Space Hero Saturdays AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE "Invisible Monsters of Callisto"

With a title like that, you know you're in for space-going excitement...

...starring the greatest sci-fi/fantasy movie serial hero of all...Larry (Buster) Crabbe!

Penciled by Alex (Space Ghost) Toth and inked by Mike Peppe, this never-reprinted tale from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #3 (1953) delivered on the promise on every cover of the series which promised tales of Space, Jungle, and Western action in every issue...the three movie genres Buster appeared in from the 1930s to the 1950s!
(If he ever did a musical or comedy, nobody told me!)
Note: the comic writers and artists always showed Crabbe as "Buster Crabbe", not Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Billy the Kid, Tarzan, or any of the characters he portrayed, while postulating he could do anything in real-life that he was shown doing on-screen!

There's even more alien butt-kicking four-color action with the greatest movie action hero of the 1940s-50s to come!
Watch for it!

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Thrilling Fantasy Tales

Reading Room ANYTHING GOES "Heroes"

Sometimes you come across a beautiful piece that speaks for itself...

...such as this never-reprinted Alex Toth piece from Fantagraphics' "benefit book" Anything Goes! #1 (1986)

Exactly what Anything Goes was can be discovered HERE.

Several such "benefit books" (and "benefit portfolios") were produced in the 1980s, including Eclipse's Destroyer Duck (to aid Steve Gerber in his Howard the Duck lawsuit against Marvel), and Last Gasp's Strip AIDS U.S.A. (benefiting the Shanti Project, an AIDS education and support organization!)

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Strip AIDS U.S.A.

Cover Gallery FANTASTIC WORLDS and LOST WORLDS

They ran for a combined total of only five issues...

Art by Alex Toth

...but Standard's short-lived sci-fi anthologies Fantastic Worlds and Lost Worlds had some first-rate talent both on the covers and inside them!

Art by John Celardo

Plus, all five covers had something in common quite unique in publishing...

...none of the covers had anything to do with any of the interior stories!

Art by Alex Toth & Mike Peppe

Despite the captions, which did mention titles from stories inside the books...

Art by Mike Sekowsky & John Celardo

...the art didn't depict anything even close to what was in the tales!

But they sure look kool, don't they?

Space Hero Saturdays AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BUSTER CRABBE "Dark of the Moon"

He was Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Thun'da!

(And he would've been a helluva Doc Savage, if they had done a feature or serial in the 1940s!)

He was Larry "Buster" Crabbe, the first (and many say, the greatest) cinema action hero.

A two-time Olympian (with a swimming gold medal to his credit), Buster didn't even have to audition for Flash Gordon. (He came to support a friend who was auditioning, and the director, who had seen Crabbe's earlier work as Tarzan offered him the role on the spot!)

Art by Alex Toth

Like many other action-movie actors of the 1930s-1950s, Crabbe had his own comic book where he's shown as Buster Crabbe, not "Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon" or somesuch in the tale, and it's assumed that he's actually able to do anything he's been shown doing in his films.

Unlike most of the other matinee idols, Crabbe's comic adventures covered a variety of genres from Western to sci-fi, and even some cross-genre mashups.

(The others, except for John Wayne, were purely Western-themed series.

Wayne, because of his extensive war film work also had Korean War and present-day adventure comic stories in his comic series.)

Though the writer for this wild, never-reprinted tale from Lev Gleason's Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe #2 (1954) is unknown, the artists are Alex Toth (pencils), Mike Peppe (inks) and John Celardo (retouching on Buster's face in several panels).

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Thrilling Fantasy Tales

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Outlaws of Space"

Some say space operas are just Westerns with rayguns instead of six-shooters...

...and here's a story that plays with those cliches, even down to the characters mentioning the parallels!

While we don't know who wrote this never-reprinted story from Standard's short-lived sci-fi anthology Lost Worlds #6 (1952), the art is by Alex Toth (pencils) and Al Rubano (inks).

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Setting the Standard

Comics by Alex Toth: 1952-1954

Reading Room ADVENTURE COMICS "Wings of Jealous Gods"

In 1972, Supergirl moved from Adventure Comics into her own title...

...and DC decided to restore Adventure to its' original anthology format.

The first issue (425) featured the kool Mike Kaluta cover seen above, along with a never-reprinted, high-adventure story illustrated by a Golden Age pro who had moved to the animation field, but still kept in touch with his comic book roots...

Alex Toth made a brief return to DC in 1972-73, doing stories for several titles, including Adventure (where he did a two-part Black Canary back-up tale several issues earlier), Detective, and Our Fighting Forces.

Toth would do one more tale for Adventure Comics during this period; "Is a Snerl Human?", which we presented HERE.

(If you want to see all the Alex Toth stories we've presented, click HERE.)

Lynn Marron scripted several tales for DC and Warren in the early 1970s before disappearing from comics...but not from writing!

She's the author of several ongoing mystery and fantasy series available as e-books or print-on-demand editions on Amazon.

Check out her website HERE.

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Treasures Retold

Lost Art of Alex Toth

Reading Room COSMIC BOOK "UFO and the Perts vs Experts"

Feeling just a wee bit paranoid?

Feel like the world just doesn't make any sense at all?

Well, you ain't alone, kiddo!

While it's been reprinted several times, this version from Wandering Star Press' Cosmic Book #1 (1986) is the only time it's been presented in color!

The Cosmic Book was a personal obsession for Pat Boyette who packaged it (as well as doing the covers and a couple of tales inside), then shopped it around to numerous publishers until Ace Comics agreed to co-publish it.

Though there were rumors of a second issue, it never appeared.

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Cosmic Book