There is a bit of confusion about Major Mars, the futuristic hero depicted on the cover of this issue. In fact, Major Mars (who evidently made his only appearance in this issue of Exciting Comics) is in reality, a watered down version of Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future. The Major Mars story "The Beast Men of Jupiter" was adapted from Hamilton's first Captain Future story, Captain Future and the Space Emperor, which had been published two months prior in the first issue of Captain Future (Winter 1940). The artwork in the Major Mars comic book story is credited to Max Plaisted; no author is credited. Since Exciting Comics and Captain Future was published by Better Publications; both were among the titles edited by Mort Weisinger, a science fiction fan who had previously started, with Julius Schwartz, the first literary agency to concentrate on science fiction; their first client was Edmond Hamilton. When Weisinger left the agency to begin working for what would become Better publications, he brought Hamilton and many other clients with him to fill the many pages the pulp and comics industry demanded.
From Major Mars' first panel: "Major Mars, wizard of science and inventor of Grag, the robot, endowed, with a synthetic brain. Grag can think and talk! Born on the moon of Earthly parents, Major Mars is a one-man vigilance committee dedicated to the maintenance of peace among the planets!"
In the pulps, Captain Future is aided by the robot Grag, a shape-shifting android named Ortho, and the encased brain of an aged scientist, Simon Wright; Grag had been created by Simon Wright and Captain future's father Roger Newton. For the Major Mars adventure, only Grag assists our hero; Ortho and Simon Wright are not mentioned. Also, instead of Captain Future's semi-love interest Planetary Agent Joan Randall, we have Joan Jilson, the scantily-clad daughter of the governor of the Earth colony on Jupiter.
A mysterious villain dubbed the Space Emperor is turning the Earthmen on Jupiter into ape-like beasts, intending to take over the planet and rule it himself. He gets his powers from an ancient belt because there's no better way to explain how he is doing what he is doing. Major Mars wears a long-sleeved form-fitting shirt with astronomical symbols on the front, tight yellow Speedos (they are blue on the cover) that look like diapers, and calf-high red boots; Captain future, on the other hand, is often portrayed on the magazine covers wearing a full space suit -- either red or blue -- with a fish-dome helmet; no Speedos or diapers for him!
But wait, there's more!
Norman Daniels contributes a story about The Mask, which is a riff on Daniels' first Black Bat story from Black Book Detective magazine (July 1939).
And "The Black Inferno" gives us a tale of Jim Hatfield, Texas Ranger, the long-running pulp western hero created by A. Leslie Scott for Texas Rangers magazine, which ran from October 1936 to February 1958.
In addition, Sergeant Bill King takes on the Nazis in "In No-Man's-Land"; champion pistol shot "Gunner Thompsn" takes on two -- count 'em, two -- gangs of racketeers preying on the city in "Payoff in Lead"; Hy Hardy, the ace newsreel cameraman, makes his only comic book appearance in "Deep Sea Drama on Parade"; Dan Williams, Private Investigator, solve "The Forbes Case"; Klaus Nordling's Make-Believe Micky's flights of fancy keep getting interrupted; and Sam Brant (a house name used by Frank Gruber, Louis L'Amour, Syl MacDowell, and others) contributes a one-page text story of the Old West, "A Real Waddy."
A pretty good bargain for your dime, I'd say.
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