Reading Room WORLDS UNKNOWN "Arena" Part 1

It's the sci-fi tale so nice, they adapted it twice...

...first on Outer Limits, then, two years later, on Classic Star Trek!

Will human ingenuity, cunning, and strength triumph?

Or will the alien win?

Be here TOMORROW for the answer!

This extremely-faithful adaptation was created by writer Gerry Conway, penciler John Buscema, and inker Dick Giordano.

The short story it's based on, by Fredric Brown, first appeared in Street & Smith's Astounding Science Fiction (June, 1944).

It was voted one of the Top 20 Science Fiction Stories before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers Association and included in the must-have (if you're a serious sci-fi fan) anthology Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol 1: 1929-1964...which is still in print.

You can read the taut tale of terror HERE.

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Reading Room CAPTAIN ROCKET "Monstroids of the Underworld"

The final (in more ways than one) Captain Rocket tale...

is not an outer space adventure, but an inner space one!

Wow!

We had an atomic war in 1962...and nobody told us?

And Cap's adventures take place eons (or many millions of years) from now?

Both writer and artist(s) of the never-reprinted final story from PL's Captain Rocket #1 (1951) are unknown to everyone, even the eagle-eyed crew at the Grand Comics Database.

Captain Rocket didn't have a second issue, and the character never reappeared, though his name has been used for video games and halloween costumes!

Little is known about PL Publishing, one of the least successful comic publishers in history, lasting less than a year and producing only eight titles, none of which ran more than three issues!

Happy 98th Birthday to Jack "King" Kirby!

"It is said that when Man reaches The Edge of the Universe, he'll find 'Jack Kirby' signed in the lower right-hand corner."

Reading Room CAPTAIN ROCKET "Meets the Mind Stealers"

As we pointed out yesterday...

There were three Captain Rocket stories in his one and only issue from the short-lived PL Publishing, but only two were comics!

The third was a text feature!

There are no traceable credits for either the cover (which omits Cap's usual, rather dorky, helmet in favor of a transparent one) nor the story.

And here's a weird note: Though this tale involves Saturnians, the little vignette in the upper left of the cover warns us..."We MUST prepare for an invasion from MARS!"

Since there are no Martians in either of the comic stories, was the tiny Cap head shot referring to the aliens in the text feature, who might have been written as Martians, but changed by the editor into Saturnians (perhaps because he felt Martians were too much of a cliche)?

Or was there another, unpublished, Captain Rocket tale that got bounced into the never-printed second issue?

The answers are lost in the mists of time...