Monday, August 23, 2021

Monday Mars Madness CAPTAIN ROCKET "Meets the Mind Stealers"

Welcome to a story about Martians...
...who weren't Martians!
There were three never-reprinted Captain Rocket stories in his one and only issue from the short-lived PL Publishing, but only two were comics!
The third was a text feature!
The cover (which omits Cap's rather dorky helmet in favor of a kool transparent one) and this text feature from PL's Captain Rocket #1 (1951) were written and illustrated by Harry Harrison, who later gave up illustrating and became a major sci-fi/fantasy writer (including the novel Make Room! Make Room! which was the basis for Soylent Green!
And here's a weird note: Though this tale involves Saturnians, the little vignette in the upper left of the cover warns us..."We must prepare for an invasion from MARS!"
Since there are no Martians in either of the comic stories, was the tiny Cap head shot referring to the aliens in the text feature, who might have been written as Martians, but changed by the editor into Saturnians (perhaps because he felt Martians were too much of a cliche)?
Or was there another, unpublished, Captain Rocket tale that got bounced into the never-printed second issue?
The answers are lost in the mists of time...

BTW, the headlined cover feature "Man Who Wanted a World" wasn't even a Captain Rocket tale!
It was the debut (and only) appearance of space heroine Aurora of Jupiter!

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Thanx for posting!