Monday Mars Madness RACE FOR THE MOON "Face on Mars"

Perhaps the most famous story from Harvey's Race for the Moon...

...is this tale from #2 by writer/peniler Jack Kirby and inker Al Williamson which doesn't take place on the Moon...but on Mars!

Why is it so famous?

When NASA's Viking satellite reached Mars in 1976, it took this photo...

Keep in mind that this was the era of the Chariots of the Gods? fad, and to many, this pic was confirmation that aliens had either come thru the Solar System and stopped off not only on Earth, but Mars as well, or were from Mars initially!

And, there were those who remembered this little comic tale from their childhood.

The truth was a bit more mundane. Click HERE for NASA's explanation.

To this day, there are still those who say it's a cover-up, that there is life on Mars, and that "the face" is a relic of their existence.

Judge for yourself.

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Mars in the Movies

A History

Reading Room: "Supreme Penalty" Versions 1.0 & 2.0

A couple of months ago, we presented two different versions of the same tale...

...and we're doing so again!

This version appeared in Harvey's Black Cat Mystery #47 (1953) during the height of the horror comics boom.

It was re-presented in Harvey's Race for the Moon #1 (1959) after the Comics Code went into effect.

Let's see how things have changed...

Almost every panel has a change from the original, either in art or balloons!

Panel 4 has an interesting change in dialogue indicating the condemned survive in space...

Only change is dialogue in the first panel, which indicates the exiled criminals are still alive, but in orbit.

The figure of Judge Krenk being murdered in Panel 6, and his corpse in Panel 7 have been removed!

Panel One: Judge Krenk is said to be wounded, not dead!

Panel Six: Frances' face redrawn to look less maniacal and his sentence altered to confine him to his lab!

Interesting to note the alterations inflicted by the Comics Code Authority!

Art (and probably story) by Bob Powell.

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Happy 50th Anniversary, Apollo 11!

In the 1940s (and before), we dreamed of meeting (and battling) aliens on the Moon...

...In the 1950s, we feared meeting (and battling) Commies on the Moon...

...when we actually got to the Moon in 1969, thankfully, there was nothing to fear (or fight)!

Happy 50th Anniversary!

Friday Fun RACE FOR THE MOON "Lunar Trap"

In tribute to the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon...

...we present a change-of-pace tale from the 1950s, when we thought we'd be fighting with the Soviet Union over control of the Moon...

 

This tale from Harvey's Race for the Moon #2 (1958) features a fierce, fighting, female cosmonaut...extremely progressive for the time!
Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson (who, along with fellow EC alumnus Reed Crandall, was doing a lot of work for Harvey at the time)!
Not sure who wrote it, but speculation is that Kirby himself scripted it.
Either way, a decent story with solid storytelling and magnificent rendering!

Reading Room BLAST-OFF "Space Court"

Let's finish the week with one more Twilight Zone-style tale...

This mild little story from Harvey Comics' Blast-Off #1 (and only) was penciled by Al Williamson, and inked by Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres, three of the members of the "Fleagle Gang".
(Click HERE for a look at the group of legendary artists who worked together, usually uncredited, on various stories and covers for the fun of it or to help with deadlines!)

The writer is unknown.

According to the Kirby Museum, this tale was intended for the never-published Race for the Moon #5 in 1958, but remained unused until 1965!

And, it's never been reprinted!

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The Art of Roy G Krenkel

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Garden of Eden"

From the final issue (#3) of Race For the Moon comes a tale with spectacular Jack Kirby/Al Williamson artwork combining both realistic 1950s spacesuits and architecture and way-out technology and alien costuming.
Note that the female, Anizaar, looks a lot like Zsa Zsa Gabor in the then-current flick Queen of Outer Space, but in a kooler costume than the simple ones shown in the movie!  
Trivia: Zsa Zsa didn't play the title role! "The Queen" was Laurie Mitchell!
The story itself is a clever reworking of several science-fiction tropes common to the era (1958).
See of you can identify them all...

I dunno...while I'm certainly on the humans' side, that last panel sounded like a rather nasty threat...

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Space Garbage"

Here's a tale that could be considered a "Space Western"...

...though it's actually from Harvey's Race to the Moon #3 in 1958, several years after Space Western Comics folded.

Prospectors, claim jumpers, gunmen, fist-fights, a "frontier" town...
Seems like a Western in space to me...
Art by two legends in the field; Jack Kirby and Al Williamson.
Script probably by Jack Kirby himself or Joe Simon.

Happy 45th Anniversary, Apollo 11!

In the 1940s (and before), we dreamed of meeting (and battling) aliens...

...In the 1950s, we feared meeting (and battling) Commies...

...when we actually got to the Moon in 1969, thankfully, there was nothing to fear (or fight)!
Happy 45th Anniversary!

Best of Reading Room: RACE FOR THE MOON "Invasion"

Some people called early television "just radio with pictures"...

...a premise taken to an obvious extreme in this tale...

Unfortunately, the technological level of tv fx in 1958, when this story was published in Race for the Moon #1, make the events of the story highly unlikely.
The primary reason the inspiration for this story, the 1938 War of the Worlds radio hoax by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre of the Air, worked was because peoples' imaginations ran wild, fueled by sound effects and well-written dialogue!
The "visuals" were in their heads!
Nonetheless, the unknown writer and artist Bob Powell did their best in only five pages.
And, the comic's intended audience, kids aged 9-15, could accept the premise, especially if they had no knowledge of the Welles radio show, which wasn't often rebroadcast until old radio show reruns made a comeback in the mid-1960s on college radio stations and lp albums.

NOTE: This story is a radically toned-down version of a tale that appeared a decade earlier!
Tomorrow we'll show you how it ORIGINALLY looked...pre-Comics Code, which has NEVER been reprinted!

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