Even when I was 6 years old, in 1960, I was clear on the fact that Space Ranger was only the second-best spaceman in the DC universe.
Over in Mystery in Space, Adam Strange had the advantage of stories by Gardner Fox and art by Carmine Infantino (who could not only make you believe the unbelievable, but make you believe the unbelievable to be sleek, tempered and elegant).
Space Ranger, the lead feature in Tales of the Unexpected, was delivered with the workmanlike art of Bob Brown and goofy-fun stories by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney.
DC’s two spaceman superheroes — one operating in the present, the other in the future — were actually created to be rival concepts and placed with rival editorial teams.
This house ad spotlights Tales of the Unexpected 55. In The Ghost Creatures of Phobos, Allied Solar Enterprises exec Rick Starr dons his Space Ranger disguise and, with his cute shape-shifting little pal Cryll, investigates reports of ghostly menaces on the Martian moon Phobos. The phantoms of monsters and Wellsian war machines turn out to be images reflected from the moon’s past for criminal purposes.
In Mystery in Space 83’s The Weapon That Swallowed Men, the green, cube-headed alien Vantor invade Rann with a weapon that turns people into gas.
“Carmine Infantino’s art is beautiful in this tale,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “An early scene shows ruins of Sumuru, the first city on Rann. The walls of the ruins are made up of numerous irregularly sized rectangular blocks... They form an imaginative and unusual variation on Infantino's Art Deco architecture.”
And in House of Mystery 104’s The Seeing-Eye Man, a scientist’s “retriever ray” pulls an alien spaceship to a crash landing on Earth. He’s pressed into service leading the temporarily blinded, telepathic alien Zod, and cleverly thwarts the alien’s plan to conquer Earth.
Don DeLuca wrote: It's amazing what a ten-year mind can absorb and remember to this day! Great sci-fi tales that thrill my imagination.
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman wrote: I was never a fan of Space Ranger but always loved Adam Strange. Fox's stories just seemed more adult and Infantino's art was so sleek and beautiful especially when inked by Anderson. By and large, the SF stories under Julie Schwartz were heads and shoulders above the quality under Jack Schiff and his assistants. Schwartz' stories could be as absurd as anything else published by DC-and often were!-but the polish on his books just made everything seem more interesting and mature. Just look at the difference between the aliens on the Unexpected cover and Infantino's green guys on MIS! (The alien on HOM doesn't look to silly though).
ReplyDeleteAfter Schwartz gave up MIS, Space Ranger became the more prominent character in the book and Adam took a back seat before vanishing. Those later stories were no great shakes!
Mark Amundsen wrote: I want to live in Infantino’s Central City. It was a modern cityscape with room to breathe. His version of Gotham was nice too — maybe too nice — but the buildings looked older, as would be the case with an Eastern vs. Midwestern city.
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