Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Man Who Didn't Know Venus"

Nedor/Better/Standard Comics produced several sci-fi anthologies...

...none of which lasted more than three issues.

But it certainly wasn't due to lack of quality.

With a contributor list that included Alex Toth, Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Nick Cardy, and Jack Katz, you're talking some of the great and soon-to-be-great storytellers of comics history!

But, there was one other sci-fi creator who did a story for Lost Worlds, one of only four tales he did for comic books.

Jerome Bixby, novelist and short-story writer, as well as screenwriter whose credits include...

IT! the Terror from Beyond Space!

Fantastic Voyage

Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror"*, "By Any Other Name", "Requiem for Methuselah" and "Day of the Dove"

and the short story "It's a Good Life" which was adapted on both the original Twilight Zone tv series (by Rod Serling) and the 1983 feature film (by Richard Matheson).

BTW, around the time he wrote this, Bixby had just left his position as editor of the Planet Stories pulp magazine at Fiction House, where he also contributed a couple of text pieces to Planet Comics and Indians (his only non-genre text story)!

*The Mirror Universe created by Bixby in "Mirror, Mirror" has proven to be so popular that it has reappeared in almost all the spin-off series spanning almost all of Federation and StarFleet history!

And let's not get into the numerous (sometimes contradictory) novels and comics about the concept...

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Masters of Science Fiction Volume 2
Jerome Bixby
"One Way Street" and Other Tales
Note: "One Way Street's" concept of being transferred to another universe was the thematic basis for "Mirror, Mirror"!
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Reading Room UNSEEN "Eerie Glen"

No, it's not about a weird guy named "Glen"...

...but, according to dictionaries, a Scottish/English term meaning "valley with gentle slopes"!

In truth, it seems more like a swamp than a glen, which tends to be open and grassy!

This never-reprinted tale from Standard Comics' Unseen #6 (1952) is typical of the "Oops! I'm dead!" twist-ending story, but because of the reason for the demise (a fever from an unspecified disease), we felt it appropriate for CoronaVirus Comics.

Artist George Roussos worked for for half a century in comic (1940s to the 1990s) as a penciler, colorist, and, most notably, a fast, clean and efficient inker (one of the few who could keep up with speed-demon penciler Jack Kirby)!

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Ten-Cent Plague

Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Space Race"

If you think a high-speed auto race is fun...

...what if the race was between high-speed spacecraft?

This is the sort of story that proves the trope that most sci-fi of the Golden Age was just re-written Western stories.

Replace the horse or stagecoach with a spaceship, six-shooters with ray blasters, and Indians with aliens, and voila, a sci-fi story!

This never-reprinted tale from Lost Worlds #6 (1954) was penciled by John Celardo and inked by Bernard Sachs.
The writer is unknown.

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

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Reading Room FANTASTIC WORLDS "Invaders"

 The short-lived Standard 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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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

A Safety Tip from The Fighting Yank for the 4th of July...

Here's the word, kids, from The Fighting Yank himself...

Art by Mort Meskin

...from the final issue of his 1940s series, Standard's Fighting Yank #29 (1949)

Art by Alex Schomburg

And here's the patriotic cover from that issue!

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "Visitors from Space" and "Space Platforms--Way Stations of the Future!"

Besides comic stories, comic books often ran one-page features like these...

Standard's Lost Worlds #5 Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

...based on historical or scientific information available at the time...

Standards' Lost Worlds #6 Art by Rocco Mastroserio

...or speculation about future developments, again, based on then-current knowledge!

(I love that third panel, showing spacesuit-garbed scientists on a balcony on the satellite!)

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Jet-Heeled Prom" and "Zingbats"

Like most comics of the era, Jetta of the 21st Century had text stories...

...to qualify for second-class (magazine) mailing rates!

The text stories featured other characters from the "Jetta-verse"!

Written by "Dixon Wells" (a pen-name used only for Jetta text stories), this never-reprinted piece from Standard's Jetta of the 21st Century #7 (1953) would've made a pretty good comic story.

Perhaps it was scripted by Dan DeCarlo?

Also included in this final issue of the series was this one-pager totally-unrelated to the "Jetta-verse"...

No credits are available for this short, which probably was meant for one of Standard's sci-fi comics, Lost Worlds or Fantastic Worlds!

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta

Reading Room LOST WORLDS "First Man to Reach the Moon"

In this 1952 tale, Mankind doesn't reach the Moon until 2021!

For the record, most sci-fi stories of the era show a manned Moon landing occurring by 2000!

While we don't know who wrote this story from Standard's sci-fi anthology Lost Worlds #6 (1952), the illustrations are by Art Saaf, a steady contributor to comic books from the beginning of the Golden Age to the end of the Bronze Age (1940-1980).

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

Space Hero Saturdays FANTASTIC WORLDS "Space Treasure"

What's it like to be just another working stiff doing his job...but in outer space?

This tale from Standard's Fantastic Worlds #5 (1952) offers some insight...

Lovingly-rendered by Murphy Anderson, the story was created between his stints on the Buck Rogers newspaper strip, and certainly has the "look" of the legendary comic!

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Life and Art of Murphy Anderson

Reading Room FANTASTIC WORLDS "Asteroid God"

Some call Golden Age sci-fi "Westerns with ray guns"...

...but it could also be "jungle tales with aliens instead of natives", as this tale demonstrates!

John Celardo illustrated this story from Standard's Fantastic Worlds #7 (1953), the final issue of a short-lived anthology that featured artwork by Alex Toth, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson, among others.