Saturday, March 27, 2021

Space Force Saturdays SPACE SQUADRON & SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN "Famous Explorers of Space" Part 4

Both Atlas' Space Squadron and Speed Carter: SpaceMan had "future history" features...
...set in the "past", like this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Space Squadron #4 (1951), which took place in the then-future of 1965!
So the scientist let a guy with no depth perception fly his experimental ship?
He's lucky they didn't crash into anything!a
Let's look at how such "Future History" was told in Speed Carter...
Ah, the good ol' days of 2006, when a spaceport sat outside New York City...
...funny, I don't remember the skyline looking like that in 2007!
I guess I developed amnesia after I hit my head falling out of my flying car...
I'm wondering what Joe's gonna do when he runs out of cigarettes!
Nicotine withdrawal is rough enough on Earth.
But on Jupiter...without even nicotine gum...
This story from Speed Carter: SpaceMan #4 (1953) references previous Famous Explorers tales in its' first paragraph, mentioning the explorations of Venus, Mercury, and Mars.
Written by Hank Chapman, and illustrated by Joe Maneely, in his final Speed Carter interior art job.
Joe would later do the cover for #6, the final issue of the series.

Note: the astronauts in this story, which takes place three generations in the "past" of Speed Carter, have different uniforms and lower-end technology than what's shown in the Maneely-rendered Speed Carter tales.
But since Mike Sekowsky, who illustrated the rest of this issue, redesigned both the uniforms and tech in the "present-day" stories, that whole aspect now falls by the wayside for the remainder of the series' run.
Besides "Famous Explorers", Space Squadron also presented "future history tales" about the guy who was young hotshot Jet Dixon's crusty Commander-in-Chief when he was a young hotshot pilot...
While the writer for this never-reprinted tale (also from Atlas' Space Squadron #4 [1951]) is unknown, the artist is George Klein, who's best known as an amazingly-versatile inker, but could pencil (albeit slowly) as well!
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Thanx for posting!