Showing posts with label Fred Guardineer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fred Guardineer. Show all posts

Saturday, March 25, 2023

Space Hero Saturdays DAN HASTINGS "and the Demons of Mexady"

One of the earliest comic book characters "inspired" by Flash Gordon...
...also had one of the most convoluted publication histories!
For one thing, the title character didn't even appear in the first two installments in Centaur's Star Comics (#1 above and #2 below) until the very end!
Instead, this pair of two-page chapters concentrate on Mexady's Ming the Merciless-type dictator and his reluctant chief scientist!
As of Centaur's Star Comics #3, our stalwart hero, his scientist friend, Dr Carter, the scientist's son (and Dan's sidekick) Bob...
...and the scientist's hot daughter, Gloria (whom the alien dictator immediately lusts for), finally get some attention!
Within four pages, we've gone from a World War (placed on hold) to a War of the Worlds!
And that was just the beginning!
The strip was created/written/illustrated by Fred Guardineer, one of the busier creatives of the Golden Age!
Though he's best known for his numerous magician characters including DC's Zatara, and Quality's Tor the Magic Master and Merlin the Magician, Fred worked in every genre, including Western, romance, high adventure, sci-fi, and even costumed super-heroes!
After his initial serial in Centaur's Star Comics 1-9, Dan Hastings popped up in titles published by MLJ/Archie, St John, and publisher Harry Chesler's various imprints!

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Reading Room: SPACE ACE "Space Patrol"

Magazine Enterprises' Space Ace was a curious strip...
...starting out relatively-sophisticated, as we'll show you here in this tale from ManHunt #1 (1947)...
 ...and progressively becoming more juvenile as it's first incarnation progressed, as seen in the final tale of that version.
When the series was rebooted, it was extremely, shall we say, "kid-friendly" as shown HERE and HERE, but ended with more adult-oriented scripts and art as seen HERE and HERE!
The Grand Comics DataBase attributes the art to Fred Guardineer (who also did the final story), but it doesn't look like Guardineer's other work, so I'm skeptical as to the accuracy of the assessment.

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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Reading Room: SPACE ACE "Harp of Death"

This is the last story of the first of three incarnations of Space Ace by the same publisher...
...none of whom have any relation to the 1980s video game character!
While it's not confirmed as to who wrote the tale from Manhunt #7 (1947), it's clearly illustrated by Fred Guardineer, creator of numerous Golden Age characters including Zatara, Tor the Magician (both of whom spoke their incantations backwards), Blue Tracer, Alias the Dragon, and Moon-Man.
This 1930s-40s Buck Rogers-style character ran in the first seven issues of Magazine Enterprises' Manhunt anthology comic, which featured law enforcement officers past, present, and future.
As of #8, Ace was replaced by a Western hero, Trail Colt, and the ManHunter of the 21st Century wouldn't be seen for a couple of years.
When he did reappear, he was (literally) a new man...as we shall see tomorrow...

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