"Our story continues..."
Story by Al Stenzel / Art by GRAY MORROW
BOYS' LIFE / January 1969
(Continued in 1970)
A few bonuses, from February, March, and January '69, respectively.
Copyright (C) BOYS' LIFE Magazine
Restorations by Henry Kujawa
For more fun & info:
Sleestak's blog post about SPACE CONQUERORS!
Smurfswacker's blog post about SPACE CONQUERORS!
Planettom's blog post about SPACE CONQUERORS!
Read the Bob LeRose page at Wikipedia
Read about the history of Johnstone & Cushing at the Hogan's Alley site
Pete Doree's Bronze Age Of Blogs page on GRAY MORROW
Steve Thompson's Shades Of Gray GRAY MORROW blog
Early in 1969 was about where I came in on SPACE CONQUERORS. Really before my time --- and before my older brother's time --- in Scouts, but we had a pile of BOYS' LIFE magazines that a kid in the neighborhood had given us. Though it was probably around 1973 that I really started reading these, at age 7.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing, I didn't need much of a backstory --- we've got a group of Earthmen, and one of them has a buddy who's a caveman. Well, obviously, somewhere along the way, they stopped and picked up a caveman!
That said, in 1982, while in high school, I went on a Scout trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. The huge (127,000 acres) camp gifted to the Scouts by Phillips Petroleum owner Waite Phillips. On the property was Phillips's residence, which now housed a library of all things Scout-ish. When we toured it, I noticed there were bound copies of BOYS' LIFE going back decades. And I was thinking --- man, if I could just manage to get back here for a day, I could read through these and read all the SPACE CONQUERORS! and Time Machine stories that were before my time in Scouts!
But, that would have to wait another 28 years until 2010, when I realized they were all archived in Google Books on the Internet!
Nov'69 was the last issue we got on our subscription. (The Scout Troup had disolved a few months earlier, when not one person in the neighborhood came forward to take over when the last Scout Leader stepped down after 8 years.) So I was left on this cliffhanger, for 42-1/2 years!!!
ReplyDeleteThe Empress always seemed to me clearly inspired by Azura, Queen of Magic from FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS (1938). A castle hovering above the planet similarly seems a tribute to the city of the Hawkmen from FLASH GORDON (1936). The ants seemed familiar to the ones in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1963), and inspired similar creatures in my own comics back then! I didn't actually see FORBIDDEN PLANET until around 1980, but a flying saucer manned by Earthmen with an unpredictable, uncontrollable "star drive" that sent them thru a time-warp was very similar to the Jupiter 2 on LOST IN SPACE (which debuted 3 years after the Galaxy One did in SPACE CONQUERORS!).
And hey-- how could you not love the idea of a cave man onboard a starship? What a cool series.
Little did I know (nor did I find out until THIS month!) that the guy doing the art at this point was the same one who took over doing the storyboards for the 2nd & 3rd seasons of the SPIDER-MAN cartoon show. I've been a Gray Morrow fan since I was a kid, only I didn't know it.