Five typical 1950s planetary adventures in this anthology comic book. The artwork is pretty good and the writing is above average:
- "Invasion?" [listed as "Invaders from Alturo" on the cover] Was the satellite ,launched from Earth a mighty force for peace? Or was it an invitation for INVASION? Every six months a relief ship from Earth brought new personnel to be rotated with those on the distant satellite. But this time the ship carried green-skinned aliens who overpowered the satellite. Only Major Joe Vickers, who was stationed on a remote refueling station, was spared; everyone else had become mindless slaves to the aliens' intoxicating hypnotic gas. Can one man defeat the forces of Alturo that are hell-bent on conquering Earth?
- "The Sandhogs of Mars" "It was strictly a routine job. Earthmen were building a roadway across the blood-red sands for the Martians: a routine job, that is, until the grinding, jolting halt came so suddenly!" The sandhogs had hit a huge city that was buried under the Martian sands eons ago in an atomic explosion. Okay, so...atomic explosion...a city hidden for the surface for millennia ...eons of radiation...gives you deformed, Martian monsters, an entirely different type of Sand Hog! And they are not friendly. With the crew is a Martian girl, Urla, who is drop dead gorgeous, with a killer bod and tiny antennae. And there's a mutiny among the stranded Earthman and the mutineers are all uncouth shirtless brutes. Talk about your recipe for excitement!
- "Space Rangers: The Changelings" From previous adventures we have Space Rangers Flint Baker and Reef Ryan, now headed to the prison city of Bacarat, with Borlu, the Martian in charge of the mission, and a being with his own agenda. The Rangers are to pick up a group of parolees and take them back to Earth. But something is amiss. Borlu announces that these are not the prisoners that had originally been sent to the prison planet. It turns out that they are the Changelings from Arcturus, who have taken over the bodies of the prisoners. Borlu defeats the leader of the Changelings in a battle of mental powers and Earth is saved. Flint and Reef realize that any suspicions they had about Borlu were ill-founded.
- "Silence from Planetoid X" [How many times has a Planetoid X appeared in 1950s SF stories, films, and comic books? If I had a nickel...] "This was the year 2556. fifty years ago Arn Guro had led a band of hardy Earthpeople off to colonize a new world in outer space. For a long time he kept electron-radio contact with Earth. Then the messages became fewer and fewer. Now Earth's far-reaching communicators picked up nothing. There was only...SILENCE FROM PLANETOID X." Turns out that a rebellion had destroyed the planetoid's civilization and its people reverted back to a caveman-like existence. I'm not sure what the point of this story was.
- "Hi-Jack on Alpha-7!" A slave ship is intercepted by an interstellar patrol ship. the slave ship damaged badly, the cargo of slaves are jettisoned into space to die, and the slave ship limps to the nearest asteroid -- Alpha-7. Not much is known about Al[ph-7; it never joined the Galactic Union and was a civilization shrouded in secrecy; it is peopled by green, ant-like beings with four limbs -- not six -- and ears. The slavers hijack one of the ships from Alpha-7, and to their horror, they learn the secret of the asteroid.
A pretty good issue for the most part -- above average, I'd say. The aet was done by John Belcastro, Maurice Whitman, Bill Discount, Bill Benulis, and -- possibly -- Jim Mooney or Art Peddy. Every now and then I'd see the influence of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Ed Emshwiller, but that's just me.
Check it out:
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102103&comicpage=&b=i
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