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

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 "Alice in TerrorLand"

We ran a humorous variation of Alice in Wonderland HERE......

... but here's a story based on Lewis Carroll's tale that combines sci-fi, and a fear many children experience at one time or another...

Penciled by Alex Toth and inked by Mike Peppe, this tale from Standard's Lost Worlds #5 (1952) takes the common kids' fear of toys coming to life and adds imagery from Lewis Carroll's Alice tales to an alien invasion scenario to create a wonderfully-creepy story.

Sadly, the writer of this wild tale is unknown.

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Alice in ComicLand

Featuring various comics incarnations of the Lewis Carroll character!

Reading Room FANTASTIC WORLDS "Boy Who Saved the World!

The short-lived anthology Fantastic Worlds featured Earth-based stories...

...contrasting with the other anthology from Standard Comics, Lost Worlds, which was a space-opera book.

This kid-friendly tale from Standard's Fantastic Worlds #6 (1952) was drawn by Alex Toth and Mike Peppe, though the writer is unknown.

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Reading Room FANTASTIC WORLDS "Invaders"

The short-lived anthology Fantastic Worlds featured Earth-based stories...

...contrasting with the other anthology from Standard Comics, Lost Worlds, which was a space-opera book.

This tale from Standard's Fantastic Worlds #5 (1952) was drawn by Alex Toth and Mike Peppe, though the writer is unknown.
(Page 7, Panel 6 is apparently a redraw by Carmine Infantino!)

BTW, though it's #5, this is actually the first issue of the title!

There was no #1-#4!

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Man from U.N.C.L.E. From 1965 to 2015!

The new Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie opens this Friday...

...and our "brother" RetroBlog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video, will be doing a feature on the previous U.N.C.L.E. films.

But before that, we invite you to have a look at the premiere issue of the 1960s comic based on the TV series!

"Why?", you may ask?

Two reasons.

1) It's the closest the comic came to doing an epic tale that would've made a helluva big budget movie.

2) Oddly, enough, the renderings of Solo and Kuryakin look a lot like Henry Cavil and Armie Hammer!

Judge for yourself!

Reading Room: FROGMEN "Strange Experiment of Doctor Vogar" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Original art for the cover to FrogMen #9

Kidnapped and transported to a foreign country, professional scuba divers Steve Randall and Jim Collins aka "The FrogMen" are forced to battle mutated sea creatures created by mad Dr Vogar!
They survive the first test and attempt an escape, which fails and leaves them right at the tank where they will undergo...

Considering Dr Vogar returned in both the remaining issues of the series, it seems Steve's advice, though quite reasonable and wise, was disregarded by Jim...

This never-reprinted tale from Dell's FrogMen #9 (1964) was written by Don Segall, and illustrated by penciler Mike Sekowsky and inker Mike Peppe.

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