You thought the SpaceBusters story ended with the book's cancellation after #2?
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| Art by Bernie Krigstein, adapted from page 1. |
Nope!
Though the publisher (Ziff-Davis) went out of business, the published (and unpublished) material ended up at several other companies, including St John Publishing.
This particular story features the uniform and weapon designs from SpaceBusters #1, before Murphy Anderson was brought on board for #2 and revamped everything to look more like his work on the Buck Rogers newspaper comic strip.
Bernie Krigstein illustrated this story, as he did all the tales in SpaceBusters #1.
Oddly enough, though the aliens invading Mars remained "Belzarians" and the Terrans were referred to as "Earthians", the heroes went through a name-change.
Blond and blue-eyed Captain Brett Crockett received a new name, becoming "Captain Andall", while his balding and mustached sergeant, Bolo, became "Sgt Bala".
And the nickname "SpaceBusters", used incessantly in the two issues of the series, is nowhere in sight...
The story saw publication
three times in ten years, ironically making it the
most-printed of all the
SpaceBuster tales!
First in
Daring Adventures #6 (1954) from
St John (where it was
not the cover feature).
Then, it was reprinted in
Great Exploits #1 (1957) by
Ajax/Farrell (who purchased some of
St John's material when
they left the comics business to concentrate on magazines), where it finally became the cover feature (as seen at the top of this post).
Finally, it was reprinted in 1964 by
Super/IW Comics, with a
new cover by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.
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