The Good Guys Of The Galaxy!

Contained in The Complete Cosmo the Merry Martian collection from Archie Comics is issue #665 of Archie which serves up a clever homage to the Guardians of the Galaxy making use of Archie and Jughead and an offbeat assembly of heroes from across the many decades of the Archie universe.

Like the second iteration of the Guardians themselves, the team is made up of nigh forgotten characters from a host of genres.

One stalwart if MLJ's Golden Age superhero of the animal set -- the mighty Super Duck. While he dropped the Super Duck gig pretty quickly and became a more commonplace figure not unlike his predecessor Donald and his later variant Howard, we have Super Duck here in his full heroic regalia.

Also on hand is a Silver Age great, the space explorer and Buck Roger wannabe turned superhero wannabe the tragically traditionally handsome Captain Sprocket.

Sprocket was a somewhat regular denizen of Archie's Madhouse comic, a magazine which slid between genres almost on a monthly basis.

A case in point is fellow hero the downright weird Captain Pumpernik. Above you see all two pages of his debut appearance in Archie's Madhouse #50. He's a bizarro blend of Bela Lugosi and Buster Crabbe by way of  Lou Costello. 

The final member of this wacko team is Cat Girl who debuted in Adventures of the Fly in Archie's Silver Age attempt to revive its MLJ heroes.

As far as I can find out she appeared in two later issues of The Adventures of the Jaguar a year or so later.

So with this set up you see the similarity. A washed up superhero from another era (Captain Sprocket and Starlord), a crossover talking animal (Super Duck and Rocket Racoon), a deadly femme fatale (Cat Girl and Gamora), and...well I can't make Pumpernik fit unless he's supposed to be Drax the Destroyer (Drax and "Dracs" maybe). That makes Cosmo into Groot and that doesn't work for me though they are both space critters of another era, but I'm glad he's here. I want Jughead to be Groot with his single-minded quest for a snack and of course Archie is Archie. All in all a fun batch of "heroes" and a delightful one-off comic even in these blighted times.

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Cosmo The Merry Martian!

Cosmo the Merry Martian was a vintage series from Archie Comics (formerly MLJ in the halcyon Golden Age of Comics). Published in 1958 and 1959 there are six issues of what some mistakenly call a "limited series". It does have some characteristics of a limited such as a story which continues form issue to issue reaching a finale of sorts. The series has recently been reprinted by Archie with some extras to boot.

In the debut issue we encounter Martian culture, a technically advanced society which has decided to send two emissaries to the planet Earth. The two space travellers are the tenpin-shaped Cosmo and his somewhat less brave buddy Orbi. They leave life and love behind to trek into space and sort of crash on the Moon. There they meet a horde of small round multi-colored folks all named "Oog". Later they head to Earth they use comet dust to become invisible and then seek out humans engaged in what was once upon the national pastime -- the elegant game of baseball. When the dust wears off Cosmo and Orbi and company speed away in flying saucers supplied by the Moon folks.

As their space trek continues, Cosmo and Orbi travel to the mysterious dark side of the Moon and find a legendary fearsome beast named the Gillywhump. This is a creature somewhat similar in size to the other Moon critters but with a giant nose and giant feet and a few other powers. Making friends the Gillywhump and the two Moon people along with Cosmo and Orbi return to Earth to find medicine but this time a work site and the machines therein scare them again.

In the third issue another ship from Mars arrives on the Moon with Cosmo's girlfriend Astra and Orbi's pet dog Jojo and piloted by Professor Thimk. They have a new mission to head to Venus and two of the Moon people tag along. On Venus they find enormous orange giants. As the issue closes they are being taken to the Queen of all of Venus.

The Venusian Queen selects Cosmo as her mate but of course Astra takes issue with that and the team (Professor Thimk, Astra, Orbi, JoJo, the Gillwhump and two Oogs work to free him from his unsought royal station. They succeed just barely and fly from Venus and because they cannot take time to plot a course are headed to Saturn.

On Saturn they discover the rings are made of foam rubber. The peoples of Saturn are actually enormous talking vegetables who welcome the visitors with friendship. But Orbi ends up on his own and after eating some forbidden gumdrops shrinks to a small size and later into a vast giant who rides along the rings.

Returning to Mars the expanded team (Cosmo, Orbi, Astra, Proessor Thimk, the two Oogs, Gillywhump and three Vegetable people. But their expedition over they find a general named Beatnik is bent on leading a massive invasion of Earth. Cosmo is able to fend off the threat and maintain the peace as the series comes to an end.

In addition to the original six issues of Cosmo this volume contains later appearances in the Archie universe. The issue above will be dealt with in detail tomorrow and there are three other stories after it which use Cosmo, two in which he is treated much like a popular game which has people look for icons and characters all around their neighborhood.

Finally the collection gives the reader the debut issue of a new Cosmo series, but to be honest the new character designs are not as engaging to my veteran eye as the vintage ones. A few new characters are added and there are more issues of this run.

At a mere eleven bucks this somewhat smaller tome is a bargain. I never expected to be able to read the Cosmo stories but having done so I can say heartily they are well worth the effort.

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Nifty Presents - Archie's Madhouse!

Archie's Madhouse had morphed into Madhouse Glads when I was first bopping into comics, and alas looked too goofy for a serious superhero fan like me. I found I always liked to read Archie comics, but felt since they were girl books, I was compelled to do it in secret, but since no one was paying much attention to me in that regard, I must've been hiding from myself. The series took a brief spin into legit horror when Gray Morrow stepped in along with Frank Thorne and a few others and was called just Madhouse, before becoming just Madhouse Comics until its cancellation in the early years of the Reagan administration. When I started to get access to the vintage covers from the earliest days of the comic, I realized it had been a most vigorous offering in areas I cared much about -- classic monsters and outer space with superhero spoofs thrown in for good measure. This tome from Yoe Books documents that time and gives more than a good glimpse of just how entertaining a good Archie comic could be. I gave both my adult daughters some Archie comics for Christmas (among other things of course...I'm not that cheap...well?) and they returned the favor with this outstanding book.

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