Remembering Artist Lee Elias

Remembering artist Lee Elias on his birthday (May 21, 1920 - April 8, 1998) with his mostly forgotten Mystery In Space covers featuring Adam Strange!

Not exactly prime time for the Earthman transplanted to Rann, but some oddities worth taking a look at!

Mystery In Space #95 and #97 (November, 1964 and February, 1965)

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Mystery In Space #98 and #10 (March and September, 1965)

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Mystery In Space Change

Mystery In Space was a somewhat later arrival into the horror genre, not that some of its earliest stories couldn't fit easily into that genre...but after a lengthy run with Earthman in space Adam Strange (starting in Mystery In Space #53 of August, 1959) and future cop Space Ranger (starting with Mystery In Space #92 of June, 1964), the title gave up the ghost with Mystery In Space #110 (September, 1966) with Ultra the Multi-Alien.

Still, even Adam Strange and Space Ranger would not have foreseen that Mystery In Space would return with issue #111 in September, 1980...

...with a short run of horror related space stories, usually with a cover by Joe Kubert.

Mystery In Space #112 and #113 (October and November, 1980)

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Mystery In Space #114 and #115 (December, 1980 and January, 1981)

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Mystery In Space #116 and #117 (February and March, 1981)

 

Mystery Unknown President

An alien is found to be suffering delusions....he thinks there is a planet called Earth, and that that planet has a president....

...but which president?

That depends on what decade you read the tale.

1950s

In Mystery In Space #30 (February-March, 1956), with a story by Otto Binder, Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella (with a cover by Gil Kane), the patient alien has delusions of Earth, under a President Izen-Hower (Dwight D. Eisenhower).

Such is the first case of The Impossible World Named Earth!

1970s

When the tale by Binder, Infantino and Giella was reprinted in From Beyond The Unknown #17 (June-July, 1972) with a cover by Murphy Anderson, the delusional alien got to see visions of Nee-Xon (because Richard Nixon was now President, and DC, trying to hide their reprints, changed to the current President).

Making this a second case of The Impossible World Named Earth!

 

Shadows Of Adam Strange

Taking a look at one of the great romances of DC's science fiction comics, with two similarly themed issues of Mystery In Space, with Earthman Adam Strange, and the love of his life whom he has to take a Zeta-Beam to see, Alanna of Rann, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, 25 trillion miles from Earth!

Shadow People Of The Eclipse

Adam Strange returns to the planet Rann in Mystery In Space #78 (September, 1962) by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson only to find Alanna in a panic, as the planet has been plunged into an unnatural darkness.  The Vantors are threatening Rann again, sending its inhabitants to a distant planet ruled by the Llyrr, who absorbs their experience (draining their minds).  

Adam figures out the Llyrr is feeding off of people's electrical impulses, and defeats it with a thunderstorm, helping everyone return to their homeworlds.  Once back, he and Alanna work together to defeat the Vantors, but doesn't get to enjoy more than a bite of Alanna's Ranagarian Quail before his Zeta-Beam wares off, returning him to Earth.

The Deadly Shadows Of Adam Strange

At least Mystery In Space #80 (December, 1962) by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson starts happy, as Adam finds a little time with Alanna, as her father, Sardath is kidnapped.  Trying to rescue him, Adam's Zeta-Beam wears off, leaving him on Earth, with time for him to work on his archeology while awaiting another Zeta-Beam back to Rann.  

Once back, Adam finds Alanna, still searching for her father.  While he joins her, he is attacked...by his own shadow!  The two find the flier that the kidnapper drove in the ruined city of Alkamar, and are again attacked by shadows.  Defeating them, they find Sardath, who was kidnapped by an old foe, Mortan, who found the process to animate shadows with Pi-Radiation in the ruined city, and planned to use them against Adam.  Adam studied this phenomenon, figuring out a way to defeat Mortan's creations by making himself invisible.  Then, with his foe defeated, got to see Alanna again, where the pair renewed their affections.

Happy Birthday Artist Alex Ross

Happiest of birthdays to artist Alex Ross.  

Alex has done many covers (and interiors) over the years for DC, and these are two of his more recent, or at least 2 done in the 21st Century, as wonderful homages, based on classic Silver Age covers created when Julie Schwartz was an editor at DC, who used the idea of creating a cover, then building a story around it.

Mystery In Space #82 (March, 1963)

DC Comics Presents: Mystery In Space #1 (September, 2004)

Original cover by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.

Flash #163 (August, 1966)

DC Comics Presents: The Flash #1 (October, 2004)

Original cover by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella.

These were part of a group of covers designed to honor the work of Julius Schwartz, and included modern covers by Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland (covering Gil Kane)and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

Alex Ross, among other things, helped complete this painting of the Crisis On Infinite Earths with George Perez.

