Like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many other space heroes...
...Cosmo Corrigan had a weird first name.
Unlike them, he was a bit of a screw-up and wise-ass...
...so he was sent to the Solar System's equivalent of Siberia...the frozen planet Pluto, thereby qualifying his strip for inclusion during our week of Polar Vortex-related posts!
Planet Comics was noted for its...well...lack of scientific accuracy, being much more "science fantasy" than hard science fiction (which at least tried to apply known scientific facts to the storytelling).
But this series seems almost like a space opera sit-com, featuring a slacker as the hero!
Sadly, it only ran for three installments...which you'll see tomorrow and Saturday!
Illustrated by George Tuska (who would handle the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in the 1950s, as well as become Iron Man's illustrator when he received his own book in the 1960s) the scripter for this tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #9 (1940) is, regrettably, unknown.
("Ray Alexander" was a Fiction House pseudonom.)
Anybody still alive here?...
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I delved into the Planet and Exciting Comics series. My first impression was 'amateurist'. But the drawings are, for early 1940s, actually quite decent.
The stories are very simplistic, every episiode rushes to an end. 4 or 6 pages poer story. But most striking was the naïvity. Every planet in the solar system has an Earth like gravity, and an oxygen atmosphere. Later I thought: the artist more or or less invented "planetscaping"! In this age: the 21st century, NASA is brooding seriously on it: planet-scaping Mars. Wow!
What also struck me, is the guys and gals who visit the planets in our solar system are very sparsely clad. All our planets and moons must be sub-tropical!
So it was hilarious to discover Flash Gordoplanes on Pluto...with nothing on but skates, and a pair of shorts.
Now Flash Gordon once went skiing on the planet Mongo in bare chest, but he, and Queen Freya (in bikini) had themselves covered in what looks like a cellophane suit.
Not for Corrigan! He likes the extreme subzero qwinds on the dwarf planet against his body.
The shorts and bare chests are all over Planet & Exciting Comics comics. Very futuristic!
And to be honest; I find it quite sexy....
The comic world of the 1940 is amazing. And also, unintentionally, very gay....
It inspired me to write a scifi story in a solar system where all laws of physics are turned upside down, (due to the sudden Great Shrink) and everything is possible. The result is hilarious. Nude surfing (a la the Silver Surfer), while space helmets and oxygen tanks in the Vacuum are no longer necessary.
Unfortunately I can't post a link; it's in Dutch. But the whole novella is roughly based on that Cosmic Corrigan openingspage- him skating on Pluto. (And after that he visits the - lol - King of Pluto who has a job for him, and the king, while not bare chested, wears short shorts too. Lol.)
Thanks for posting about this piece of 1940s nostalgia. You are not the only one, but blog posts with this subject are not easy to find. Keep the great vintage stuff alive!