Space Force Saturdays SPACE BUSTERS "Empress of Belzar"

Space Busters was a war/military comic...set in the future.

Think of it as a less-sophisticated version of Starship Troopers, sorta "Sgt Fury or Sgt Rock in Space"!

Interestingly, it featured a woman (albeit a non-combatant) as a regular member of the front-line team.
(A rarity in comics until the late 1980s)

As to the plot...the planet Belzar has invaded our Solar System, managing to conquer everything from Pluto to Mars, with Earth next in line.

However, Earth's military is about to launch a counter-attack...

Unlike the other strips we've been running, this wasn't a spacegoing police force, but a "marines in space" series.

(BTW, for those who were wondering, Space Busters wasn't "inspired" by Robert Heinlein's Hugo Award-winning Starship Troopers since it pre-dates it by more more than half a decade!)
Illustrated by EC Comics mainstay Bernie Krigstein (who was also the artist on ZD's Space Patrol, based on the TV series), this premiere tale from Ziff-Davis' Space Busters #1 (1952) was likely scripted by editor Jerry (Superman) Siegel!

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Starship Troopers #0

Markosia Comics

Friday Fun / CoronoaVirus Comics MAD "Look at Modern-Day Bacteria"

Think our concerns about diseases and a possible plague are something new?

This never-reprinted feature from MAD Magazine #153 (1972) combines humor with medicine and politics!

Among those whom writers Max Brandel & Frank Jacobs and artist Bob Clarke skewer are President Richard Nixon (R), Vice-President Spiro Agnew (R), conservative Presidential candidate George Wallace (I), and the radical liberal Students for a Democratic Society!

(Google them if you're too young to remember!)

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MAD About Trump!

A Brilliant Look at Our Brainless disgraced ex-President (up to 2018)

and/or

MAD About the Trump Era Error

(2018-2020)

Reading Room UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION "Kick the Can"

It's said that space opera = "horse opera" with rayguns instead of six-guns...

...and just like the revisionist westerns of the '60s and '70s, this Bronze Age tale is a more sophisticated version of that concept.

Written and illustrated by Bruce Jones, this never-reprinted tale from Marvel's Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #4 (1975) takes the cliches of both horse opera and film noir, puts them in a sci-fi setting and makes them work in a way the Comics Code would not have allowed in a color book.
(Helping a wife escape her husband through extra-legal means and deliberately allowing someone to die were both no-nos to the Code.)
Plus, Jones' classical illustration style gives the tale an emotional resonance a more-stylized artist wouldn't have achieved.
BTW, Jones is still active in the field, as his LinkedIn site shows.

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Bruce Jones'

Razor's Edge

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LOST WORLD "Monsters from the Blue"

With the school to train resistance fighters now secure...

...Hunt Bowman and Lyssa press on with their mission to retake Earth from the Volta invaders!

Will Bowman and his cadets utilize this flying sub (and other similar craft) against the VoltaMen?

Will Earth be freed?

I'm afraid we'll never know!

Sadly, this story from Fiction House's Planet Comics #64 (1950) was the final Golden Age tale of The Lost World.

Though Planet Comics continued for another year, it went all-reprint!

But this is not the end of Hunt Bowman and Lyssa's adventures in Lost World at Wednesday Worlds of Wonder!

Nest week you'll see the only Lost World text feature ever published!

And after that, the Bronze Age reboot of the strip from Blackthorne's all-new Planet Comics!

Don't remember it?

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A Slight Case of Murder

and Other Stories

Illustrated by George Evans

Reading Room ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN "U.F.O's...Bunk or the Real Thing?"

From the final issue of one of comics' longest-running fantasy anthologies...

Art by "Lou Wahl" (Kurt Schaffenberger)

...comes a tale about an always-popular subject!

Written (as was almost everything at ACG) by editor Richard Hughes using a pseudonym, this cover-featured, never-reprinted story from Adventures into the Unknown #174 (1967) was illustrated by Bob Jenney, whose experience with sci-fi/fantasy included numerous movie adaptations for Dell Comics like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Frankenstein).

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics