Space Hero Saturdays MEN INTO SPACE "Space Probe"

Just as the #Artemis Crew are Currently "Taking the Jalopy Out for a Test Drive"...

...the astronauts who will soon travel to the Moon in this amazingly-realistic TV series from the early days of the Space Race needed to see how their ship will handle in space and "work out the bugs" before heading all the way to a lunar landing!

Adapted by writer Gaylord DuBois and illustrator Murphy Anderson from the episode's screenplay by Arthur Weiss, you may note there are some differences between the comic and the episode as aired, as you'll see when you click HERE to open a new window to see the actual episode!
That's because, with the long lead-time to produce a comic (about 3 months from script and art to production to printing), DuBois and Anderson had to work from an early draft of the script!
Trivia: Angie Dickenson played Col. McCauley's wife Mary in this episode, but Joyce Taylor portrayed Mary in the other eight episodes the semi-regular character appeared in!

Note: We already re-presented the comic adaptation of the show's second episode, "Moon Landing" HERE and HERE at our brother RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, our usual locale for comic book/graphic novel adapatations of movies/TV shows/radio shows!

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Men Into Space

The Making of the TV Series

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Good Friday KING OF KINGS "Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday"

You may be wondering "Where's Parts 1 & 2?"...

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ

...and the answer is; we haven't run them yet!

Since it's Good Friday, we're presenting the Dell Comics adaptation of the final part of the 1961 movie, covering the period from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.

We'll run the first part around Christmas, and the second shortly after that.

While the writer for this movie adaptation from Dell's Four Color Comics King of Kings #1236 (1961) is unknown, the artist is Gerald McCann, a pulp artist who moved to comics in the early 1950s and did numerous Classics Illustrated covers and stories including "Abraham Lincoln" and "Ben-Hur".

Who says comics ain't educational?

Lunar Reading Room MEN INTO SPACE "Perils of Outer Space" and "What Is on the Moon?"

Before We Actually Launched People into Space...

...the newly-formed NASA was incredibly-concerned about "real-world" problems most sci-fi stories never addressed!

Both pages above written by Gaylord DuBois, illustrated by Murphy Anderson

When you look back on it, it's astonishing how much info we did have when the only tools we were utilizing were ground-based visual telescopes and spectrometers!

The only satellites we (or the Russkies) had at that point were just metal-hulled shells with radio transmitters and radiation detectors (like geiger counters)!

One thing the scientists were adamant about, even then, was first taking the vehicle that would orbit and land on the lunar surface and "field-test" the ship as much as possible before actually landing!

In fact, the surprisingly scientifically-accurate 1959 TV series Men into Space did exactly that in the series' premiere episode, "Space Probe", which was adapted into comic form...

We're running that tale in Space Hero Saturdays this coming Saturday!

Don't Miss It!

Note: We already re-presented the comic adaptation of the show's second episode, "Moon Landing" HERE and HERE at our brother RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, our usual locale for comic book/graphic novel adapatations of movies/TV shows/radio shows!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Men Into Space

The Making of the TV Series

Paid Link

Easter & April Fool's Day Reading Room SPEED BUGGY COMICS "Magic Easter Candy"

Here's a never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Speed Buggy #3 (1975)...

...a rather appropriate April Fools Day post during the Lent/Easter season!

Scripted by Mike Pellowski and illustrated by Alan James Hanley (not to be confused with the NYC comic book store owner), this was one of numerous one-off text features created to fulfill the second-class (magazine) privilege requirements for subscription copies when they didn't have a letters page or short story based on the specific comic's characters!

Lunar Reading Room CONTACT COMICS "Moon Express"

Before We Actually Put Anybody into Space...
...we had to figure out how we would get them out there!

The hopeful author of this feature from Aviation Press' Contact Comics #12 (1946) believed we'd have a rocket reaching the Moon by 1950!
(In fact, the first rocket, the Russian 'Luna 2', didn't reach the Moon until 1959.)

The writer also believed legendary science fiction writer/editor John W Campbell to be a "uranium expert"!
(Campbell did have a BA in Physics, and, as an editor, pushed his writers to be as scientifically-accurate as possible.)
This 80 year-old never-reprinted story should give you an idea of how the concept of reaching somewhere outside of our atmosphere has captivated humans for centuries, and returning there a half-century later can still grab our attention!