Showing posts with label Mystery Men Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mystery Men Comics. Show all posts

Saturday, October 8, 2022

Space Hero Saturdays REX DEXTER OF MARS "SpaceShip of the Living Dead"

This Rex Dexter adventure truly goes where no space hero has gone before...
...battling interplanetary zombies!
This terrifying tale by creator/writer/artist Dick (Frankenstein) Briefer is from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #21 (1941)!
Rex Dexter of Mars was an ongoing feature in Fox Features' anthology Mystery Men Comics, which featured Rex, the original Blue Beetle, and The Green Mask, among others.
It's possible Rex was the first comic character to have his origin revised/altered within a year of his premiere!
HERE'S his origin (and premiere) in Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939).
And HERE and HERE is the expanded/revised/somewhat contradictory new origin tale, from the one-shot Rex Dexter of Mars comic from 1940...a year later!
(To make things even weirder, his first origin tale was reprinted in the Rex Dexter of Mars comic...starting the next page after the revised origin!)
The entire Rex Dexter series has been posted on this blog, and you can read the rest of his awesome adventures by clicking HERE!
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Friday, May 15, 2020

Friday Fun / CoronaVirus Comics MYSTERY MEN COMICS "Rex Dexter and the Radium Creatures of Capris"

Even in the " far future" of the year 2000 (as seen from 1939)...
..., plagues can affect the inhabitants of Earth!
And only a stalwart, heroic, usually lantern-jawed space hero could save us...
Ah, radiation!
Was there nothing it couldn't cure back then?
The use of Earth-based magnetism to propel and recover un-powered spacecraft is a rather unique touch that writer/artist Dick Briefer seems to have come up with on the spur of the moment.
BTW, we've re-presented the entire Rex Dexter series on this blog, and you can read every one of his startling space-bound sagas by clicking HERE!
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Friday, October 5, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Among the Stars!"

This is a fitting episode in several ways...
...as Rex Dexter of Mars becomes immortal (metaphorically-speaking)!
Rex Dexter didn't return!
This tale in Fox's Mystery Men Comics #24 (1941) was his last Golden Age appearance, and makes a very appropriate (though unintentional) finale to the series!
Rex would return in Image's Savage Dragon as a supporting character in the early 2000s and still appears from time to time.
Note: for all those who think the Clash of the Titans movies are an accurate version of ancient Greek myths, Rex Dexter gets it right!
Perseus fought Cetus, not the Kraken to save Andromeda!
However, original CotT screenwriter Beverly Cross decided to go with the more dramatic "Kraken"!
And, let's face it, don't the two Zeus (Zeuses?), Laurence Olivier and Liam Neeson, sound kool rumbling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" instead of "RELEASE CETUS!"?
Though this was the final Rex Dexter story published in Mystery Men Comics, it's not the end of Rex at Friday Fun!
Next week, we begin a two-part presentation of Rex's revised origin (it ain't a modern phenomenon, guys), told as the opening tale of Fox's Rex Dexter one-shot in 1940!
Then, the Friday before Halloween, we present a Rex Dexter story we "skipped" so it could be run around All Hallow's Eve since it involves space zombies!
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Friday, September 28, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Puppet of the Ugly Queen"

...with a scheme involving one of the oldest concepts in sci-fi!
"As she dies, the spell is broken.."
But, the Ugly Queen's body is still alive as the souls/intellects switch bodies!
So, Cynde doesn't go through the trauma of experiencing death!
But, we lose the closest Rex will ever come to an ongoing arch-enemy...
Body-switching in fiction has gone on as long as fiction itself has existed!
Whether it's via magic, technology, or super-human psychic powers, 
Both Edgar Rice Burroughs and HP Lovecraft used it in novels.
TV series like Star Trek, The Avengers (Steed and Mrs Peel, not Marvel characters), X-Files, and many others have featured their primary cast members' bodies switched with antagonists!
Movies including All of Me, Freaky Friday (all of them) and the highly-underrated I Married a Monster from Outer Space based their premises on the concept.
In comics, this never-reprinted tale from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #23 (1941) is one of the first (if not the first) takes on the subject!
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Friday, September 21, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Attack of the Ugly Queen"

Yes, it'a a very politically-incorrect title for this story...
...but it is what the antagonist of this tale calls herself, so...
Flash Gordon gets Ming the Merciless' beautiful daughter Princess Aura lusting after him!
Buck Rogers has the lovely Draconian Princess Ardala chasing him all over the galaxy!
Rex Dexter has...the Ugly Queen!
There ain't no justice, I tell ya!
And, worse, she's coming back...
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Friday, September 14, 2018

Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Sonic Slayers from Saturn"

I wonder if Gene Roddenberry got the idea for the Ferengi from this tale?
(He would've been in his early 20s, and in the Army Air Corps at this point.
Our military men were among comics' biggest fans.
The four-color mags were cheap, quick reads, portable, and expendible.)
Emmos has huge ears compressed under that turban?
Wow!
Give writer/artist Dick Briefer credit for coming up with consistently-weird menaces for Rex and Cynde to battle!
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