Space Hero Saturdays SPURS JACKSON & HIS SPACE VIGILANTES "Sun Masters"

Once more we return to the really weird pages of Space Western Comics...

...where both stagecoaches and spacecraft are accepted forms of transportation!

Written by Walter (The Shadow) Gibson and illustrated by Stan Campbell, this tale from Charlton's Space Western Comics #42 (1953) starts out relatively-accurate to the science of the era, but throws it all away at the conclusion!

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Space Western Comics
Cowboys vs Aliens, Commies, Dinosaurs, and Nazis
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Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Face on Mars"

The most famous story from Harvey's Race for the Moon anthology series...

...is this tale from #2 by writer/peniler Jack Kirby and inker Al Williamson which doesn't take place on the Moon...but on Mars!

Why is it so famous?

When NASA's Viking satellite reached Mars in 1976, it took this photo...

Keep in mind that this was the era of the Chariots of the Gods? fad, and to many, this pic was confirmation that aliens had either come thru the Solar System and stopped off not only on Earth, but Mars as well, or were from Mars initially!

And, there were those who remembered this little comic tale from their childhood.

The truth was a bit more mundane.
Click HERE for NASA's explanation.

To this day, there are still those who say it's a cover-up, that there is life on Mars, and that "the face" is a relic of their existence.

Judge for yourself.

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Mars in the Movies

A History
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Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "The World Awaits"

We know Steve Ditko as the co-creator of The Amazing Spider-Man...

...but he was equally-adept at visualizing insects as well as arachnids!
(Yes, there is a difference!)

This lovely Ditko-rendered story from Charlton's Out of This World #12 (1959) would really have benefited from some Stan Lee-esque scripting rather than Joe Gill's stilted prose, which renders the ending rather...dull.

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Creativity of Ditko
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Space Hero & Heroine Saturdays ASTONISHING "Menace from the Moon!"

Congratulation to the Artemis Crew for a Successful and Safe Trip to the Moon and Back!

But what if something had happened while they were on the Far Side, totally out of communication with Earth?

OK, this tale from Atlas' Astonishing #5 (1951), written by Hank Chapman and illustrated by Cal Massey is a tad silly.

They claim the ship was lost five years earlier, yet speculate the crew was still alive and coming home?
C'mon, even a kid in the 1950s would find that concept...well...DUMB!!!
(And that's being polite!)

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 
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Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Reservation to the Moon!"

Sometimes the heroic Space Mouse ventured into outer space to fight menaces...

...sometimes the menaces commuted to Earth!

And, sometimes, very rarely, there is no menace...just misunderstood alien visitors!

Writer/artist Frank Carin told this never-reprinted tale of misinterpreted Moon-people motives in Avon's Peter Rabbit #31 (1956)!

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Golden Treasury of
Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics
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Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE COMICS "Science Lore"

Who says comics ain't educational?

 

One and two-page featurettes, based on the science known at the time, offer fascinating insight into the mindset of the sci-fi/comics writers and what info they had to work with!

This never-reprinted, Pete Morisi-illustrated piece from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #3 (1954) is typical of the era, except for the fact all the spaceship designs, combining real and fictional vessels are from different eras!

Among them are a Mongo warship from the Flash Gordon comic strip, a ship from the movies Destination Moon and/or Conquest of Space, and what's described as a "WAC Corporal", but is rendered as a German V-2!

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3
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Lunar Reading Room & Theatre WALT DISNEY'S MAN INTO SPACE

Walt Disney Was a Major Supporter of America's Space Program...

...so much so that, even before Sputnik launched the Space Race, he devoted a number of episodes of his various TV series to then-infant American space program!

The original plan to send men to the Moon involved first creating a space station as shown above to serve as a launch platform for lunar-bound ships.

Obviously, that never occurred, but a lot of what was presented by Disney, based on info from such authorities as Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley, was to become fact years later!

Written by Don F Christensen and illustrated by Tony Sgroi, this section from Dell's Four Color Comics: Man into Space #716 (1956) adapts part of one of the first episodes of Magical World of Disney devoted to the then-infant Space Program, "Man and the Moon" scripted by William Bosche, John W. Dunn, and director Ward Kimball, which aired Dec 28, 1955.

And. because the servicable (but hardly spectactular) artwork above doesn't do justice to the concepts involved, here's the actual segment of the episode combining live-action, minature SFX, and animation in a tour-de-force only Disney could bring to TV at the time.
BTW, though it initially-aired in b/w, the episode was shot in color, because Disney knew color TV for the mass-market was only a few years away!
Reruns from the early 1960s onward were broadcast in color...
Trivia: the voice of the narrator is Dick Tufeld, best-known as the voice of The Robot on Lost in Space!

Note the "state of the art" technology used on the spacecraft.

In reality, the actual tech used in the Mercury and Gemini space programs was barely a few years ahead of this stuff!

It's a miracle they survived those flights!

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Walt Disney Treasures

TomorrowLand
Disney in Space and Beyond
Which contains all the kool 1950s Disney episodes about space travel, plus bonus features including an interview with Ray Bradbury about Walt Disney!
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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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