Space...Hero??? Saturdays PLANET COMICS "Cosmo Corrigan: Exiled from Earth!"

Like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many other handsome space heroes...

...Cosmo Corrigan had a weird first name.

Unlike them, he was a bit of a screw-up and wise-ass...

...so he was sent to the Solar System's equivalent of Siberia...the frozen planet Pluto, qualifying him (sort of) for appearing as part of Space Hero Saturdays!

Planet Comics was noted for its...well...lack of scientific accuracy, being much more "science fantasy" than hard science fiction (which at least tried to apply known scientific facts to the storytelling).

But this series seems almost like a space opera sit-com, featuring a slacker as the hero!

Sadly, it only ran for three installments...which you'll see over the next few Saturdays!

Illustrated by George Tuska (who would handle the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in the 1950s, as well as becoming Iron Man's illustrator when he received his own book in the late 1960s) the scripter for this tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #9 (1940) is, regrettably, unknown.

("Ray Alexander" was a Fiction House pseudonom.)

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Planet Comics

Volume 3

Reprinting issues 9-12

Whether You Call Him "Kris Kringle" or "St Nick" or "Santa Claus", He's the Embodiment of the Christmas Spirit!

Did You Know...

...the image of Santa Claus, as we Americans know it, is based on the work of two artists over 70 years apart?

1) Thomas Nast, who illustrated the first published version of Clement Clark Moore's The Night Before Christmas in the 1860s
and

2) Haddon Sundblom, who took Nast's visual concepts, refined them, and used them to illustrate Coca-Cola's Christmas advertising campaigns in the 1930s
TRIVIA:

Both Nast and Sundblom are equally famous for their other artistic accomplishments...

Nast was primarily a political cartoonist, whose illustrations of New York's "Boss" Tweed were considered the main reason the corrupt politician was forced from office!

Sundblom also created the image of the Quaker Oats man, and was a noted pin-up girl artist! (In fact, his last published artwork was a pin up girl semi-dressed in a Santa outfit for Playboy's December, 1972 cover!

I'm not going to show it, but you can Google it with sundblom christmas playboy...

Pearl Harbor Day Special: UNCLE SAM "Ruthless Invaders!"

Six months before Pearl Harbor, this comic book story predicted the event...

...in Quality Comics' National Comics #18, cover-dated December 1941!

Remember that comic books used to be cover-dated 2-4 months before the actual on-sale date, and that the actual production time for a comic is anywhere between 1-3 months!

So this comic was on sale in September or October of 1941, and the story was written by Will Eisner and drawn by Lou Fine sometime between May and August of that same year!

Eerie, eh?

Note: they didn't get some of the details quite right...

Guam is hit at the same time as Pearl Harbor.

This one is weirdly close to reality!

Guam was attacked and conquered the very next day, Dec 8th!

Aircraft bomb Guam and battleships shell Pearl Harbor.

In reality, aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor and battleships shelled Guam just before it was invaded!

A German invasion fleet heads for New England!

Plus, the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Guam were part of a coordinated plan by Japan and Germany!

In reality, Germany had no such trans-Atlantic fleet available.

Hell, they couldn't even invade England, only 35 miles away from Axis-occupied France across the English Channel at it's closest point!

And, the Germans were less than happy to discover they now had to deal with America, along with England and Russia!

Hitler had hoped to keep the US out of the war for at least another year.

However the Nazis did honor their pact with Japan and declared war on the USA less than a week after Pearl Harbor.

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

He's the Jolly Old Elf in a red suit!
They are BIG Green Men from Mars with an even BIGGER robot!
Before Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, they were the ingredients for the weirdest Christmas movie ever!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was filmed in 1964 in that bastion of the cinema, Long Island (in an unused aircraft hangar).

Starring a host of tv and b-movie actors including handsome-but-stiff Leonard Hicks as the Martian Leader (and kids' father) Kimar, 60s villain/voiceover artist Vincent Beck (who did lots of work for Irwin Allen's sci-fi shows) as the film's mustache-twirling villain, Voldar, and John Call as a pretty damn convincing Santa Claus, the flick is touted as the debut of future talentless chantuse Pia Zadora as Martian Kid Girmar. Thankfully, she has rather limited screen time.

