Buster Crabbe

I spent almost three years searching for a copy of Buster Crabbe #5 – a book that always managed to get sorted to the top of the pile 30 years ago when organizing my collection taken from the old man’s stash. There is just something that attracted me (and I suspect many others) to Frazetta art.

The whole comic is rather interesting. First off, it is a mixed genre in a “Cowboys and Aliens” sense – where cowboy Buster Crabbe is whisked away to Mars. Then you have the fact that Buster Crabbe himself is actually a real person – an Olympic champion swimmer who went on to star in Hollywood B-movies playing the likes of Buck Rogers, Tarzan and Flash Gordon. In addition to the Frank Frazetta cover, the issue also boasts excellent inside art, with Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel and Joe Orlando. This same team also collaborated at EC Comics on Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. It all goes to show that facts indeed can be stranger than fiction.