Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Junk Room of Doom"

It's taking a helluva long time for Rex Dexter to reach the second-closest planet to Earth...

...and going through the Junk Room of Doom is not going to speed things up!

This tale from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #12 (1940), was reprinted in Fox's The Eagle #1 (1941), presumably because the strip was being moved over there to give the new title an already-established feature, but the editors changed their minds, and new features like Spider Queen and Joe Spook took over the back pages of The Eagle, instead!

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "Revolt of the Robot Slaves of the Secret Planet"

Either Rex Dexter is the worst navigator in the history of space flight...

...or somebody (like creator/writer/artist Dick Breifer) is conspiring to keep him from getting home!

Considering Mars is the second-closest planet to Earth (Venus is closer, but it's in the other direction), where the hell is this unnamed world, anyway?
And why hasn't anyone noticed other ships and crews disappearing in this region of space?
This never-reprinted tale from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #11 (1940), offers no answers...

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "vs the Flame-Men of Emalf"

Rex Dexter seems to be taking a roundabout way from Earth to Mars...

...and his knack for being at the right place at the right time is unmatched!

"I'll be seeing you next issue to take you to Mars---"

Didn't he say that last issue?

Will Rex ever return to Mars?

Or will he become a Flying Dutchman of space?

Judging from this never-reprinted tale from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #10 (1940), it sure seems that way!

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "on the Planet of Peace"

Rex Dexter makes the cover of Fox's Mystery Men Comics for the second (and last) time...

with this absolutely spectacular Lou Fine cover featuring aliens who never appear in the series!

BTW, if the first panel above looks familiar, it was used as clip art for the Rex text story as well as this ad!

Rex knows those people are doomed in this story from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #9 (1940), but thinking God might deliver a miracle assuages his conscience.

Dick Briefer's little morality play is pretty dead-on!

We are a savage species, and others would do well to avoid us.

In post-WWII science fiction, a number of tales involve more advanced civilizations wanting to quarantine/isolate us from the rest of the universe until we can prove peaceful intentions.

Not surprisingly, sometimes we fail...

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "The Day Rex Dexter Failed to Save the Earth!"

Looks like a typical day in the life of our favorite interplanetary adventurer...

...but that's certainly not the case this time!

Note: this tale was scanned from microfiche, so the quality is less than ideal, but it's all we have to work with!

Note: this tale was scanned from microfiche, so the image quality is less than ideal, but it's all we have to work with!

To be fair, Rex's ego isn't so fragile that he's ashamed that Cynde had to rescue him in this never-reprinted tale from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #8 (1940), making him one of the more enlghtened heroes of the Golden Age!

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER OF MARS "...Goes Through!"

Ever hear of Nathaniel Nitkin?

If you're a Golden Age fan, you've probably read his work...including this story!

Nitkin wrote text features for Fox covering almost all their ongoing characters.

(Those text features were a requirement for the less-expensive periodical mailing permit the Post Office issued!)

Unfortunately, as this piece from Fox's Rex Dexter #1 (1940) shows, Nat would take a fairly generic genre plot and cram it into a story about whatever chararacter he was doing.

It's OK, but it lacks the weirdness of Dick Briefer's version of the strip.

BTW, the art is existing Briefer art "clipped" from a couple of stories!

Since it's never been reprinted, we thought Rex Dexter fans (and judging by the hits on his tales on Friday Fun, there are quite a number of you) would find the only non-Breifer Rex Dexter tale to be an interesting curiosity!

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Friday Fun REX DEXTER "Saves the World...Again!"

When Last We Left Our Interplanetary Hero...

...Rex has not only rebuilt a major part of Asia, but repopulates it with Americans, since all the locals were killed by the meteor strike!

Why wait?

We'll give you that kool page, from Fox's Mystery Man Comics #8 (1940), now!

Is that kool, or what?

TRIVIA: You may notice that pages 5-8 of this tale from Fox's Mystery Man Comics #7 (1940) have larger panels, and less-detailed art than the first four pages.

Did writer-artist Dick Briefer fall behind on the deadline and do the last four pages overnight?

Did the editor reject the original last four pages...forcing Briefer to re-write/re-draw them?

We'll never know...

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