Let Me Tell You About Space and Dianna!

 

cover art by Lou Fine

Fantastic Comics, published by Fox Publications from 1939 to 1943, was a bizarre and entertaining book. It was full of stories that barely made story sense, even when taking Comic Book Logic into account, but were fast-paced and graced with imaginative art.

It was an anthology book, but did include a number of regularly appearing characters--an Arthurian knight, Samson (a descendent of the Biblical Samson and also given superstrength), a spy and several science fiction heroes. 

Today, we'll look at an adventure of one of the science fiction guys as recounted in Fantastic Comics #3 (February 1940).

Space Smith and his pretty companion Dianna have spent the first two issues battling the Great Central Brain of Mars, who wants to destroy Earth. In this issue, they are heading back to Mars to finish off the Central Brain. But on the way, they pass near Venus. (Which I think might be possible. What if Mars was currently near the opposite side of the sun from Earth? A route to Mars that goes past the sun might come close to Venus, right? I know I'm giving the story too much credit for thinking this through, but what the hey.)

Anyway, they get jumped by Leopard Women from Venus who are flying atop giant reptiles and blasting away with "comet fire" from their helmets. My wife makes fun of my lack of fashion sense, but even I can see the leapard women are destined to be trendsetters.

The blasts immobilize the Earth ship and the Leopard Women board through... open portholes. Okay, I have no justification for that. But I don't care. Sometimes, realism and logic simply don't matter.

Space and Dianna soon find themselve prisoners on Venus, guarded by robots. When Dianna is taken off to be surgically altered into a Leopard Woman (I'm not sure what that consists of, since the Venusian women appear to be normal humans who simply wear unusual clothes.) This makes Space angry. And apparently, you won't like Space when he's angry. He snaps his chains and goes on a rampage, fighting his way past robots and reptiles to resuce Dianna. 

The epic fight continues until a robot is knocked into a tank of Superluner Star Gas, which carpets the area. This allows Space and Dianna, after a swim through an underground river and the judicious use of a flying belt, to reach their ship and get away.

The story was written and drawn by Fletcher Hanks (using the name Hank Christy) and it is the lightning-fast pacing of the story plus his eccentric, colorful art and weird character/creature designs that make it work. As I said, there are times when story logic means very little and, in fact, this particular story probably wouldn't have been half as fun if Hanks had tried to make any real sense of it.

You can find this issue online HERE. 

Next week, we return to our look at Superman Family #182 to see what Lois Lane is up to.