Comics, Books, Videos

SOME PERSONAL MEMORIES

As various Atlanta TV stations became affiliated with the networks, and increased their power so that their signals could be received in Athens, Georgia, I was able to watch CAPTAIN VIDEO and TOM CORBETT fairly regularly, and later ROD BROWN. I didn't like SPACE PATROL and rarely watched it; it was difficult to pick up clearly anyway. I never even heard of the BUCK ROGERS, FLASH GORDON, or ROCKY JONES TV series (although of course I watched the Buster Crabbe serials based on Buck and Flash over and over). I saw a few episodes of MEN INTO SPACE but didn't like it. To put all this in perspective, my age in the interval 1950-57 was 10 to 17; I graduated from high school and started at the local university in 1957, in fact.

After the death of Al Hodge in the mid-1970s I tried to write down what few flashes of memory survived 19-odd years after my viewing of these programs. Here are some of them:

CAPTAIN VIDEO: I have more memories of this program than any other. The Captain and the Ranger wore plastic space helmets just like us kids were able to have after sending in a box top and some coins. Mine had a blue top, white sides and a clear visor, which hinged up at the top.

Once, the Captain and the Ranger were exploring an airless asteroid and when the Captain bent down to pick up something from the surface, his visor flew open! Al Hodge didn't bat an eye, but he kept his hand carefully on the visor for the rest of the scene, with an ad-lib to the Ranger that his helmet seal was malfunctioning.

I also vividly recall a sequence during which the Captain and a Han Solo-Princess Leia-type couple were exploring a giant space ark. Al Hodge needed a vacation, or medical leave, or something, so during the exploration he wandered into a dreaded stasis beam! And there he remained for more than a week, while his companions took over the adventures, before he was discovered and released. (A camera shot of a large still photo of Video in the throes of the beam was cut to, for a moment each day, to remind us kids where he was.)

We kids also liked that the hand weapon of choice for the Captain during most of the 1952-55 period was the good old Buck Rogers Sonic Ray Blaster, which all us kids had bought sometime between 1947 and 1952 at the nearest Kresses or Woolworths. When he fired this blaster at a bad guy, the bad guy's chest often erupted in a burst of flame and smoke!

I can also remember several sequences when Video and the Ranger, or Video alone, had to climb a sheer vertical cliff or tower. This looked pretty good and was done in the studio by having the actors crawl on their bellies along a line of orange crates, shot by a camera turned over on one side, and with a fixed video matte of cliff or tower obscuring the crates.

Buzz Corry had lots of controls on his space ship Terra V, and Tom Corbett and the other space cadets had a few levers and knobs on the control deck and power deck of the giant rocket cruiser Polaris, but Captain Video's giant rocket Galaxy II had no visible controls at all. As viewed from a considerable distance, Video and the Ranger sat in a kind of large greenhouse cockpit with huge arching framework, and neither controls nor even chairs were visible. The camera taking this view swayed slowly back and forth and up and down, to give an illusion of space flight that was pretty convincing to us kids.

The first Captain Video, Richard Coogan, didn't make much of an impression on me. He frequently fumbled lines, and never managed to look really serious about what was going on; indeed, young Don Hastings generally stitched the scenes together with an unflappable seriousness and a gift for totally-in-character ad-libs. When Al Hodge, whose stern and dedicated version of Video seldom ever cracked a smile, took over the role, it was hard to say who was the most unflappable, Video or the Ranger. Considering the disasters that regularly befell the live TV broadcasts, actors needed superhuman will-power to stay in character and more or less at the right spot in the studio and in the script at the right time.

SPACE PATROL: About all I can remember is scenes of two women in very short skirts climbing a ladder, sometimes facing away from the camera, sometimes facing toward it, a nice view either way. [When I got to see SPACE PATROL kinescopes in the 1980s, I found the girls were Carol and Tonga. Interestingly, in these kinescoped programs (1953-55), Tonga was not in evidence and Carol was never shown except from the waist up, so I guess there had been some parential complaints!] I remember as a kid, I disliked the faintly campy tone of the program, especially comic relief sidekick, Cadet Happy. In my more tolerant old age, I actually relish the antics of good old Lyn Osborn in this role.

ROD BROWN OF THE ROCKET RANGERS: About all I can remember from this show is the opening, in which a rocket blastoff was achieved with a model and special effects. I have no idea what was used for the exhaust, but it looked very effective... perhaps it was strongly backlit water.

TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET: Despite the fact that I watched this show religiously from about 1951 until it went off the air, I have very few memories of specific scenes. I can recall how disappointed I was when Roger Manning was replaced by the very unlikeable and unfunny T. J. Thistle (Jack Grimes). I can also recall a scene in which space pirates have taken over the Polaris and Tom, wearing a space suit, appears in front of the familiar Polaris control deck circular viewport (courtesy of the program's video matting technique) to confront them somehow. I can also remember the program (which I now also have on kinescope) in which T. J. brings a 1950s reel-to-reel tape recorder with his "favorite music" aboard the Polaris, to the universal condemnation of the rest of the crew.

