Space Force Saturdays MARS COMPANY in "Winner"

In the early 1970s, DC experimented with pulp-style illustrated prose tales...

...in genre (sci-fi, horror, western, and romance) titles!

Written by Denny O'Neil, and rendered in retro 1950s Buck Rogers style...

...by Murphy Anderson, this never-reprinted text feature from DC's Strange Adventures #227 (1971) seems more a tribute to classic 1940s-50s "hard" sci-fi pulps instead of a then-current "new wave" science fiction tale!
Since it featured the last story about Earth's interplanetary fighting force, Mars Company, we felt it would be the perfect "capper" to the SpaceBusters saga, which Murphy re-conceived just before its' cancellation!

Murphy seemed to be DC's "go-to" guy when they needed retro-style material in the 1960s-70s!

He was the artist for Silver Age revival try-outs of Golden Age characters in Brave & Bold (Starman & Black Canary) and Showcase (Dr Fate & HourMan and The Spectre), as well as the first few issues of The Spectre's own Silver Age title!

Anderson was also the initial artist on DC's Bronze Age version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, as well as filing-in where needed on other Burroughs strips including Korak and Beyond the Farthest Star!

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Mysteries in Space

The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics

Frigid Friday Fun PLANET COMICS "Cosmo Corrigan: Exiled from Earth"

Like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many other handsome 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, qualifying him for running as part of our new Frigid Friday Fun feature!

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 over the next few Fridays!

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.)

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Planet Comics

Volume 3

Reprinting issues 9-12

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Invasion"

Here's a"lost" story you'd think was from one of Atlas/Marvel's early 1960s sci-fi titles...

...because it features a kool a pencil and ink job by Silver Age legend Don Heck!

But you'd be wrong!

Heck had an undeserved reputation as a hack artist, mostly due to poor inking by actual hacks like Vince Colletta, who was notorious for leaving out pencilers' linework to get the job done faster.

When Don had a good inker or inked himself, his work was on a par with any of the other acknowledged greats of the field.

But since he was almost as fast a penciler as Jack Kirby, publishers didn't utilize his inking talents as often as they could've.

This tale hasn't been seen since it appeared in the back of DC's Adventure Comics #424 (1972).

We're pleased to present it to an audience that was probably unaware of its' existence.

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Don Heck

A Work of Art

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder MYST "Passages"

One of the most popular video games of the 1990s was never played in an arcade...

...because it was conceived and designed, from the beginning, for use on then-new desktop home computers!

The puzzle-solving game was a phenomenon of the time, with the title (and sequels) becoming the best-selling computer game series until after The Sims debuted a decade later!

This never-told tale from Dark Horse's Myst #0 (1997) is the prequel to the comic book series which itself is a prequel to the events of the game...

Written by Chris Ulm and illustrated by Kirk Van Wormer, the tale expands on the backstory already presented in the game and associated novel, The Book of Atrius.

It lead into the mini-series Myst: The Book of the Black Ships...which was cancelled after only one issue due to creative differences between Dark Horse and the game's creators at Cyan, Inc.

But You'll See It Here...in March!

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MYST Reader

Omnibus of All Three Novels

Reading Room ASTONISHING "Unknown Ones!"

The story's title has a double meaning to graphic literature aficionados...

...since it also covers the fact this story hasn't been seen in color since 1957!

It was reprinted (in b/w) in Dark Horse's Al Williamson: Hidden Lands TPB (2004), but that OOP tome had a very limited print run.

Written by Carl Wessler, this Williamson-penciled and Roy Krenkel-inked tale from Atlas' Astonishing #57 (1957) was done after the horror comics purge of the mid-1950s reduced EC Comics to just MAD Magazine, and the majority of now-unemployed artists were scrambling around for work.

Besides Atlas, Williamson was freelancing for ACG and Harvey, doing full pencils and inks, inking others like Jack Kirby and Matt Baker, or, as in this case, penciling for others (usually fellow Fleagle Gang members*) to ink.

*The "Fleagles" were a group of artists including Williamson, Krenkel, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, and George Woodbridge who would help each other out on tight deadlines by doing a "jam" with individuals penciling and inking different pages and even different panels on a single page, producing some absolutely amazing visuals!

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Al Williamson

Hidden Lands

Monday Madness STRANGE TALES "Zzutak: the Thing That Shouldn't Exist!" Part 2

We Have Already Seen...

Sci-fi magazine cover artist Frank Johnson, desperate to top his previous efforts, tries out a set of "three-dimensional paints" offered by a mysterious sttanger, that cause whatever he draws to not only exist as a three-dimensional object...but also to come to life!

Accepting the paint set as a gift, he is suddenly-compelled to journey to a remote part of Mexico, where he paints his greatest monster of all, Zzutak, on a giant canvas!

But...why?

Now, all shall be revealed!

You'd think the colorist of the cover for Atlas' Strange Tales #88 (1961) didn't communicate with the colorist for the story itself, since he transposed the coloring for Zzutak and his unnamed adversary...

...except the two colorists were the same guy, Stan Goldberg!

I can only speculate the cover and interior were colored at two different times and, in the confusion, someone lost track of who was orange and who was green!

When the story was reprinted in Marvel's Fear #3 (1971), the unknown colorist got the second monster right, but still got Zzutak wrong!

 

When the story was reprinted in Germany, a new, painted cover got Zzutak's color right, though not all the details of his design/anatomy!

Poor Zzutak is postitively unreocognizable on his most recent reprint appearance in Marvel's Monster Menace #3 (1994), even though he's rendered by the guy who inked his story back in 1961...Steve Ditko!

(And he's portrayed correctly in the "character box" in the upper left corner of the cover!)

Zzutak was the cover-featured monster on #4 of Marvel's Monsters Unleashed (2017) with this superb Francesco Francavilla variant cover...

This mini-series featured a new character named Kid Kaiju aka Kei Kawade, an Inhuman who could control giant monsters he illustrates...including Zzutak!

Bur a decade earlier, Zzutak, Frank Johnson, and the Aztecs, returned in a never-reprinted adventure featuring a team of Marvel heroes!

You'll see that story next Monday!

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Monsters Unleashed
(the 2017 mini-series)