Creeping Death From Neptune: Horror & Science Fiction Comics by Basil Wolverton

A pioneer from the first generation of comic book artists, Basil Wolverton arrived just as publishers began embracing original material, turning away from the newspaper-strip reprints that had been sustaining the industry since its inception four years earlier. One of the first to realize the value of "in-house" features was Centaur Publications, whose art director Lloyd Jacquet gave Wolverton his big break in comics in 1938, accepting "Meteor Martin" for Amazing Man Comics and "Space Patrol" for Amazing Mystery Funnies. Jacquet soon established an independent comics packager, Funnies, Inc., for which he asked Wolverton to invent a new science-fiction character. The artist came up with the iconic "Spacehawk," who made thirty appearances in Target Comics. Prime examples of Wolverton's iconic space hero will be featured in Creeping Death from Neptune. Fed up with the publisher's constant meddling with "Spacehawk," Wolverton dropped his creation in 1942 and concentrated on humorous features for the rest of the decade. His short-lived return to serious subjects in 1951 resulted in some of the most intense horror and science-fiction stories of the pre-code era, including the classics "Brain Bats of Venus," "Escape to Death," and "Robot Woman," all of which appear in this volume.