Rex Dexter And The LONG Road To Mars

My mind is finally starting to surface from the work on T3C for a bit of fresh air. As i herd it back towards The Voice Of ODD!, some of those bits we wandered off from seem to be calling for a return. Today, let's (hopefully) begin another visit with Dick Briefer, starting with a return to the adventures of Rex Dexter of Mars, Interplanetary Adventurer from Mystery Men Comics.

After his first adventure, Rex started heading back home to Mars to show off his new Earth Babe...

Five issues later, still enroute to Mars...
 

...soon after, it was becoming apparent even to Rex that this trip was taking a bit too long...
 

...but, finally, they were on "the last lap" of their journey...
 

SU-U-URE!
They'll have you two back on Earth in no time - right after a quick stop on Mars.

While they're travelling, we'll come back to some of Briefer's other works including, of course, more Frankenstein - after we visit with Biff Bannon. Maybe they'll make it back to Mars by the time we finish looking at the others...

page art by Dick Briefer from Mystery Men Comics #s 4, 9, 11, & 12 (1939, 1940)

Mixing It Up With Tom

As noted in our postings on Jane and Snood, Tom Mix's gang on the TM Bar Ranch were known as the Straight Shooters. They used that phrase frequently, and applied it to others beyond themselves. So, in every issue of Tom Mix Comics there was a Straight-Shooters! page featuring a real-world figure in a biographical profile, starting with Tom Mix himself -

The feature went on to spotlight the kind of notable western history figures one might expect...

(Movies LIED to me about how Kit Carson looked, apparently)

Another way they used the Straight Shooters hook was to bring in the readers themselves...

They featured several spreads with the names of kids who joined the Straight Shooters Honor Role,<sic> building their fan base with readers and radio show listeners like the Supermen Of America, who might be more familiar to modern readers. 

But, as we've seen with Jane and Snood, the war came to the TM Bar Ranch and the book changed from Tom Mix Comics to Tom Mix Commandos. With that shift, the feature changed from Straight-Shooters! to Commandos And Their Weapons -

There was another change beyond just the war, but i can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe you can spot the oddness not related to WW2...

Wash was another member of the Straight Shooters, as you may have noted in the pic we use when talking about them -

Being an actual person helped Wash to avoid being drawn in the heavily caricatured style typical of the times, but didn't save him from the step'n'fetchit dialectics. He was saddled with them in the radio show, too, so there was no sparing him here.

page art by Fred Meagher from Tom Mix Comics #s 1-9 and Tom Mix Commandos #s 10-12 (1940, 1942)