Reading Room MYSTERY IN SPACE "With His Head in the Stars"

DC's last attempt at an ongoing sci-fi anthology (except for an occasional one-shot)...

...was this revival of a classic title that, unfortunately, ended after only seven issues.

Writer Arnold Drake and artist Steve Ditko were both Silver Age pros who knew how to make a short story's surprise ending work, as this never-reprinted tale from DC's Mystery in Space #116 (1981) demonstrates.

Reading Room KIDNAPPED BY A SPACE SHIP "Part 6 - Laughing Death"

In the year 1970, two 'tweens and two adults ended up on an alien world...

...where both scientifically-advanced inhabitants and savages co-exist!

Out of the frying pan and into the fire...but science will provide an answer!

This tale from Treasure Chest V14N16 (1959) feels like a chapter from an old movie serial, moving from one peril to the next.
Note that the comic was a bi-weekly, so the readers had to wait two weeks, unlike movie audiences who only had a week between serial chapters at their local theatre!

Writer Frances Crandall followed the accepted concepts of space travel postulated by scientist Werner Von Braun and, illustrated by Chesley Bonestell in various books and magazines like Conquest of Space, and popularized in numerous 1950s movies like Destination Moon and Angry Red Planet!

Artist Fran Matera was also the art director/art editor for Treasure Chest, but is best known for his long run on the Steve Roper and Mike Nomad newspaper strip.

Design of the Week "DIARY SECRETS: OH, JIM, IF ONLY WE COULD!"

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another.
This week, put a "beach read" retro romance comic book cover on your beach blanket, t-shirt, canvas bag, e-reader, and other stuff!

Available on all sorts of kool kollectibles!

Enjoy...and make sure you have plenty of drinks.
Gotta keep hydrated in this heat!

Reading Room: SPACE PATROL "Gambling Den of Space"

Here's a tale featuring an evil Plutonian who runs a mobile gambling den...

...from a short-lived series about a pair of interstellar cops in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies!

(Does Kodi look like a prototype for Star Trek: the Next Generation's Ferengi?)

The multi-talented Basil Wolverton wrote, illustrated, lettered, and probably colored, this tale from Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 (1940).

It's one of the first of the "law enforcement in space" sub-genre that prospered in pulp and comic sci-fi in the 1930s and 40s, and carried over to TV in the 1950s.

Note: the 1950s TV/radio series Space Patrol was not based on Wolverton's strip.

(Could you imagine them trying to do the aliens in the gambling ship using 1950s-level makeup techniques?)

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Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Frozen Famine"

Let's visit Pluto, world of talking penguins...

...as stranded spaceman Norge Benson's existence may come to an end since the food supply on the frozen world seems to be running out!

As you can see, life on Pluto had its' charms back in 1942, as this never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #16 proves!

Artist Al Walker and whoever was scripting under the name "Olaf Bjorn" did a heck of a job with this whimsical tale, providing comedy relief amidst all the deadly-series tales of space emperors and alien invasions.