Return to Top

VIDEO SOURCES (historical interest only)

This is all out-of-date information from 2011, presented here for historical purposes only. A Note on Video Quality:

Programs such as TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET, or CAPTAIN VIDEO, or SPACE PATROL were broadcast live. They are preserved today only as "kinescope recordings," sound 16 mm films made directly off the face of a very tiny, very bright image tube. On the other hand programs such as ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER, or FLASH GORDON, or MEN INTO SPACE, were filmed programs; that is, they were photographed directly as 16 mm sound films, which are their original form. DuMont's rarely-seen Electronicam system also produced a 16 mm film, using a film camera optically incorporated within the video cameras; this system was not used for CAPTAIN VIDEO, however. (Some live programs by the mid-1950s were being kinescoped on 35 mm film, and the resulting image quality can be stunningly good.)

In my experience, kinescope recordings are quite sharp; the only problems experienced are occasional slight distortions at the top of the image where the kinescope display was not properly adjusted, or fading and similar deterioration of the emulsion of the 50-plus-year-old positive 16 mm prints. As for the programs filmed directly on 16 mm, they should be as razor sharp as the format allows.

However, when you obtain video tapes of these programs from dealers, you will note a wide range of image deterioration; not all dealers are honest about the nature of this deterioration. Briefly, the situation is that if what the dealer sells is a good copy of a master tape film-chained directly from the 16 mm positive print, the image is far sharper than what we saw live on TV in the early 1950s, in most cases. But, alas, dealers sell tapes that are often many generations removed from the original master tape. Often what you get is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, with someone inexpertly using a so-called "enhancer" (which actually deteriorates the image further, in most cases) at every stage. We have seen a few video tapes in which the image appears to be carved in bas-relief out of mahogany, so faint and noise-swamped is the video signal!

When we first started buying video tapes of live early 1950s TV shows in the mid 1980s, most dealers were also film collectors, and the tapes they were selling were made directly from the 16 mm prints they personally owned. These dealers, such as VIDEO YESTERYEAR, THE FANG, CINEMACABRE, and others, seem to have all but disappeared today. In some cases, such as the mid 1980s offerings of NOSTALGIA MERCHANTS, the resulting cassettes were completely professional, duped from 3/4 inch video masters made directly from the original films.

As time went on, we started seeing dealers who had recorded programs off cable TV, and sold amateur-quality dupes of the recordings they made in this way. [A fair number of SPACE CADET and SPACE PATROL episodes were run on several cable TV shows, such as NIGHTFLIGHT, in the mid 1980s. Filmed programs such as MEN INTO SPACE have been rerun almost endlessly since the 1960s.] Today, nearly 20 years after selling of video cassettes of 1950s TV shows became common, the range of video quality is nearly beyond description.

What we provide, therefore, is a video quality rating. This rating refers ONLY to the quality of the video transfer from the original film elements, as it comes to you. The ratings are based on viewing of a fairly large number of video cassettes from the dealers listed, so that we believe they can be considered typical of the dealers' offerings. These ratings are not in any way intended as criticisms of the dealers, who after all can only sell what they can obtain to sell.

THE RATINGS:

A-- Professional quality; professionally duped from masters film-chained directly from original prints.

B-- A good-quality amateur copy of an A-rated tape. This is the kind of copy you might make yourself for a friend, if you knew what you were doing. Good copies of tapes made directly from TV transmissions can fall within this rating, also.

C-- A copy usually many generations removed either from a B-rated tape, or from an original made directly from a TV broadcast, usually with enhancer problems to boot. Such copies are still watchable, but sometimes can be quite frustrating to view.

D-- A copy so many generations removed from a B-rated tape that both audio and video signals have suffered noise to the extent that watching the tape is a chore.

Return to Top

GRAPEVINE VIDEO
P.O. Box 46161
Phoenix, Arizona 85063

Offers 12 volumes of SPACE PATROL, two shows per tape, $9.95 per tape. Most of the titles as listed are garbled, so it is difficult to tell just what is on each tape.

Also has a couple of ROCKY JONES triplet-episodes, like every known public domain video source. (Snore...)

Quality rating: B.

Return to Top

ENGLEWOOD ENTERTAINMENT
10917 Winner Road
Independence, MO 64052

Back in the 1970s a collector named Wade Williams acquired the rights to almost all surviving 1950s sf TV kinescopes, and also obtained good prints of most 1950s theatrical sf and fantasy films. His first "1950s space hero" video release, in 1999, was TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET: THE INVASION FROM MERCURY, 75 minutes for $19.95 plus postage. Check out the web site here and point at Atomic TV.

