Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Garden of Eden"

From the final issue (#3) of Race For the Moon comes a tale with spectacular Jack Kirby/Al Williamson artwork combining both realistic 1950s spacesuits and architecture and way-out technology and alien costuming.
Note that the female, Anizaar, looks a lot like Zsa Zsa Gabor in the then-current flick Queen of Outer Space, but in a kooler costume than the simple ones shown in the movie!  
Trivia: Zsa Zsa didn't play the title role! "The Queen" was Laurie Mitchell!
The story itself is a clever reworking of several science-fiction tropes common to the era (1958).
See of you can identify them all...

I dunno...while I'm certainly on the humans' side, that last panel sounded like a rather nasty threat...

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Face on Mars"

Perhaps the most famous story from Race for the Moon...

From #2. Art by Jack Kirby and Al Williamson. Script by Jack Kirby.

Why is it so famous?
When the Viking satellite reached Mars in 1976, it took this photo...

Remember, this was the era of Chariots of the Gods?, and to many, this was confirmation that aliens had either come thru the Solar System and stopped off not only on Earth, but Mars, as well, or were from Mars initially!
And, there were those who remembered this little comic tale from their childhood.
The truth was a bit more mundane. Click HERE for NASA's explanation.
There are those who say it's a cover-up, that there is life on Mars, and that "the face" is a relic of their existence.
Judge for yourself.

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Space Garbage"

Here's a tale that could be considered a "Space Western"...

...though it's actually from Harvey's Race to the Moon #3 in 1958, several years after Space Western Comics folded.

Prospectors, claim jumpers, gunmen, fist-fights, a "frontier" town...
Seems like a Western in space to me...
Art by two legends in the field; Jack Kirby and Al Williamson.
Script probably by Jack Kirby himself or Joe Simon.

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Saucer Man"

From the era when actual space travel was brand new...

 ...and flying saucers were probably real.  from Race for the Moon #3 (1958).

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson, an absolutely magnificent combo, rivaling Kirby's pairings with Wally Wood and Joe Sinnott!

Science fiction was in a state of flux as real-world science began catching up with our imaginations.
Instead of far-future sagas with warp-drive ships, tales of "the day after tomorrow", when we would make our first landings on the Moon and Mars came into vogue.
That didn't mean that visitors from beyond our Solar System were left out, but the technology we used to respond to them (friendly or not) was much closer to "present-day" (1950s) tech than ray-guns and photon drives.
It's sad that, now that we're actually in the era shown in these tales, we haven't done anything close to what they show...

Best of Reading Room RACE FOR THE MOON "Lunar Trap"

The 1950s, when we thought we'd be fighting with the Soviet Union over the Moon...

 

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson (who, along with fellow EC alumnus Reed Crandall, was doing a lot of work for Harvey at the time)!
Not sure who wrote it, but speculation is that Kirby himself scripted it.
Either way, a decent story with solid storytelling and magnificent rendering!