Though best-known as the creator of
Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner....
...Bill Everett's
first published strip featured this
Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...
...Bill Everett's first published strip featured this Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers clone...
In this premiere chapter, the series starts "mid-stream", indicating events crucial to the plot occurred before we join Skyrocket and his buddies.
The captions and dialogue balloons are heavier than normal as expositional dialogue is used to clue the readers in on the situations in the "world of the future".
You'll also note the use of upper and lower-case lettering, unique, even then.
Everett's unique inking style is already developing, though crude in comparison to his later work.
To his credit, Bill doesn't swipe layouts from Alex (Flash Gordon) Raymond, Hal (Tarzan/Prince Valiant) Foster, or any of the already-established masters of the graphic storytelling form as so many of his comic book contemporaries do!
He's not afraid to try his own "camera angles" to tell the story...not always succeeding, but experimenting and learning!
Trivia: Though the character debuted in this tale which appeared in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies #2 (1938), he was the cover feature of issue #1...
....where no sign of him can be found inside of the book!
No one knows why!
Trivia: Pop culture historian and prolific genre author Ron (
Star Hawks) Goulart utilized the name (but
nothing else from Everett's strip) for a hysterically-funny novel about 1940s sci-fi movie serials...
...which, while available on
Amazon (as seen below)
can't be found as this 1980 first edition with a kool cover by noted artist
Carl Lundgren!
Snarky Note: I bought it in 1980,when it came out!
That and Goulart's
very HTF
Tremendous Adventures of Bernie Wine...
...a PG-13/soft R mass-market novel about a young (and horny) comic book artist in NYC, are among my favorite Goulart books in my collection (and I have a
lot of them, including ghost-written standalones and series)!
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