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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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!

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Men Into Space

The Making of the TV Series

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Space Hero Saturdays CAPTAIN SCIENCE "Traitors to the Earth"

It's only his second story, and already Captain Science has his hands full...

...any way you look at it, it's a helluva way to begin your career!

Cap destroyed a threat by humans (including Adolf Hitler) using alien tech and picked up a hot babe in the process!
Not bad for the first day on the job.

Note, though it's only mentioned in a caption, it takes Gordon Dane months to prepare for his new career (though it's never explained how a guy on a teacher's salary can afford to cobble together the equipment he needs)...
The art on this never-reprinted story from Youthful's Captain Science #1 (1950)  is by Gustav Schrotter.
The writer is unknown.

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3
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Reading Room WORLDS BEYOND "Twice Alive!"

Here's a horror story with a sci-fi slant...

Art by Sheldon Moldoff

...that the cover doesn't really convey, from the HTF anthology Fawcett's Worlds Beyond #1 (1951).

Did the writers of the movie Fantastic Voyage read this tale when they were younger?

The art is by comics legend Bob Powell, but the writer is unknown.

The cover, by Sheldon Moldoff, shows a cavern (with bats!) instead of the inside of a human being, and probably was meant for another story, but it conveys the mood of "Twice Alive", if not the plot points.

Worlds Beyond was retitled Worlds of Fear with #2 and ran for another nine issues.

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Horror Comics
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Reading Room UNUSUAL TALES "Look into the Future"

One of Charlton Comics' defining traits was...

...using montages of interior art as their covers.

Usually, the cover would utilize several different stories' art, but in this case, they played up the final story in the issue!

A morality play in a sci-fi/fantasy context.

Rod Serling was a master of this concept, as he displayed weekly on the original Twilight Zone.
This never-reprinted story from Charlton's Unusual Tales #27 (1961) illustrated by Steve Ditko (and probably written by Charlton mainstay Joe Gill) follows the concept to a "T", within the limitations established by the Comics Code Authority.
If it had been done pre-Code, Simms would've come to a horrific (and graphic) end...