Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Space Crazy Comics: The Strange Asteroid

Sometimes, these stories are over-the-top insane. Sometimes, they're mostly quietly lame.

This one, from Outer Space #26, at least borders on the latter.

We open on a spaceship, which is how it should be.

Sadly, its name is actually "Ship Number 40," which is about as lame as it could possibly be.

The art is rather disappointing, especially since it's clear who drew it:

Steve Ditko.

They're looking, as you can infer from the above panels, for an asteroid to capture with their sad spaceship. This causes the old fella to make a vaguely vulgar gesture.

Ahem.

The story does have one beautiful panel:

They get excited because, when they approach the asteroid belt, they see an unusual one. No, it's not those giant crystalline asteroids that have them excited; it's that brown, lumpy one. I guess Ditko didn't know what asteroids might look like.

They decide that they want that asteroid because it's unique, and so they go to grab it. Mr. Osborne-hair decides that he's got to have his camera (he's with the press, you see), but doesn't appear to be very concerned about actually getting it.

Leaving the pictures to Parker, are we?

Then, there's this rather comical panel where the ship is trying to grab the asteroid.

I'm not sure just what it is about that panel, but it strikes me as funny.

They start taking it back to Earth, but then, when they start to enter the atmosphere (no, the timeline doesn't make sense, why do you ask?)...

And...

...

You know what that reminds me of? There were a few dinosaur-like monsters in the old He-Man series with facial structures like that.

Sadly, the "dragon" burns up in the atmosphere. Darned scientists couldn't leave well enough alone, huh?

But what was it doing living in space if it couldn't actually do anything there, and it couldn't survive planetary reentry? Weird.

Actually, I'm going to say that there must have been an unwritten chapter: The "dragon" survives reentry, and then wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting world. The scientists must rally around Ship Number 40 and...

...No, that last part would be lame.

Uh, never mind.

-Signing off.

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