This tape contains only 6 of the first 12 SPACE CADET episodes, so it is quite difficult to follow the story. Here's what is and is not there:

Monday, October 2, 1950. First day at Space Academy for Tom, Astro and Roger. A rocket from Mercury crashes at the Academy Spaceport, killing the Solar Guard officer aboard. [On the tape.]
Wednesday, October 4. Tom sees a mysterious figure crawl from the wreckage. It's a man from a hitherto-unknown race inhabiting the Dark Side of Mercury. The Polaris unit is formed, and Tom and Astro are unhappy to be matched up with the arrogant Roger. [Not on the tape.]
Friday, October 6. Captain Strong briefs the cadets on a mission to Venus. Communication has been lost with the Venus Space Station. Captain Strong (Michael Harvey) forgets all his lines! Roger is appointed senior cadet. [Not on the tape.]
Monday, October 9. The cadets blast off for Venus in the Polaris for the first time, and promptly run afoul of a rogue comet. [On the tape.]
Wednesday, October 11. The Polaris is trapped by Correlli's comet. [Not on the tape.]
Friday, October 13. The Polaris escapes from the comet and continues on to Venus. [On the tape.]
Monday, October 16. First appearance of Edward Bryce as Captain Strong. The cadets arrive on Venus, and find the Space Station deserted. Tom wanders away to investigate a distant light and is captured by a Mercurian. [On the tape.]
Wednesday, October 18. Astro disobeys orders in rescuing Tom and capturing the Mercurian, just as a war fleet from Mercury arrives. [On the tape.]
Friday, October 20; Monday, October 23; Wednesday, October 25. Captain Strong, Tom, Roger, and Astro have various adventures with the Mercurian invaders, ending with Captain Strong and Astro being captured and sentenced to immediate execution! [None of these are on the tape.]
Friday, October 27, last show in the Mercurian sequence. Tom uses a Mercurian radio jammer to jam the chest TV cameras that the light-intolerant Dark-Siders have to use on Venus, thus blinding all the invaders. Captain Strong and the cadets capture the Mercurian invasion leader, and peace is made. [On the tape.]

Two tapes of SPACE PATROL have recently become available from this source, a compilation of the "Amazons of Cydonia" episodes, and a compliation of the "Giants of Pluto 3" episodes, each at about $19.95.

Quality rating: A.

Return to Top

CAPTAIN BIJOU
P.O. Box 87
Toney, AL 35773--0087

When last checked, CAPTAIN BIJOU's on-line catalog listed 8 ROCKY JONES SPACE RANGER compilations, at $12.95 per cassette, the two Englewood SPACE PATROL releases, the two Englewood SPACE CADET releases, two CAPTAIN VIDEO compilations, two CAPTAIN Z-RO compilations, and three cassettes containing two episodes each of the German FLASH GORDON, at prices ranging from $12.95 to $19.95 per cassette. Neither in the on-line catalog nor in the currently rarely-issued printed catalog is there much information about episode titles; for some cassettes there is no information at all.

You can also find 11 volumes of the painfully dull Ziv SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, and the 4 volumes of Englewood compilations of TALES OF TOMORROW.

The number of vintage TV episodes available from CAPTAIN BIJOU on videocassette has evidently been cut way back currently, compared to printed catalogs from 5 to 10 years ago. In those days, "Captain Bijou" (aka Earl Blair, formerly head of NOSTALGIA MERCHANTS) obtained tapes from a huge variety of sources, and quality could range from A to D. For the old TV show cassettes still available, it seems to range from at least A to C, despite the cutbacks.

Return to Top

STARTIME VIDEO
PO Box 1058
Lewisville, TX 75067

Offers six different SPACE PATROL compilations on video, usually with 4 to 5 half-hour programs per tape, $19.95 each plus postage, $3 for first tape, $1 for each additional. Money orders only.

Quality rating: B minus to C.

Return to Top

SWAPSALE

Currently, this on-line source of collectibles offers a large selection of 1950s TV programs on videotape. There are 30 volumes of SPACE PATROL material, often with 4 1/2-hour programs per cassette! Each volume is accurately described as regards contents; read the descriptions closely, however, since some programs are duplicated from volume to volume. The original source of much of the Swapsale material seems to have been the personal collection of director Dik Darley. There are even some early 15-minute episodes with Glenn Denning as Kit Corry, taking Happy on his first flight!

Swapsale also offers two volumes (5 1/2-hour programs) of CAPTAIN VIDEO, two volumes of CAPTAIN Z-RO (5 1/2-hour programs), three volumes of the German FLASH GORDON (9 1/2-hour episodes), six volumes of MEN INTO SPACE (3 to 4 1/2-hour episodes per cassette), six volumes of ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER (18 1/2-hour episodes, total), four volumes of SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE (16 1/2-hour programs total), four episodes of the British puppet show SPACE PATROL (aka PLANET PATROL), an early Gerry Anderson production, and 4 volumes of (usually 15-minute CBS and ABC) TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET episodes-- the first two volumes have the "Mercurian Invasion" storyline and "Runaway Asteroid" storyline, the third has the "Jim Masters, Space Pirate" storyline, and the fourth a couple of stray episodes in the "Deadly Force Beam" storyline, plus some assorted 1/2-hour programs from DuMont and NBC days, including "Runaway Rocket," "Mystery of the Missing Mail Ship," and "Pursuit of the Deep Space Projectile."

Cost is about $12.95 per cassette, or $12 if you don't mind a plain box.

