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 ALARMING ADVENTURES "Silent Street"

A quiet suburban street late at night...

..hardly the typical locale for a sci-fi story, eh?

We'll see...

Did Harii take possession of Bowen's body after teleporting there or do the two simply look alike?

(Harii apparently didn't arrive in a ship of his own, so teleportation is the most obvious answer.)

The "poetic" explanation would be that Harii was waiting for Vlado inside Bowen and "emerged" when Vlado arrived...except we had seen Harii back on their world, so he couldn't have been waiting on Earth!

George Tuska illustrated this never-reprinted tale from Harvey's Alarming Tales #1 (1962), but the writer is unknown...

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Frigid Friday Fun PLANET COMICS "Cosmo Corrigan in Martians, Mercurians and Money!"

Yeah, I know the logo says "Cosmic", not "Cosmo"...

...but he's called "Cosmo" in the story itself, as well as the next (and final) tale, so I consider the logo to be a typo!

Now, back to Pluto, the world that makes our current weather look like a balmy summer day!

Be here next Friday for Cosmo's frigid final adventure!
Illustrated by George Tuska (who would handle the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in the 1950s, as well as become Iron Man's illustrator when he received his own book in the 1960s) the scripter for this tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #10 (1941) is, regrettably, unknown.

("Ray Alexander" was a Fiction House pseudonom.)

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Reprinting issues 9-12

Frigid Friday Fun PLANET COMICS "Cosmo Corrigan: Exiled from Earth"

Like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many other handsome space heroes...

...Cosmo Corrigan had a weird first name.

Unlike them, he was a bit of a screw-up and wise-ass...

...so he was sent to the Solar System's equivalent of Siberia...the frozen planet Pluto, qualifying him for running as part of our new Frigid Friday Fun feature!

Planet Comics was noted for its...well...lack of scientific accuracy, being much more "science fantasy" than hard science fiction (which at least tried to apply known scientific facts to the storytelling).

But this series seems almost like a space opera sit-com, featuring a slacker as the hero!

Sadly, it only ran for three installments...which you'll see over the next few Fridays!

Illustrated by George Tuska (who would handle the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in the 1950s, as well as become Iron Man's illustrator when he received his own book in the 1960s) the scripter for this tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #9 (1940) is, regrettably, unknown.

("Ray Alexander" was a Fiction House pseudonom.)

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Planet Comics

Volume 3

Reprinting issues 9-12

Reading Room SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS "Headless Horseman Rides Again!" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Upstate New York crime lord "Bones" Bullinger murdered reporter Matt Carter to stop the newspaperman's investigations into the underworld.

But Carter's widow, Kim, and his best friend, private eye Duke Durbano, kept the investigation going.

So "Bones" hired NYC hitmen to kill the pair.

The assassins failed (though they don't know it) and "Bones" (in an elaborate disguise) is about to eliminate them...

Written by Gary Friedrich at the same time as he was co-creating the flaming-skulled motorcyclist known as Ghost Rider, this tale from Marvel's Supernatural Thrillers #6 (1973) was left open-ended with the possibility of the Horseman returning as a "Spirit of Vengeance" to deal with other criminals.

Note: 1973-75 featured the appearances of several avenging supernatural characters including Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, Man-Thing, Scarecrow (aka Straw Man), and the return of The Spectre in extremely-gruesome (for the Comics Code era) tales.

Illustrated by penciler George Tuska and inker Jack Abel, both of whom worked in comics during the horror comics era and were quite familiar with how to tell a terrifying tale!

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Reading Room SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS "Headless Horseman Rides Again!" Part 1

We presented the Washington Irving version of The Headless Horseman HERE!

Marvel did a never-reprinted sequel set in the "present day" almost 50 years ago!

What do they see?

Could it be...?

Find out Thursday!

This book-length story from Marvel's Supernatural Thrillers #6 (1973) was the final one-shot tale from the short-lived comic before N'Kantu the Living Mummy took the book over for the remainder of its' sadly-short run.

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Cover Gallery SPEED CARTER: SPACEMAN & SPACE SQUADRON

Here's a look at the covers for the complete run of Speed Carter: SpaceMan...

Art by Bill Everett

Oddly, though they're really nice pieces of art, they never relate to the stories inside the book!

Art by Carl Burgos & ?

Art by Bill Everett

Art by Mike Sekowsky & ?

Art by Mort Lawrence

Art by Joe Maneely

Bill Everett (who didn't do any inside art) did two covers, and Joe Maneely (who did all the Speed stories in the first three issues finally got to do a cover with the last issue!

Here are the covers for Space Squadron.

Note the variants in foreign editions with retitled and redrawn covers...

Art by Sol Brodsky & Christopher Rule.

Vignettes at bottom by George Tuska.

Art by Werner Roth

Canadian Edition

Easily one of the worst recompositing jobs I've ever seen!

Art by Werner Roth

British Edition

Why were the aliens' second heads removed?

Art by Werner Roth

Canadian Edition

Now, this is how you recompose a cover!

Art by Sol Brodsky & Joe Maneely

Art by Sol Brodsky

British

Art by Sol Brodsky &?

We've decided to keep Space Force Saturdays at least through Halloween, so watch this space (pun intended) next week!