Number 1770: Rocket to the Moon

Maza of the Moon, by Otis Adelbert Kline, is the source for Rocket to the Moon, an Avon one-shot comic from 1951. Kline, whose interplanetary novels emulated Edgar Rice Burroughs, was a literary agent in addition to author. Maza was published as a four-part serial in Argosy in 1929, then as a book in 1930.

Kline died in 1946, so he did not see later reprints of his works. Ace Books did a series of them in the early sixties, with attractive covers by the likes of Roy Krenkel and as you can see by the cover of Maza, Frank Frazetta

Reading Rocket to the Moon has the genre clichés: earthman on another planet, swordplay, and a beautiful princess...always. The earthman always wins the fight and always gets the princess. Hurrah for earthguys! It was a formula that worked in its day, and still has a certain nostalgic charm.

Unfortunately, comic book readers would not associate Kline’s name with this version, because it is left uncredited. You may remember another one-shot Avon adaptation I showed a few months ago, An Earthman on Venus, which left writer Ralph Milne Farley’s name off the comic book. The artwork for Rocket to the Moon is credited to Joe Orlando. The scans are from the 1964 IW Super Comics reprint, Strange Planets #12. The cover scan, which I found on the Heritage Auctions site, is from the original 1951 publication.

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