Monday Madness SPACE PATROL COMICS "Push Button Tyrant"

Ziff-Davis' Space Patrol comic featured stories based on the TV series...

...and unrelated one-shot tales, like this never-reprinted "Cold War of the Future" story from #1 (1952).

 

Boy, they were obsessed in the 1950s that the Commies would win the Cold War!
The writer and artist are officially unknown, but I see a great deal of Carmine Infantino's penciling style in a number of panels.

EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE Cover Gallery

From 1946 through 1949, Dell produced an annual Easter with Mother Goose...

...with all-new stories and art by Walt (Pogo) Kelly!

We've presented a number of the stories (most never-reprinted since the 1940s) HERE.

Space Hero Saturdays BUSTER CRABBE "and the Maid of Mars"

Though Buster Crabbe starred in more Westerns than any other genre...

 ...he's best-known to the public at large as the movie serial heroes Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers!
Here's a tale from his own comic that combines both Western and space hero concepts!
Note that Buster is actor Buster Crabbe, not "Buster Crabbe as a character like Billy West" or somesuch in the tale, and it's assumed that he's actually able to do anything he's shown doing in his films.

The amazing art for this tale from Eastern Color's Buster Crabbe Comics #5 (1952) was by Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, and Frank Frazetta, who were astounding comics fans with similar quality work at EC Comics on Weird Science and Weird Fantasy!

The cover was by Frazetta, who was also doing covers featuring Buck Rogers (whom Buster had played in the movies) for Famous Funnies, as well as illustrating the White Indian strip and covers for Ghost Rider! so he had handled both sci-fi and Western genres before doing this mixed-genre piece!

Check out our Flash, Buck, Brick and other Space Hero goodies at...

Thrilling Fantasy Tales

Friday Holiday Fun EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Goldilocks and the Baby Bear's Basket"

Here's a classic fairy tale everybody knows...

...adapted for the Easter season by Walt (Pogo) Kelly!

A never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics: Easter with Mother Goose #140 (1947) demonstrates how Walt Kelly could take even a tale you didn't think would work in this context and make it seasonally-appropriate!

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The "Star Wars" Defense System...in 1962...60 Years Ago!

You think Ronald Reagan was the first US President to think of it?

From Drift Marlo #1 (1962) Art by Tom Cooke

In the early 1960s, we already had satellites in orbit that would have detected missile launches from the "damn Communists"!

Code-named MiDAS for Missile Defense Alarm System, the plan was to eventually put anti-missile missiles in orbit that could supplement land and sea-based defenses.

As it was, a number of scanner-equipped satellites were orbited, but the crude sensors kept mistaking other heat sources (including sunlight reflected from heavy cloud cover) as missile launches, so the plan was eventually abandoned...but replaced with a more accurate system.

The project was one of the central elements of an entry featuring the Silver Age character Drift Marlo: Space Detective at our "brother" RetroBlog Crime & Punishment™.

Check out Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE!
So when you think the Russkies are ahead of us, don't worry.
We have more up our sleeves than you may realize!

Here's some more fact-based feature pages from the Drift Marlo series showing the future as we hoped it would be in 1962...

Who says comics ain't educational?