Before Terminator!
Before Magnus: Robot Fighter!
Before BattleStar Galactica (reboot)!
...now witness the sheer terror of the original 1950s version!
The art for this 1952 one-shot title from Avon Comics is by Gene Fawcette, an Avon mainstay who did everything from horror to Westerns to romance.
If you compare the two tales, you'll see the robots are totally different in this version.
They're based on a still-popular toy first marketed in the early 1950s... Obie the Popping Martian/Panic Pete/Bug-Out Bob!
Who came up with the idea is unknown, and there was no attempt at an actual tie-in between the toy and the comic...
Beyond that, the most unusual aspect of this tale is the scripter...Walter Gibson, aka "Maxwell Grant", the primary writer of the legendary pulp character, The Shadow!
Yeah, that guy!
If you compare the two tales, you'll see the robots are totally different in this version.
They're based on a still-popular toy first marketed in the early 1950s... Obie the Popping Martian/Panic Pete/Bug-Out Bob!
Who came up with the idea is unknown, and there was no attempt at an actual tie-in between the toy and the comic...
Gibson, a trained magician-turned writer did very little "hard" sci-fi during his long career...except in 1951-54, where he edited (and wrote under several pseudonoms) most of the contents of Charlton's short-lived pulp magazine (only two issues) Fantastic Science Fiction, as well as Charlton's Space Adventures comic for its' first eleven issues and co-creating and scripting Spurs Jackson and his Space Vigilantes for Charlton's newly-created Space Western Comics!
(Yes, it really existed, as shown HERE!)
He also wrote this comic and several other one-shots for Avon Comics.
(Yes, it really existed, as shown HERE!)
He also wrote this comic and several other one-shots for Avon Comics.
For the record, Gibson also wrote two volumes of prose adaptations of Twilight Zone TV episodes (with a couple of original tales mixed in), but none of those were sci-fi.
BTW, while this was the only tale adapted into b/w in the 1970s, there were two more chapters of the man vs funky robot saga!
You'll see them next Wednesday and the Wednesday after that...
BTW, while this was the only tale adapted into b/w in the 1970s, there were two more chapters of the man vs funky robot saga!
You'll see them next Wednesday and the Wednesday after that...
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