Captain Sensible

I've now got a copy of my favorite Captain Future cover/magazine in my filthy, sweaty hands and I'm thrilled that it has an embarrassing full-page ad for some dubious health product on the back. I'd have been disappointed if it didn't.

I love that it's called "Pyro." I'm pretty sure that means it burns like fuck when you pour it in your mouth, but back in the olden days if a treatment didn't hurt when you used it or burn your eyes when you smelled it that meant it wasn't working. I wouldn't have been surprised if the doctors back then offered to give you a Hurtz Donut when you came to the office.

Remember, if Pyro doesn't save your teeth you get your money back which you can use to buy false teeth by mail from one of the convenient ads inside.

Now, this has always bugged me about pulps, this sloppy cover flapping around. They're always lined up on the top edge but the bottom usually wraps around the pages. I know I'd be trimming the stupid thing when I got it home from the newsstand like way back in 1941 because I'm weird like that. Seems like I've got one some obsessive teenager trimmed up all nice back in the day but I'll be damned if I can find it. Maybe I considered buying it instead of actually buying it.

To recap, this issue is the one where the Futuremen joined the circus and the plot was totally batshit crazy. Curt goes on a lame date with Joan and Otho, the guys think Captain Future is dead and bury somebody else, there's all kinds of goofy disguises, Curt builds a transmitter out of leaves or something, and they go to the Pleasure Planet which disappointingly is only a casino where nobody wins anything. This was one of the few original novels that wasn't reprinted as a paperback in the 60s, though it didn't make any sense to leave out the best one with Ul Quorn and reprint the yawn-enducing Magician of Mars. I haven't read the third Ul Quorn story, The Solar Invasion, yet but the consensus seems to be that Manly Wade Wellman did a mondo sucky job at it.

Anyhow, here's this awesome drawing of circus Curt in a cage full of wild Venusian swamp tigers which, honestly, looks like what happens when I come home from work but it's just the one cat.

Even though nobody asked, Otho's still nekkid.