ATLAS COMICS LIBRARY Volume 3 In the Days of the Rockets

In the vein of comics-to-multimedia stars Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Atlas launched their own pulp heros in 1951, looking ahead to the futuristic year 2000: Jet Dixon and Speed Carter. Across five issues of Space Squadron (and one of Space Worlds), George Tuska, Werner Roth and Allen Bellman (with back-up features by Joe Maneely, Christopher Rule, George Klein and Vern Henkel) portrayed Captain Jet Dixon and his Space Squadron blasting into action, facing cosmic threats like "The Armada of Death," "The Space Demons," "Terror from the Deep," "The Temptress of Jupiter," and "The Midnight Horror." Come 1953, writer Hank Chapman and artist Joe Maneely gazed further into the future, envisioning the distant year 2075 and the adventures of Speed Carter, Spaceman. Maneely drew the first three issues before handing off to one issue each by Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska and Bob Forgione, with back-up features by John Romita, Maneely, and Bill Savage. As the rest of the Atlas line jumped onto the horror bandwagon in these pre-Code days, the Captain of the Space Sentinels and young cadet Johnny Day battled monstrous aliens with stories including "The Space Trap," "A Slaughter in Space," "Die, Spaceman, Die," and "The Thing in Outer Space." And of course supporting female characters helped to liven thing up for life in deep space! Unseen in 70 years, scanned in high resolution, restored to perfection and packaged as one extra-sized, beautiful hardcover volume, In the Days of the Rockets! will open a wormhole to the early era of futuristic science fantasy. As usual, another outstanding introduction by "Doc" Vassallo puts this all into perspective, talking about each artist, each story, and Atlas history. I'm a huge fan of both his work here, and the great stories he's finally making available to us.