As an example of low-budget filmmaking, it's actually pretty effective.

Every penny (what few of them they had) is up on the screen.

They make good use of stock footage (from Dr. Strangelove, no less).

And the use of then-popular Wham-O Air Blaster toy guns as the Martian weapons was either a stroke of marketing genius or clever use of limited funds. Either way, sales of the guns shot thru the roof after the film hit the kiddie matinee circuit!

If you're between 3-9 years old, the flick's a lot of fun.

If you're between 10 and whatever the local drinking age is, it'll drive you nuts, especially the theme song!

If you're over the local drinking age, do so before watching! It's available on a host of public domain dvds as well as one of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 snarkfests.

BTW: The image above is from the comic book tie-in, which you can read in three parts...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

There was also a single of the theme, a spoken-word LP album of the movie's dialogue, and a novelization!

Now I can't get that damn theme our of my head..."Hoo-ray for Santy Claus..." AARRRGGGHHH!

An early Christmas gift from us to you:
The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the film (don't tell Dr Forrester)...

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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

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Frightful Friday Fun CRAZY "Drag-ula!"

No, it's not a tale of a transvestite Transylvanian...

...(that's Rocky Horror Picture Show) but our final Dracula tale is a humorous look at the original "bat man" from Atlas' CRAZY #2 (1954)

As was usual with the lead tale in Atlas' CRAZY, this tale was lovingly-rendered by the amazing Bill Everett!

Heck, Bill might even have written it, since he had a number of scripting credits already!

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Twice-Told Tale of Terror 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 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 Harvey's Race for the Moon #1 (1958), which was reprinted in Harvey's Shocking Tales Digest #1 (1981)

The original, never-reprinted, story was from Harvey's 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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Space Heroine Stories BARBARELLA 4.2 aka Conclusion!

 When Last We Left Our Heroine...

After surviving the Excessive Machine, Barbarella ends up in the bedroom of the Queen of Sogo.
The pair manage to escape and free the blind angel, Pygar.
However, unskilled in piloting the alien craft they are traveling in, Barbarella crashes the ship, and in the ensuing confusion, the Queen escapes...

This multi-part comic strip was turned into a graphic album, and then adapted into a feature film starring Jane Fonda in the title role.

Japanese poster

Barbarella wouldn't have a new adventure until 1974, when Wrath Of The Minute Eater was published in France.
Two more graphic novels, False Moon aka Moon Child (1977) and Storm Mirror (1982), have appeared since.
Dynamite Comics has been running new comics (not by Jean Claude Forrest), both several solo mini-series and a crossover with another space heroine, Dejah Thoris: Princess of Mars!
Nelvana Animation, proposed doing an animated series during the 1990s, but no network was willing to finance it.

Proposal art by Jean-Claude Forrest

Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids, and Machete franchises) had a movie remake in development, but it died in 2009, and, to date, no one else seems interested...

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Friday Fun MARVIN MOUSE "Not-So-'Honest John' "

The creator of Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett, was an amazing writer/artist...

 ...who could do almost anything he was asked to do.

Unfortunately, funny animals, weren't exactly his "cup of tea"!

This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvin the Mouse #1 (1957) was scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated by the aforementioned Bill Everett.

I believe Everett was instructed to make the characters as different as possible from other cartoon mice such as Mickey and Mighty, which resulted in rodents who looked more like rats than mice!

Bill had shown a knack for humor as shown HERE and HERE, but this was a major disappointment!

A caption at the end of the book read "And remember, every issue Marvin Mouse magazine brings you the best in laughs, adventure, and fun ... don't miss a single issue!"

No problem!

The book ended up a one-shot and the already-completed stories intended for #2 became filler in the backs of other humor titles.

(Editor Stan Lee was very frugal and didn't let anything go to waste!)

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