Space Force Saturdays ROCKY JONES: SPACE RANGER "Space Infantry"

With the school year over and kids off to summer vacation...

...lets look at the never-revealed school days of the newest space hero in our line up, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger!

Sneaky little SoB, ain't he?

Wonder if he had a classmate named James Tiberius Kirk?
BTW, the character's Space Academy days were never shown on TV.
The series, set in 2054, started with him already an officer!

Scripter of this never-reprinted, totally-original tale from Charlton's Space Adventures #15 (1955) is unknown, but the art is by Ted Galindo, a journeyman artist who did work for Charlton, Prize, and Gold Key from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s.

Oddly, Charlton didn't give Rocky Jones his own title, as most publishers did with licensed characters, but inserted him into the already-established Space Adventures comic for four issues (and gave him the cover each issue).

The tv series itself was a weekly filmed series, not a live videotaped daily series like Captain Video or Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, giving it a slightly "slicker" look (and better special effects) than most of the competitors.

It was syndicated, and ran for 39 episodes over two seasons.

All of the eps are three-part stories and were re-edited into feature-length films which were released to syndication in the 1960s, after the series had ended its' run.

Almost all are available on DVD and two of them, Crash of the Moons and Manhunt in Space, were roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Rocky Jones will return in the near future...

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Rocky Jones: Space Ranger Collection

Featuring Six Three-Episode Compilation Movies

(That's almost half the TV series in one set!)

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Friday Fun FROM HERE TO INSANITY "Build It Yourself"

In the pre-Ikea era, assembling/building your own furniture successfully was a rarity...

...as writer/artist Jack Kirby points out!

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's From Here to Insanity V1N11 (1955) spoofs the do-it-yourself mania that spread across post-war America thanks to magazines like Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated.

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Sincerest Form of Parody
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Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Beware the Future!"

Does a never-reprinted tale from the 1950s offer a clue as to how Don (the Con) Trump became President?

And can it happen...again?

Judge for yourself...

This Stan Lee-plotted, Larry Lieber-scripted, Al Williamson-illustrated tale from Atlas' World of Fantasy #16 (1959) points out a uniquely-human foible...if we "know" things will be OK, we don't see the need to take action ourselves to make sure they do turn out OK...and things can go horribly-wrong as a result!

In 2016, many Bernie Saunders supporters, POed because Bernie wasn't nominated as the Democratic candidate figured they'd protest by staying home and not voting in the general election, believing there were still enough Dems and intelligent Repugs and Independents voting to assure Trump wouldn't get into the White House!

Didn't quite work out, did it?

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Al Williamson Adventures

Let's Play Ball! MYSTICAL TALES "On a Lonely Planet"

Can playing a sport unite alien cultures?

This never-reprinted story from Atlas' Mystical Tales #1 (1956) suggests an answer...

OK, it's an ethnocentric (species-centric?) conceit that the aliens were playing something even remotely like baseball, but illustrator Bill Everett and the unknown writer still manage to "sell" it for four pages.

BTW, despite the title, Mystical Tales was an almost-totally "hard sci-fi" anthology!

Only a handful of stories from the anthology's 8-issue run have been reprinted...all in the 1970s...which makes even the reprints almost a half-century old!

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Atlas Era Tales of Suspense

Volume 1

Friday Fun AMAZING WILLIE MAYS "Diamond Doings" "Splinters" "Balls and Strikes"

Besides tales about the title person, the Amazing Willie Mays one-shot comic we ran yesterday...

...featured humorous one-page "fillers" about (what else) baseball!

Note that every page has at least one Black ballplayer in a cartoon, a rarity in the 1940s-50s unless the illustration focused on a specific Black sports figure!

BTW, "ballhawk" is outdated slang for an expert fielder!
Who says comics ain't educational???

Reading Room AMAZING WILLIE MAYS Willie Mays (1931-2024)

I'll leave the eulogies for the legendary Willie Mays (1931-2024) to those better-equipped to present them.

What I will do is present a couple of tales from a comic published 70 years ago, when he was just beginning his major league career...but, even then, was considered one of the greats of the game!

Eastern Color's 1954 one-shot Amazing Willie Mays heralded a baseball player with, at that point, only two years in the majors!
Mind you, he had won Rookie of the Year in 1951.
But in 1952, Mays was drafted and served two years in the Army, returning to pro baseball in 1954!

BTW, we don't know if the following is actually Willie's "favorite story" or not!

Here's a bonus feature, supposedly using quotes from Willie himself...

Sadly, the comic doesn't list credits for the writers or artists, and Eastern Color has been out of business for decades, so the creatives behind these tales are unknown.

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Say Hey
Autobiography of Willie Mays
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Monday Madness AMAZING ADVENTURES "Cosmic Comics"

Ziff-Davis' 1950s sci-fi anthology Amazing Adventures...

...ran interesting "filler" pages including these humor strips by Harry Sahle from the first two issues.

Note the one above, from the inside back cover of #2, is b/w.

But the one above, from issue #1, while also an inside cover, is two-color!

Perhaps there were budget cuts between the printing of the two issues!
Sadly, these were the only two Cosmic Comic strips to run in any Ziff-Davis comics!

Reading Room STRANGE WORLDS "End of His Service!"

Though Isaac Asimov had introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in 1942...

...obviously the unknown scripter of this never-reprinted tale from Avon's Strange Worlds #5 (1951) never read the story,or chose to disregard the concept!

No less than three illustrators contributed to this story.

Norman Nodell did the bulk of the art, and inked the others' pages.
Those others were John Rosenberger on Page 3 and Werner Roth on Page 4.

The reason for the artist round-robin is unknown, though it was likely a tight deadline.

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Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES "Deal to Die"

Here's a never-reprinted short tale with a Twilight Zone-style ending...

...from the final issue of Ziff-Davis' sci-fi anthology Amazing Adventures!

I wonder if Zoro's husband, Space Captain Ventra was as big a SoB as Bernice's spouse Harold Leighton!

Illustrated by the relatively-unknown Lawrence (Louis) Dresser, this story from Amazing Adventures #6 (1952) has no credited writer.

Too bad, because it's a memorable piece for a shorter-than-usual filler.
Trivia: There have been four different comic series entitled Amazing Adventures!
This 1950-51 six-issue book, from Ziff-Davis was the first.
The other three 1960-61 (scifi/fantasy anthology), 1970-76 (featuring ongoing series The Inhumans and Black Widow (ten issues), The Beast (seven issues), and War of the Worlds/Killraven (twenty-one issues), and 1979-81, X-Men reprints (fourteen issues), were all published by Atlas/Marvel.

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