Quality rating: generally C.

GOLD EDITIONS: As of Spring 2003, Swapsale has returned to the good old days when video releases were mastered directly from the original kinescopes. Check out this link for full details on these special "Gold Editions." At present there are three volumes of SPACE PATROL and one volume of TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET. Not only is the video quality of these releases sharper than the original live broadcasts of the early 1950s, but also they feature specific programs never released in the home video market in any form before.

Return to Top

OTHER SOURCES--

Space Ranger Mike Elmo says he has had good luck with the following Internet tape dealers in obtaining early 1950s TV material. We haven't seen samples from any of these sources except Sinister Cinema, which generally offers material of video quality rating B, so can offer no further comments nor ratings.

http://www.tvideo.com
http://www.moviesunlimited.com
http://www.sinistercinema.com
http://www.hollywoodsattic.com
http://www.cinemaclassics.com
http://www.moviecraft.com

Mike says, "These sites have a nice selection of all our shows!"

Return to Top

BOOKS RELEVANT TO THE 1950s SPACE HEROES:

NONFICTION, NOSTALGIA, REFERENCE:

BEST BOOK ON THE 1950s SPACE SERIES

No contest, no competition, the best book is THE GREAT TELEVISION HEROES, by Don Glut and Jim Harmon (Doubleday, 1975). Long out of print, this book is quite easy to find in the used book market or in large libraries. Chapter 1, "Zap!", is entirely devoted to Captain Video (8 pages!), Tom Corbett (6 pages), and Space Patrol (9 pages). Chapter 5 is devoted to the premiums the various programs' sponsors offered. The information is largely accurate, although the authors don't take note of the big change that occurred in Captain Video in 1952-3, when well-known science fiction authors began to do all the scripts.

THE BOX: AN ORAL HISTORY OF TELEVISION, 1920-1961, by Jeff Kisseloff (Viking, 1995) has some nice stories about CAPTAIN VIDEO, including the Captain's unexpected encounter with a real elephant, and the decision to obtain scripts from science fiction authors, rather than hacks like Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, who were writing for almost every New-York based TV and radio show, from HOWDY DOODY to SPACE CADET. It contains many wonderful stories about the unique days of live TV.

CHILDRENS' TELEVISION--THE FIRST THIRTY FIVE YEARS, 1946-1981, by George W. Woolery, is a huge reference book published in two volumes in 1983, by Scarecrow Press, and can be found in large libraries. It represents a lot of research into magazines and newspaper articles of the 1949-59 era, concerning the space hero shows, and the important shows such as CAPTAIN VIDEO, SPACE CADET and SPACE PATROL are given long writeups. But there are many careless misprints, and quite a bit of outright misinformation, which greatly damage its reliability as a reference. It is fun to thumb through the book, though, and see how many of the hundreds of programs listed from 1949-59 you can remember!

SATURDAY MORNING TV, by Gary H. Grossman (Dell, 1981) can also be found at large libraries and large used book stores. It has nice photos, and interviews with such notables as Frankie Thomas and Ed Kemmer, but otherwise it is so error-riddled as to be virtually worthless. [Roaring Rockets infallible "researcher" rule: when a book lists a "researcher" on the title page, in addition to the author, this means that the author knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the topics "covered" in the book, and that very little is gotten right. We have seen dozens of examples of this rule, with no exceptions known.]

AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION TELEVISION SERIES OF THE 1950s by Patrick Lucanio and Gary Colville (McFarland, NC, 1998). What a strange, lopsided book this is! More than 60 pages are devoted to "The Adventures of Superman," which is really not an SF TV series, despite the main character being from another planet. But, continuing in alphabetical order, "Atom Squad" gets 1 page (!), "Buck Rogers" gets 1-1/2 pages, "Captain Video" gets 6 pages, "Commando Cody" gets 6-1/2 pages and a partial episode list, "Flash Gordon" gets 8 pages with a partial episode list, "Men Into Space" gets 10 pages with an episode list, "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" gets about 11 pages with an episode list and credits, "Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers" gets 3 pages with titles of episodes listed, "Space Patrol" gets about 9 pages with a partial list of the episodes of the last two seasons only, and "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet," gets about 11 pages, with some episodes listed for the DuMont and NBC runs (two final seasons). There is a bit of info here and there which I hadn't seen elsewhere, and much of the info is accurate. Most libraries have these overpriced McFarland books, which are seemingly made to be sold only to libraries, rather than individuals with too much money and too little sense.

THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND HORROR TELEVISION SERIES-- A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THE FIRST 50 YEARS, 1946-1996, by Alan Morton (Self published, 1997). This massive paperback has in excess of 980 pages, and is virtually illegible throughout due to choice of a reduced typewriter font that looks like "letter gothic." "Atom Squad" gets 1-1/2 pages with a partial story-arc list, the only one I've seen. "Buck Rogers" gets 1/2 page with a partial episode list. "Captain Video" gets 4 pages, with a partial story-arc list. "Flash Gordon" gets 2 pages with an episode list. "Men Into Space" gets 3 pages with an episode list. "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" gets 1 page, with a partial episode list. "Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers" gets 3 pages with an episode list. "Space Patrol" gets 11 pages with an episode list. There are a few things here not seen elsewhere, and much of the info is accurate. This book is out of print, but can usually be found in libraries. 2nd hand copies can sometimes be found on eBay or Amazon here.

