Major Mars

A curiosity from the early 1950s Golden Age, Major Mars made their debut in the very first issue of The Adventures of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis in 1952, brought to life by cartoonist Howie Post. With only a handful of appearances spread across an eclectic range of titles — from Batman to Heckle and Jeckle to Paul Terry's Mighty Mouse Comics — this character is a genuine oddity of the era, popping up in the company of animated favorites like Dinky Duck, Percy Puss, and Rudy Rooster. Brief and elusive, Major Mars is exactly the kind of deep-cut Golden Age find that reminds collectors just how wonderfully strange and wide-ranging the comics landscape of the early fifties really was.