ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 001

I've highlighted some particular aliens before but what is this blog but an exercise in making note of every dang thing I come across. And so: aliens! We're going to stick to our old familiar way of dealing with things that will have a lot of examples with little info: the round-up, and since I've been reading Target Comics recently, we'll be seeing all of the alien weirdos that Basil Wolverton designed for Spacehawk to encounter! As time goes on we'll see some of the (checks files) nearly 900 alien species I have catalogued in a dusty old spreadsheet, as well as any new ones who might come our way.

Bat-Men:

Spacehawk encounters this solitary Bat-Man in the giant ant tunnels that riddle the crust of Neptune, and he just wants the danged Martian pirates who have been making their lair nearby to clear out and stop being such bad neighbours. I really appreciate the 1940s "didn't bother to check out what a bat wing looks like" wings, which can be totally justified because, hey, this is an alien! Why would it have the same kind of wings anyway? (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

Martians:

And speaking of those Martians: here they are. As you can see, the Martians in Wolverton's Spacehawk stories have a fair amount of different facial lumps and bumps, but they all have droopy little ears and noodly tentacle arms. (Target Comics v1 005, 009 x2, 011, 1940)

Mercurians:

I said it before in the Grebo entry but the point still stands: I really appreciate this glimpse of "men of all the nations of Mercury" that shows that there is just an incredible amount of phenotypic diversity in the Mercurian genome, covering every humanoid alien look from lizard-man through pink and lumpy to weird little imp. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

Draxions:  

The Mercurian tendency toward genetic diversity finds its ultimate expression in the Draxions, who moved to Venus after a disastrous war and managed to become water-breathing fish-men over the course of a couple of hundred years merely by hanging around a lake enough. Luckily for them, Spacehawk is on hand to help them out with a bit of superscience when they decide that living in a lake isn't all that it's cracked up to be. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)