There is now a follow-up volume which presents all of the above info, along with much more:

THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEFANTASY: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION AND HORROR TELEVISION SERIES OF THE 1940s AND 1950s, by Alan Morton (Self published, 2021) In reading through this well-illustrated volume, I continually shook my head in contemplating the vast amount of tireless research that went into it. If you are already an expert in the era, and familiar with many of the programs, you will notice a very few errors, such as misspellings of the names of actors, but these in no significant way affect the accuracy of the discussions of the various series. Since many of these series are essentially lost except for a few individual episodes available on various difficult-to-find DVD collections, or even with no known surviving episodes at all, this book serves an important function in preserving what is known about them, often in surprising detail.

The volume covers not just US series from the late 1940s to about 1960, but also British and Canadian series broadcast during the same time period. Just considering early 1950s space adventure programs, I was there as a kid, aged 10 in 1950, and in those days I was a great fan of CAPTAIN VIDEO (DuMont) and TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET (CBS, ABC, DuMont and NBC!). But I never got to see more than a few moments of SPACE PATROL, or ROD BROWN OF THE ROCKET RANGERS, and I had never even heard of the syndicated, filmed series ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER until about 1980. The discussion of CAPTAIN VIDEO found here is the longest and most detailed I have ever seen anywhere, and illustrated with photos many of which were completely new to me. There are a huge number of rare photos throughout the volume.

I can recommend this book to anyone with any degree of interest in this pioneering era of broadcast TV, when almost all programs were broadcast live, in real time, just as the actors performed the script. To do often stunning special effects under these conditions, as the space adventure series required, was an adventure in itself. They were done live on SPACE PATROL and SPACE CADET, prefilmed on 16 mm on CAPTAIN VIDEO. Here is a time capsule that genuinely returns you to those "thrilling days of yesteryear." I recommend snapping up a copy while they are still available and on sale. It is available on Amazon here or directly from the author. For more information, go here.

JUVENILE SERIES FICTION:

  A set of juvenile series books featuring TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET (link1, link2) was published in 1952-56 by Grossett & Dunlap, and the books were clearly best sellers in their day. I have seen few used book stores that don't have a couple of copies. The books were issued in two formats, with dust jackets over a blueish-greenish binding (similar to the color of the Space Cadet uniforms), and without dust jackets, in the so-called "pictorial cover" format. In both formats, the endpapers feature a ripoff of two well-known Chesley Bonestell paintings, and an incredibly poorly drawn version of the Space Cadet emblem of rocket and lightning bolt.

The novels are STAND BY FOR MARS (1952), DANGER IN DEEP SPACE, ON THE TRAIL OF THE SPACE PIRATES and THE SPACE PIONEERS (all 1953), THE REVOLT ON VENUS and TREACHERY IN OUTER SPACE (both 1954), SABOTAGE IN SPACE (1955) and THE ROBOT ROCKET (1956). The actual authors of these novels remain a mystery despite a lot of research; the house name "Cary Rockwell" is used for all.

A WARNING! Under no circumstances should background information about Tom Corbett, the other space cadets, the Space Academy and the Solar Guard be taken from STAND BY FOR MARS, which "introduces" the Academy and the characters. Whoever the author was, he was clearly provided with almost no background information about the TV series. I have often suspected the author of this volume was British-- the cadets take frequent tea breaks (!) and there is no grasp of "American" conversational dialogue. The (usually uncredited) illustrators also were initially not supplied with reference photos from the TV series. For whatever reason, the first author felt free to make up essentially all the details as he went along, and they are in essentially every case inconsistent with the TV series continuity. However, later novels in the series are not only based fairly closely on actual TV or radio scripts (for instance, ROBOT ROCKET is based partly on "The Space Projectile," broadcast on April 30, 1955), but also seem to be by several different authors, who are much more familiar with the TV series and the personalities of the Polaris unit cadets. Jan Merlin thinks these later novels were written by some of the SPACE CADET TV and radio script writers. All of these books were simultaneously published in England and were quite popular there, although SPACE CADET was never broadcast on TV in England. The British versions of the books had identical text, but different illustrators. It is interesting that the name of the Commander of the Space Academy is different in the novels; since Commander Arkwright was the only character name borrowed directly from SPACE CADET by Robert Heinlein, there were probably legal considerations involved in the change of name in the juvenile novels.

