Red China has Landed a Robot Craft on the Far Side of the Moon!

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Marvin Stein

We thought we'd be dealing with the Russkies on the lunar surface, but at this point, Putin has to buy rockets from North Korea!

Space Force Saturdays THREE ROCKETEERS "Long Long Years"

Introduced in Harvey's Race for the Moon #3 (1958)...

This team of intrepid explorers survived the book's cancellation to appear in other Harvey titles over the next decade!

Penciled (and possibly written) by Jack Kirby and inked by Al Williamson, the team's debut exemplifies the 1950's optimism that science and humanity's desire to explore the unknown would enable us to set up space stations and moonbases within a few decades!
Sadly, as of the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century, over half a century later, we ain't there yet!
Yeah, we have one small space station, but nothing like what we envisioned...

Now that's a space station!

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Simon & Kirby Library

Science Fiction

(which reprints all the Kirby Three Rocketeer stories!)
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Monday Madness RACE FOR THE MOON "Asylum"

A Twilight Zone-style story from Race for the Moon #1, illustrated (and possibly written) by Bob Powell!

With the world the way it is now, perhaps we should rename our planet from "Earth" to "Asylum"!

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

Monday Moon Madness RACE FOR THE MOON "Lunar Trap"

Today's the scheduled launch to the Moon of NASA's Artemis test ship...

But, it won't be like the 1950s, when we thought we'd be fighting with the Soviet Union for control of the Moon!

 

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!

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Simon & Kirby Library

Science Fiction

Tales Twice Told RACE TO THE MOON "Disc Jockey" Version 2

Tuesday, we saw a pre-Comics Code Authority version of this tale...

...but when the tale was reprinted in Harvey Comics' Race for the Moon #1 (1958), there were some odd art changes to the alien...because of the Comics Code Authority...

As we said, some odd art changes to make the aliens less-insectoid...which really made no sense!

Plus: note how, on the last page, Sam doesn't look frightened...and a couple of the word balloons have been re-written to be less "panicky"!

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Terror

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Monday Madness RACE FOR THE MOON "Saucer Man"

From the era when actual space travel was brand new...

 ...and flying saucers were probably real, here's a tale from Harvey's Race for the Moon #3 (1958).

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson, an absolutely magnificent combo, rivaling Kirby's pairings with Wally Wood and Joe Sinnott!

Science fiction was in a state of flux as real-world science began catching up with our imaginations.

Instead of far-future sagas with warp-drive ships, tales of "the day after tomorrow", when we would make our first landings on the Moon and Mars came into vogue.

That didn't mean that visitors from beyond our Solar System were left out, but the technology we used to respond to them (friendly or not) was much closer to "present-day" (1950s) tech than ray-guns and photon drives.

Why does this tale fit into the concept of Monday Madness?
Because, now that we're actually in the era shown in these tales, we haven't done anything close to what they show...

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Monday Madness "Supreme Penalty" 1.0 & 2.0

Here's two radically-different versions of the same sci-fi comic tale...

...with changes in the reprint forced upon the publisher by the Comics Code Authority!

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!

Art (and probably story) by Bob Powell.

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Bob Powell's
Terror
(Anthology of the best of his 1950s horror and sci-fi tales)

Monday Mars Madness: a Twice-Told Tale INVASION!

One of the best-known Mars invasion tales is Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio show...

Edited version

...which this twice-told tale "updates" to the television era!

But, it's radically-altered from it's first appearance, and that the original version had never been reprinted!

First the toned-down version, then the original, scarier version...

Original version

 Note in the original version, both the wife and singer on tv show a lot more cleavage!

Edited version

Original version

Again, more cleavage in the original version...

Edited version

Original version

Oddly enough, the wife's cleavage is unchanged, but the look of terror in the last panel is toned down!

Edited version

Original version

Panel four in the original version is much more gruesome than the edited version.  Note the dialogue balloon is unchanged, even though there's no actual weapons fire in the edited version!

Edited version

 This last page is radically-different! Prepare yourself!
Ready?
Proceed...but remember, I warned you...

Original version

Wow!

The edited pages were from Race for the Moon #1 (1958), which was reprinted in Shocking Tales Digest #1 (1981)

The original story was from Witches' Tales #21 (1953)

As you can see, the Comics Code Authority insisted on some major redos, including most of the last page!

What do you think, fans!

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The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics: Volume 2

Bob Powell's

Terror