More UFO Nattering

UFOs are, by nature, odd and mysterious things that are frequently confusing to the perceptions. So i guess it's rather natural that the comics seem to follow suit.

I mentioned last time that Gold Key's book, UFO Flying Saucers, continued for another 6 issues beyond the 7 issues that i originally had on hand. And that Whitman published another 5 issues. (Note that Gold Key and Whitman are both divisions of the same company - Western Publishing) While digging through the archives last night, i found another 12 issues from Gold Key - they changed the title to UFO & Outer Space with issue #14. The series continued through #25 in 1980.
And so the stack has grown...

Meanwhile, we've got more of the speculative pieces from those first seven. Eschewing dramatic presentation structures, let's open with perhaps the most interesting speculative possiblity -

ARE THE UFOS LIVING BEINGS? (art by George Roussos)

WHO FLIES THE SAUCERS??? (art by Frank Bolle)

WHERE DO FLYING SAUCERS COME FROM? (art by Luiz Dominguez)

Of course, it's always good to have a handy identification guide for spotting UFOs...

MODERN TYPES OF UFOS AND FLYING SAUCERS (script by Leo Dorfman, art by Rocco Mastroserio)

UFO'S THE SHAPE THEY'RE IN (art by Luiz Dominguez)

As mentioned previously, much of the book was dedicated to case studies of UFO encounters. We haven't looked at any of those as yet, so let's close out this post with a story that combines those with the speculative works which we've been viewing...

DO CREATURES FROM OUTER SPACE WALK THE EARTH??? (art by Frank Bolle)

"It is possible that somewhere in the universe, someone is reading a horror story about a fellow creature who explored a distant planet and was attacked by four horrible little bipeds."

Yeah. I can see that. "Horrible little bipeds" being how human beings were known to galactic society seems believable.
(Hermit, remember?)

page art from UFO Flying Saucers #s 1, 4, 6, & 7 (1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975)

LOOK! Up In The Sky! It's... What IS That?

While prepping this weekend's presentation of Vic Torry And His Flying Saucer, some related comics were piled off to the side, as is often the case around here.

Vic came from the dawn of the modern UFO era and many more followed over the years, gaining greater cultural presence in the late '60s and through the '70s. At the height of the Groovy Age, Gold Key published UFO Flying Saucers. The title lasted for at least seven issues (based on my pile here) between 1968 and 1975.
(Nope. Deeper investigation reveals there are six more issues not in the current pile. UFO ran for 13 issues, through 1977. And another 5 issue series followed from Whitman.)

The book establishes their editorial tone on the inside of the front cover with a short essay on the subject. The basic attitude is covered in the opening three sentences:

WHAT IS A UFO?
UFO simply means Unidentified Flying Object. A UFO is a phenomenon, usually a bright light in the sky, which has been observed but cannot be explained.

A brief overview follows, with this paragraph concluding the piece:

UFOs are nothing new. Sightings were made thousands of years ago. Still they defy all efforts to discover what they really are, where they come from and whether they amount to anything more than an interesting curiosity. In short, UFOs remain one of our most intriguing and persistent mysteries.

Now, don't fret. I didn't just blithely skip the middle. Much of what it had to say was more interestingly presented in some greater detail throughout the book in comic format. Let's go to the introduction, written by Leo Dorfman, along with everything else in the issue, and illustrated by Jet Dream's Joe Certa -

After that rather abrupt stop, the book shifts to short accounts of more modern encounters. Mixed in with those were various speculative pieces, usually 2-pagers like these:

LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS (art by Luiz Dominguez)

WHO FLIES THE SAUCERS? (art by Rocco Mastroserio)

EARTH'S OWN FLYING SAUCERS (art by Luiz Dominguez(?))

Oddly enough, this all links back to my favorite caveman comic...

page art from UFO Flying Saucers #1 (1968)