 

There were very, very few juvenile series books in the 1950s with a science-fictional framework, although this period saw the greatest growth in the popularity of science fiction since it was first named as a literary genre in the mid 1920s. Among the few other series:

 

   THE LUCKY STARR series by "Paul French" (Isaac Asimov). DAVID STARR, SPACE RANGER (1952), LUCKY STARR AND THE PIRATES OF THE ASTEROIDS (1953), LUCKY STARR AND THE OCEANS OF VENUS (1954), LUCKY STARR AND THE BIG SUN OF MERCURY (1956), LUCKY STARR AND THE MOONS OF JUPITER (1957) and LUCKY STARR AND THE RINGS OF SATURN (1958) offer Asimov's take on the Space Cadet genre. These may have been Doubleday's only 1950s juvenile series, and they are still readily available in multiple paperback editions-- have a look at any large used paperback store. Asimov is not a writer anyone would associate with the space opera and space action genres, and these novels are far from his best work, but still worth a look.

 

   THE TOM SWIFT JR. series by "Victor Appleton, Jr." takes the son of the orginal 1910s boy inventor, Tom Swift, into the space age. There are 33 books in the series, beginning with TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB (1954) and ending with THE GALAXY GHOSTS (1971!). Tom, Jr., moves into space in TOM SWIFT AND HIS ROCKET SHIP in 1954, and soon has a large manned space station, a lunar base, and is battling asteroid pirates! These books, like almost all Stratemeyer Syndicate productions for Grossett and Dunlap, are written by poorly paid ghost writers from banal, repetitive and unimaginative outlines, and deteriorate from poorly written to atrociously written as the series drags on for nearly 20 years, while Tom, Jr. remains a perpetual 18 years old. Early volumes in this series suffered so many reprints that they can be found at nearly every used book store.

 

   THE DIG ALLEN series by Joseph Greene was published by Golden Press in 1959-62. In order, the novels are THE FORGOTTEN STAR, CAPTIVES IN SPACE, JOURNEY TO JUPITER, TRAPPERS OF VENUS, ROBOTS OF SATURN, and LOST CITY OF URANUS. Greene was one of the creators of the SPACE CADET TV series, although as far as I know he never wrote any actually broadcast TV or radios scripts, or any of the juvenile series books. The Dig Allen series gives him a chance to work in the universe he co-created for SPACE CADET, and is well worth a look by fans of SPACE CADET. The books are not as common as the TOM CORBETT volumes, but not that rare either. The books are surprisingly somber and low-key for juvenile SF, with LOST CITY being a real downer, as it involves the mass suicide of an entire alien civilization!

 

   THE MIKE MARS series by Donald A. Wollheim was another Doubleday juvenile sf series, published from 1961 - 64. The titles are MIKE MARS, ASTRONAUT; MIKE MARS FLIES THE X-15; MIKE MARS AT CAPE CANAVERAL; MIKE MARS IN ORBIT; MIKE MARS FLIES THE DYNA-SOAR; MKKE MARS, SOUTH POLE SPACEMAN; MIKE MARS AND THE MYSTERY SATELLITE; and MIKE MARS AROUND THE MOON. As reality caught up with science fiction a bit in the 60s, Wollheim based his characters' exploits on those of actual test pilots and the original Mercury astronauts, but gave them far more risky flights and missions, with a Roger-Manning-like villain, and lots of Russian competition, some of it playing for keeps. Again, volumes of this series are not difficult to find in used book stores.

 

   THE KENT BARSTOW ADVENTURE SERIES by Rutherford G. Montgomery was published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in 1958-64. The hero is a pilot and secret agent who ventures into space at least twice in the series. Titles are KENT BARSTOW, SPECIAL AGENT; MISSILE AWAY!, MISSION: INTRUDER; KENT BARSTOW, SPACEMAN; KENT BARSTOW AND THE COMMANDO FLIGHT; KENT BARSTOW ABOARD THE DYNA-SOAR, and KENT BARSTOW ON A B-70 MISSION. (The "Dyna-Soar," appearing in both the Mike Mars and Kent Barstow series, was an Air Force-sponsored forerunner of the Space Shuttle.) These books are extremely difficult to find, because Duell, Sloan and Pearce was hardly a prolific publisher.

 

   THE RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE SERIES (link) by "John Blaine" (Harold L. Goodwin) is one of the most popular juvenile series among collectors today, and for that reason is sometimes a challenge to collect. The books were issued by Grossett & Dunlap between 1947-68, in rough parallel with the Tom Swift Jr. series, and provide an refreshing alternative to Tom, namely a "boy inventor" whose inventions are really possible and practical for a teenager. The hero, Rick Brant, has a big advantage in that he lives and works at a private scientific research foundation, Spindrift, directed by his father. While this is not a space adventure series by any means, it had great appeal to science-oriented teenagers, and there was even a non-fiction volume called RICK BRANT'S SCIENCE PROJECTS (1960), which gave hints for science fair entries! There are 23 volumes in the series, beginning with THE ROCKET'S SHADOW and ending with DANGER BELOW! (A 24th volume based on a rejected manuscript was privately printed in 1989, as THE MAGIC TALISMAN, bringing the complete series to 24 volumes.) The books are well-written and well-plotted, except for the last four, and feature many exotic locales, obviously described from first-hand knowledge. Goodwin also wrote a one-shot juvenile space adventure, RIP FOSTER RIDES THE GREY PLANET, for Whitman, under another pen name.

 

   THE WINSTON JUVENILE SCIENCE FICTION series published as "Adventures in Science Fiction," in 36 volumes, was about the only science fiction kids could find in junior high school and high school libraries in the early 1950s. The series is best remembered today for its beautiful dust jackets, painted by such greats of sf illustration as Kenneth Fagg, Alex Schomburg, Virgil Finlay, Ed Emshwiller, and the great Mel Hunter (forgotten today but better than Bonestell in many ways!). Many of the novels (too many) were written by Lester del Rey, but there were also novels by Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Chad Oliver, Raymond F. Jones and Donald A. Wollheim. Some of these books formed regular juvenile series within the overall series. For example, del Rey wrote three volumes about a teenager named Jim Stanley, who implausibly is involved in the construction of a manned space station, and expeditions to the moon. These books are considered highly collectable today, but most copies that turn up are ex-library copies. A website devoted to these books is located here.

Unfortunately, collecting juvenile series books has become a very popular hobby in recent years, and as always in such a case, predators have appeared. These will gladly sell a beginning collector a "rare" volume for $250, that can be found anywhere for $5. Very common series books, such as the TOM CORBETT and early TOM SWIFT Jr. books, are worth no more than $5-10, without dust jacket, no more than $15 with dust jacket in good condition. It would be a very rare juvenile series book indeed that sold for more than $30, fair price. The last volume in the TOM SWIFT Jr. series is often sold for $300 - 600, but in the past 10 years I have found three different copies at under $5, without setting foot outside the town I live in! So beware.

Return to Top

SPACE HERO COMIC BOOKS

CAPTAIN VIDEO--

The first of TV's space adventure series gave rise to one of the earliest TV-spinoff comics, Fawcett's CAPTAIN VIDEO, which saw six issues between February and December of 1951. The photographic covers, oddly enough, often show neither Richard Coogan nor Al Hodge, but rather male model Steve Holland, who a couple of years later played Flash Gordon in a terrible syndicated TV series filmed in West Berlin. The stories to be found within the covers are poorly written, poorly drawn (by later EC great George Evans, who does get a fair likeness of Al Hodge), and have virtually nothing to do with the TV series. The comic-book Captain Video owes a lot more to radio's Captain Midnight, battling earthbound crime from a secret mountain retreat, via a fast jet plane. (Ironically, when Captain Midnight made it to TV, the show owed much more to TV's Captain Video than to its radio original, with actor Richard Webb uniformed like, in a headquarters like, and even looking and sounding like Al Hodge's Video.)

I can still remember my tremendous disappointment when I bought the first issue of this comic, at the tender age of 11, around Christmas of 1950. I expected to see space adventure on distant planets, and got dumbly staged cops and robbers. Later issues showed no improvement. I'm amazed the comic made it to six issues!

Click on the image of one of the reprint volumes below to order from Amazon:

Return to Top

This series was not very successful in spawning spinoffs into other media. An attempt at a daily newspaper strip failed to win syndication, mainly due to inferior art, nor was there any juvenile series of hardbound books based on the TV program. However, although many don't seem to know it, there was a SPACE PATROL comic book which saw two issues. Publisher was Ziff-Davis, and both comics featured lovely painted covers by Norman Saunders (who later became famous for his MARS ATTACKS trading card series). Interior art is by Bernie Krigstein, who a few years later became famous for his work at EC Comics. Krigstein has an odd, loose, impressionistic, somewhat swashbucking style, which works quite well for SPACE PATROL adventures.

The first issue, Summer 1952, has stories on "The Lady of Diamonds" (Tonga in her criminal days), "Outlaws of Vesta" (a continuation of the previous adventure), an ad for the "Jet Glow Code Belt" and the "Cosmic Smoke Gun," a list of the radio and TV stations that carry SPACE PATROL, an SP-unrelated story, and "Space Pirates," which introduces yet another female villain, Margo. The back cover has a colorful ad for the "Space Patrol Belt." Krigstein gets a good likeness of the main characters, despite his loose style.

The second and last issue, October-November 1952, has stories on the "Robber Baron of Deimos," "The Free State of Hecuba," an SP-unrelated story, and "Slave King of Pluto," which ends with Happy getting a kiss from a blonde princess!

These comics are fairly difficult, but not impossible, to find on the huge used-comic market. As an odd footnote to the series, a comic called SPACE BUSTERS, also published by Ziff-Davis in two issues, Spring 1952 and Summer 1952, also with painted Norman Saunders covers, and also with interior art by Krigstein, is a SPACE PATROL comic in all but name. Why on earth would Ziff-Davis publish two almost identical comics simultaneously, that competed directly with one another?!? Neither I, nor any comic expert I have consulted, has a clue. Clearly, both failed to win readership.

