those reboots of a long established character that actually worked, it's both a free-wheeling fantasy and a surprisingly adult, grown-up series. Adult not in the Heavy Metal sense by the way.
The first issue takes a good long time to establish Ray Palmer's marital problems with wife Jean, and makes clear the fact that being married to a superhero might not actaully be as much fun as it first appears.
Then we're into said superhero action, before Ray / Atom gets stranded in the tiny kingdom of Morlaidh, and becomes an almost completely different character. His shrinking powers are irrelevant, him being stuck at the same size as everybody else, and at this point he's no longer the World's Smallest Hero, but actually John Carter Of Mars.

Longtime Richard Corben collaborator Jan Strnad's script is action packed and surprisingly complex, and you have one of the greatest fantasy artists in comics on hand to redesign The Atom's already great costume, and Gil's temples, cities, warriors, princesses and priests are a joy to behold.
Of course, it didn't last. After the 4 part series, and 3 sequel specials, The Atom was back in our world again, with his adventures in Morlaidh almost completely forgotten, but for a while it was a blast. Here's the first part.