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I first posted this on LiveJournal in 2010, but I'm moving it over here.
A perque of being in Boy Scouts was a subscription to BOYS' LIFE magazine. It had a lot of good articles and fiction, including a few science fiction series. One, the Time Machine stories, I'll be posting about another time. But there was also a comic strip serial called SPACE CONQUERORS! that ran from Sep 1952 to October 1972, over 20 years, by Al Stenzel.
Yes, the exclamation point was part of the title, and I'm bolding it each time, because that's the way I hear it in my head, sort of like "Pigs...In...Space!" SPACE CONQUERORS!
I didn't join Scouts until 1977, but my older brother had a stockpile of BOYS' LIFE magazines, from 1971 when he joined, plus, he had some earlier ones from Cub Scouts, and somebody gave him some older issues, so we had some from 1969 or even before. In those days, BOYS' LIFE magazine was huge (I don't mean number of pages, but height and width of the magazine), the way LIFE magazine used to be. Later, in the January 1975 issue, it shrunk to the smaller size it is today. Saving paper, no doubt.
SPACE CONQUERORS! started in September 1952 and had several storylines through 1956 that varied in degrees of space opera and semi-realistic exploration of the solar system.
In July 1957 SPACE CONQUERORS! rebooted with a nuts-and-bolts first journey to the Moon saga sort of along the lines of the Heinlein movie DESTINATION MOON, set in 2057. Little did they know that just 12 years later we'd actually be on the Moon. But Sputnik was launching just 3 months later in October 1957, and it must have seen prudent to turn down the space opera in favor of a less fanciful depiction of future space travel.
It was a crew of 3 guys: The skipper, Bill, and another guy who never got a name. After the Moon, they went to Mars, Saturn, and Mercury, and then their storyline seemed to run out of steam.
But by the time I started reading them (From issues really before my time, but possibly from as early as 1969), it had changed back to more of a space opera (Starting December 1962), with Earth guys in a very FORBIDDEN PLANET spaceship, zooming around the galaxy pretty much at random due to their temperamental hyperspace drive, encountering aliens and having adventures. The main characters were Spaceman Kurt, and Primo, a caveman from 50,000 years ago who joined the crew after a timewarp. Also the Skipper, Doc, and Sparks/Red.
They were fairly violent, and rather horrific and icky in parts --- there was a fondness for giant bugs. I don't think you'd see these types of tales in BOYS' LIFE today.
Here Kurt and Primo, aboard a derelict spaceship, find a giant mutated bug. So they eat it. February 1971, March 1971.
Here they find a different kind of giant bug attacking a mutant creature. May 1971, June 1971.
( Read more about *SPACE CONQUERORS!* )
A perque of being in Boy Scouts was a subscription to BOYS' LIFE magazine. It had a lot of good articles and fiction, including a few science fiction series. One, the Time Machine stories, I'll be posting about another time. But there was also a comic strip serial called SPACE CONQUERORS! that ran from Sep 1952 to October 1972, over 20 years, by Al Stenzel.
Yes, the exclamation point was part of the title, and I'm bolding it each time, because that's the way I hear it in my head, sort of like "Pigs...In...Space!" SPACE CONQUERORS!
I didn't join Scouts until 1977, but my older brother had a stockpile of BOYS' LIFE magazines, from 1971 when he joined, plus, he had some earlier ones from Cub Scouts, and somebody gave him some older issues, so we had some from 1969 or even before. In those days, BOYS' LIFE magazine was huge (I don't mean number of pages, but height and width of the magazine), the way LIFE magazine used to be. Later, in the January 1975 issue, it shrunk to the smaller size it is today. Saving paper, no doubt.
SPACE CONQUERORS! started in September 1952 and had several storylines through 1956 that varied in degrees of space opera and semi-realistic exploration of the solar system.
In July 1957 SPACE CONQUERORS! rebooted with a nuts-and-bolts first journey to the Moon saga sort of along the lines of the Heinlein movie DESTINATION MOON, set in 2057. Little did they know that just 12 years later we'd actually be on the Moon. But Sputnik was launching just 3 months later in October 1957, and it must have seen prudent to turn down the space opera in favor of a less fanciful depiction of future space travel.
It was a crew of 3 guys: The skipper, Bill, and another guy who never got a name. After the Moon, they went to Mars, Saturn, and Mercury, and then their storyline seemed to run out of steam.
But by the time I started reading them (From issues really before my time, but possibly from as early as 1969), it had changed back to more of a space opera (Starting December 1962), with Earth guys in a very FORBIDDEN PLANET spaceship, zooming around the galaxy pretty much at random due to their temperamental hyperspace drive, encountering aliens and having adventures. The main characters were Spaceman Kurt, and Primo, a caveman from 50,000 years ago who joined the crew after a timewarp. Also the Skipper, Doc, and Sparks/Red.
They were fairly violent, and rather horrific and icky in parts --- there was a fondness for giant bugs. I don't think you'd see these types of tales in BOYS' LIFE today.
Here Kurt and Primo, aboard a derelict spaceship, find a giant mutated bug. So they eat it. February 1971, March 1971.
Here they find a different kind of giant bug attacking a mutant creature. May 1971, June 1971.
( Read more about *SPACE CONQUERORS!* )