My original guess, based on inspection of a reprint of one of the Space Busters stories published in STRANGE PLANETS No. 18 in 1964 was that the first SPACE BUSTERS comic was intended as the first SPACE PATROL comic, but the story line was considered too unrelated to the TV series for use. In the reprint, the Commander Corry character is called Captain Andall, and his sidekick is Sergeant Bala, an elderly bald man with a big white handlebar mustache! The art shows extensive signs of retouching (Bala's head I guessed had been pasted over Happy's, and speech balloon references to character names and the Space Patrol had been pasted over and relettered in a totally different style).

But truth is far stranger than my guess. In the actual 1952 SPACE BUSTER comics, which I have now seen, the Commander Buzz Corry character was called Commander Brett Crockett, and the outfit he worked for was called, from panel to panel, the Space Patrol, or the Space Busters, or the Space Patrol again, indiscriminately. His male sidekick was still Sergeant Bala, but he was depicted as young instead of old-- he looks rather like Happy except for a big black mustache and a bald head-- and Corry, or rather Crockett also had a lovely blond female sidekick, June, corresponding to Buzz's sidekick Carol Karlyle. There was even a SPACE BUSTERS story in 3D, in St. John's DARING ADVENTURES #1, November 1953, still pencilled by Krigstein.

If anyone has an explanation of the whys and wherefores of SPACE BUSTERS versus SPACE PATROL, I'd love to hear of it.

Click on the image of one of the reprint volumes below to order from Amazon:

Return to Top

It came as a surprise to me to discover that this very obscure TV series had a comic incarnation. Issues #15-18 of the Charlton comic SPACE ADVENTURES (1955) carry Rocky Jones stories and are retitled "SPACE ADVENTURES PRESENTS ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER." Covers and interior art are by Galindo and Osrin, and are passable, although no likenesses of the characters are attempted. Issue 17, the only one I have seen, has the story "Fate of the Treasure Seekers," starring "Michael Ressner's Rocky Jones." The second story, "The Ark," is an odd ripoff of George Pal's WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, with Rocky ordered to stem the panic fostered by an end-of-the-universe cult. The third story, "The Invisibles," pits Rocky and Winky against two invisible men. The final story has "Lance Gregg of the Inter-Planetary Security Police" battling interplanetary bank robbers.

Worth a look if you are a fan of Rocky Jones (if there is such a thing as a fan of Rocky Jones…).

Click on the image of one of the reprint compilations below to order from Amazon:

Return to Top

The SPACE CADET comics, published by Dell, were by far the most visible of the space hero comics of the early 1950s; Dell's lock on comics distribution meant that all their titles were displayed on news stands, even when it also meant the latest issues of other comics couldn't be displayed at all. The Dell product was extremely bland; as comics historian Bill Black notes, "When I was a kid [in the early 1950s], every boy I knew collected comic books. Not one collected any Dell comics... no one would offer any Dells in the trade. Dell comics were the comics your parents bought for you or the kind your aunt would give you on your birthday."

There were eleven Dell issues of SPACE CADET. The best, both in terms of art and story values are the first three ("Four color" 378, 400 and 421) from 1952, which have fantastic art by Alden McWilliams. The series deteriorated sharply in both art and scripting thereafter, but all issues have nice painted covers. The final Dell issue is September-November 1954. The first issue has a storyline based fairly closely on the TV scripts for the first few weeks of the TV series, with the cadets single-handedly facing down an invasion fleet from Mercury, except that the invaders' origin is shifted from Mercury to Titan, the large moon of Saturn. McWilliams gets a very good likeness of the four cadets of the Polaris unit (Tom Corbett, Astro, Roger Manning and Alfie "The Brain" Higgins, who on TV had been added to the unit to tutor the backward Astro in his academy coursework).

The title was taken over by Prize Publications, which published three issues (May-June 1955 to September-October 1955), greatly inferior in artwork and scripting to the Dell issues.

It is not generally known that there was another one-shot Tom Corbett comic during this period: MARCH OF COMICS 102, which reprinted a bit of the syndicated newspaper strip by Ray Bailey, which ran daily from September 1951 to sometime in 1953.

Interestingly, there was yet again a reprint of Ray Bailey's strip, by a small, independent comics publisher, Eternity, in 1990. THE ORIGINAL TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET, as it was called, was projected to run 10 issues, but only five were issued. Unfortunately, the storyline was difficult to follow, because only daily strips were included, and the story climaxes were usually set to hit in the omitted color Sunday strips!

But the saddest part of the Space Cadet comics story has to be another publication by Eternity. In January of 1990 they unwisely issued a NEW Tom Corbett comic! It ran for eight issues before dying a deservedly dismal death. The artwork was in the ghastly Japanese "Manga" style, and the book seems to have been aimed at fans of the various Japanese space adventure animated cartoon series. Tom and Roger were handled without too much violence to tradition, but Astro was converted into a 1990s stereotypical cyborg computer jock, and even more horrifying, Joan Dale, instead of being a professor at Space Academy and the offscreen girlfriend of Captain Steve Strong, was a space cadet herself, and the onpage girl friend of Tom Corbett! The covers helpfully told us all this crap was "based on the Classic Television Series."

Click on the image of the reprint compilation below to order from Amazon:

Return to Top