Space Hero Saturdays PLANET COMICS "Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol in 'I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!' "

This strip started out as a typical Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...

...but when eccentric (to put it mildly) writer/artist Fletcher Hanks took over as of Buzz's second appearance in Fiction House's Planet Comics #7 (1940)...well, let the apocalyptic craziness begin!

Just another Tuesday for Buzz Crandall, who, despite the "Space Patrol" in the title, seems to run a two-person operation with only his girlfriend to aid him!

Like the tales of Fletcher's other Space Hero, Fantastic Comics' Space Smith, these stories played with the fact that there werem't any "rules" to follow and took the concept of "anything goes" to dizzying levels!

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I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!

by

Fletcher Hanks

Space...Hero??? Saturdays PLANET COMICS Cosmo Corrigan & Norge Benson

With North America currently caught in a deep freeze with major snow storms/blizzards...

...you can stay warm at home and read Fiction House's Planet Comics' two different characters starring in strips set on the frigid world of Pluto!

Unlike most of the deadly-serious features of the period, these strips played both series as sci-fi sitcoms, starring "heroes" who could best be described as "spacegoing slackers", or "galactic party animals"!

You can read the complete run of the first guy, Cosmo Corrigan, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Yeah, he only lasted three issues.

Cosmo Corrigan was apparently caught in a black hole and immediately replaced (like the very next issue) in Planet Comics by Norge Benson, who encountered a whole different group of Plutonians!

Norge was a somewhat less snarky (though no less humorous) version of the "Earthman on Pluto" concept shown in Cosmo Corrigan., mixing talking alien versions of both Arctic and Antarctic animals with total disregard to anything even remotely resembling exobiology (or continuity)!

But both strips were fun, and that's all that really matters!

Norge Benson managed to survive for twenty issues, all of which you can read by clicking HERE!

Reading Room GHOST COMICS "Face in the Shroud"

It's been a while, boy fiends and ghoul friends...

..but during the season when ghosts and goblins dominate pop culture, we felt it was time to rise up out of the coffin and tell a sordid story!

As horror stories go, this tale from Fiction House's Ghost Comics #8 (1953) is fairly mild, but the art by the underrated Bill Benulis and Jack Abel has a couple of kool "camera angles" and storytelling tricks that other artists of the period like Alex Toth and Ross Andru were also experimenting with.

The writer's name has been lost to the mists of time.

BTW, this tale was recently-reprinted (for the first time in over 60 years) in IDW's Haunted Horror, but was oddly-attributed to Don Heck, even though the story is signed by Benulis and Abel in the first panel!

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EC Horror Library of the 1950s

(It ain't cheap,...but it's GREAT!)

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The First Korean War Comic...Published a YEAR Before the War Began!

We brought you the comics tale that predicted the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor...

...half a year before the attack!

Now, we bring you the first Korean War comic story...

...a full year before the war broke out!

Are we amazing, or what?

Space Hero Saturdays MAN O' MARS

Here's a kool klassic from the 1950s...the lead story from a 1953 one-shot that combined all the great cliches of space opera (spaceships, ray guns, aliens, half-naked space babes) in one tight ten-page tale set only thirteen years from now...

These days, this story would be a six-issue mini-series with tie-ins to several other titles.

The rest of Fiction House's Man O' Mars one-shot from 1953 was made up of unrelated reprints from earlier issues of Planet Comics.

The interior artist is Maurice Gutwirth, but the writer is unknown.

The original cover was done by Maurice Whitman, one of the Golden Age's more prolific artists with credits at almost every company of the era!

When the book was reprinted by IW Comics in 1958 from the original printing plates, the covers weren't included, so publisher Israel Waldman commissioned Angelo Torres...

...who created a superb Frank Frazetta-style cover, doing his fellow Fleagle Gang member proud!

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

Tales Twice Told STRANGE GALAXY "Planet of Horror"

Remember "Last Expedition", our "Tale Twice Told" from Tuesday?

Well, here it is again, right down to the original captions, dialogue balloons and character names!

Eerie Publications editor Carl Burgos thought the story from Fiction House's Planet Stories #72 (1953) was good enough to have Argentinian artist Oswal re-draw it almost 20 years later for the b/w magazine Strange Galaxy V1N8 (1971)!

(In fact, all the stories that appeared in the Eerie Publications line-up were either actual reprints or re-drawn versions of 1940s-1950s tales from defunct publishers!)

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Sci-Fi Art: a Graphic History

Tales Twice Told PLANET COMICS "Last Expedition"

In space, things are not always as they seem...

...as this story of the rescue of personnel from a science research colony aptly demonstrates!

This tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #72 (1953) was illustrated by Bill Benulis, but the writer is unknown.

That's a pity, because Eerie Publications editor Carl Burgos thought the story was good enough to re-do almost 20 years later...as we'll see on Thursday!

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Mysteries in Space

The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics