Reading Room UNEARTHLY SPECTACULARS "Saucerer"

The 1960s were a weird period in comics (and pop culture in general)...

...as this camp-fest from the "Swinging Sixties" amply demonstrates!

BTW, could you guess that the creators were both middle-aged guys whose exposure to "rock-n-roll" was through their kids (more likely, their grand-kids)?

Yep!

Written by long-time sci-fi and comics author Otto Binder (born 1911), and illustrated by Golden and Silver Age artist Carl Pfeufer (born 1910), this never-reprinted two-pager appeared in the back of Harvey's Unearthly Spectaculars #3 (1967)!.

In point of fact, most Silver Age creators were 40 (or over)!

In comparison, today's comic creators are mostly in their 20s and early 30s...and judging from their output, I'm wondering if that's such a good thing...

Monday Mars Madness MAN FROM S.R.A.M. "Madhouse in Hollywood!"

In the Silver Age, comics mixed genres with wild abandon...

...as this tale, which combines no less than three of them demonstrates, albeit a bit ham-handedly!

When the protaganist has to spend half the story explaining his name, you know the writer's really desperate.

Which is surprising since the guy who penned this tale is Otto Binder, a prolific sci-fi writer who not only scripted classic Superman and Golden Age Captain Marvel stories (including The Monster Society of Evil serial!), but also wrote the first Marvel Comics novel, The Avengers Versus the Earth-Wrecker!

But this never-reprinted, Carl Pfeufer-illustrated tale from Harvey's Jigsaw #2 (1966) is so incredibly-silly that it's surprising Binder was so over-the-top!

Personally, I suspect editor Joe Simon rewrote the story, inserting the SRAM = MARS explanation on practically every page.

Note: Though identified as "Jigsaw" in the indicia, the book's working title was apparently "Big Hero Adventures", which appears as a sub-title on both issues' covers and title pages as well as on the original art for the first issue.

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Campy Comic Books, Crimefighters, and Culture of the Swinging Sixties