Remembering Gil Kane

Remembering artist Gil Kane on his birthday, with a pair of covers he drew!

Gil Kane was an artist who changed the world on Green Lantern, Atom, Spider-Man and more, and Gil provided the cover to Mystery In Space #34 (October-November, 1956), which featured the story of "The Man Who Moved The World" by John Broome and Sid Greene.


Though Gil didn't do any work on that story, he did draw the Space Cabbie feature in the issue.

This story of "The Man" found itself reprinted in From Beyond The Unknown #9 (February-March, 1971), with the art slightly altered (this man was an aimless wanderer looking for something to do...not knowing his own fate).

A Gil Kane drawn story was reprinted in this issue (from Strange Adventures #108 of September, 1959), "The Last Horse On Earth"...


....with a space cowboy who used a robotic steed, that everyone ridiculed the cowboy for having (and the cowboy based himself on the western Johnny Thunder (Gil co-created Madame .44, in All-Star Western #117 of February-March, 1961)...

....though the Strange Adventures story of a human held by gorillas, only had a cover by Gil Kane.



Still, no monkeying around, but remembering the talent of Gil Kane!

Ultra The Multi-Alien's A Mystery In Space

Part normal sci-fi astronaut from the near future, part horror movie from the 1950s, wherein four aliens were merged with that astronaut to become...Ultra the Multi-Alien!

Origins

Ultra the Multi-Alien premiered in Mystery In Space #103 (November, 1965) by Dave Wood and Lee Elias, wherein pilot Ace Arn is trapped in the magnetic field of a comet and carried to another solar system, crashing near the lab of a dead scientist named Zorba.  Zorba's four assistants (one alien each from the worlds of Ulla, Laroo, Trago and Raagan) each turn on Ace, with all of them using a gun created by Zorba, that would turn its target into a duplicate of the race of the ray gun wielder, and a slave of the owner of the weapon.  Because Ace was hit by four blasts at once, he turned into the odd composite that was Ultra the Multi-Alien, and kept his own mind.  Using his new found powers (strength, flight, magnetism and lightning), Ultra defeats the aliens, names himself using the names of the alien races (and his own) and plots his return home.


Over the next eight issues, Ultra returns home to his girlfriend (Bonnie Blake), and fights Dr. Taxo and the Moon Raiders (in Mystery In Space #104), Dr. Dynamo and his energy creatures (Mystery In Space  #105), Craniac and Tragg (Mystery In Space  #106), splits apart and has to reassemble (Mystery In Space  #107), fights the giants Kratum and Vaaro (Mystery In Space  #108), faces Venusian Jal-Rel and Martians Klu-Kann, Tojeel, and Arrkon (and gains the ability to turn back into Ace Arn...all in the only issue that doesn't have him on the cover, Mystery In Space #109), and with his final regular appearance in Mystery In Space #110 (September, 1966) faces off against the Pied Piper of Pluto!  Then, Mystery in Space was...gone!  (Cancelled, not much of a mystery, sad to say).

The Return

Well, kind of.  Ultra gets an appearance in Animal Man #25 (in a limbo for forgotten characters), and is a fare of the of Space Cabby in Starman #55. 

Ultra next appears during the Infinite Crisis (being involved with Donna Troy and the space faring heroes involved in the Rann-Thanagar War), and in Superman/Batman #31-33 (as part of a collection of outer space heroes).

Jeff Lemire even brought him back for a solo feature in Strange Adventures #1 (July, 2011)...

...and must have liked the character, as he both wrote and drew the story of "The Life And Death of Ace Arn" which had 8 pages of Ultra the Multi-Alien all on his own in a Vertigo comic!

The New 52

Jeff Lemire didn't forget about Ultra either...

...as he included the character (with a slightly different origin, that of being a creation of the alien shape-shifter, Byth), in the early issues of Justice League United, including issue #2, entitled "Mystery In Space"!.

Not bad for a nearly forgotten character of the mid-1960s?

The Tomes

Strangely, though he made the cover of Mike W. Barr's Silver Age Sci-Fi Companion of 2007, Ultra didn't make the interior (still, it's an incredible collection of facts on folks like those he replaced in Mystery in Space like Adam Strange and Space Ranger, as well as the Star Rovers, Captain Comet, the Space Cabby and the Atomic Knights...and more!). 

Ultra did make it into the American Comic Book Chronicles:1965-1969 by John Wells and Keith Dallas, wherein they said this of Ultra.."The concept itself wasn't necessarily bad...but Ultra just looked silly.  He was part bald blue man and part hairy green monster set atop a bird's leg and a lightning bolt."....and that was one of the joys of Silver Age science fiction!