Buster Crabbe #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBuster Crabbe #5 (Eastern Color, July 1952) stands as one of the earliest documented collaborations among three artists who would each go on to reshape American fantasy and science-fiction art: Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, and Roy Krenkel. The signed Frazetta cover — depicting Buster wrestling an alien — and a science-fiction interior story penciled by Williamson with Krenkel backgrounds and Frazetta inks represent a preview of the 'Fleagle Gang' working method that would soon define the best EC Comics pages of the early 1950s. The issue is also a direct artifact of the Golden Age celebrity-licensed comic: it appeared while Buster Crabbe was simultaneously headlining his own New York children's television show and still active in serials, making the book a genuine multimedia tie-in. For comics historians it documents the pre-EC 'apprenticeship' phase of two Hall of Fame artists at a publisher — Eastern Color — that had itself helped invent the American comic-book format two decades earlier.
Buster Crabbe faces conflict on an alien world where he and a woman named Miss Mars are forced to be enemies by their respective planetary governments, though they harbor romantic feelings for each other; he must escape before oxygen runs out. In a separate Western story titled "Homez on the Range," a sheriff pursues the outlaw Ferdie Pedink, who has hidden in a desert cave system near a river, with a bounty offered for his capture dead or alive.
Buster Crabbe and his sidekick Whiskers are uranium prospecting in the Rocky Mountains when they stumble upon explorers from Mars—and get captured before they can say "uranium." Hauled aboard a Martian spacecraft and taken to the red planet itself, the two Earth prospectors must use every ounce of quick thinking to survive encounters with the Martian authorities and navigate the planet's strange customs. As tensions escalate and Buster finds himself the unlikely center of attention, the line between enemy and ally grows surprisingly thin.
When Whiskers discovers what he believes is gold in the creek, he gets the whole camp excited about striking it rich—but three hours of fruitless panning later, the truth about his find becomes a lot less shiny. This 1952 frontier comedy plays out the classic prospector's dream and the reality that follows, with plenty of frontier humor along the way.
When Buster Crabbe and his sidekick Whiskers roll into the town of Drago, they discover a corpse buried under the name "Buster Crabbe"—and a ruthless vigilante outfit led by a man named Benson using the murder as cover to seize control and eliminate their enemies. Buster's got to reveal his true identity and rally the honest ranchers of the territory before Benson realizes the game is up and makes his final, deadly move. It's a tense race against time as the vigilantes close in, and Buster finds himself cut off with dwindling ammunition and no backup in sight.
Whiskers, a grizzled frontier scout with a reputation as the roughest Indian fighter in the territory, finds himself captured by a fierce band of Comanches—only to be offered a way out when the Chief's daughter Minnie-Boo-Hoo falls head over heels for him and demands marriage. Suddenly adopted as an honorary Comanche brave, Whiskers must navigate the messy conflict between his newfound tribal loyalty and his duty to the U.S. Cavalry, all while trying to win over his determined new bride.
Buster Crabbe and his companion Whiskers are riding the Comanche Trail when a gang of outlaws makes a calculated move: while one of their own tries to ambush the lawman, the rest plan to rob a mail car by demolishing the trestle beneath it. When Buster outsmarts the would-be assassin and lets him escape, he's counting on the fleeing outlaw to lead him straight to the larger operation. The climax traps both the criminals and their stolen prize in a mountain pass, where Buster and Whiskers spring their own carefully planned surprise.
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The Buster Crabbe series was published under the Famous Funnies imprint of Eastern Color Printing, headquartered in Waterbury, Connecticut, with William J. Pape as president and the copyright held by Buster Crabbe Enterprises, Inc. — a corporate arrangement that placed Crabbe's own business entity in control of his likeness rights. Al Williamson, who later described Crabbe's Flash Gordon serials as a formative personal influence, was still in the earliest stage of his professional career when he drew interior stories for the run; Lambiek Comiclopedia notes that the Buster Crabbe series was among his very first professional credits. Frazetta credits for this issue are documented in Greg Theakston's Frank Frazetta Comic Art Bibliography, corroborated by signed art on the cover itself. The series ran bi-monthly for 12 issues between November 1951 and September 1953, entirely within the Comics Code-compliant era, though the Code's formal establishment came only in 1954 — the indicia's 'Authorized A.C.M.P.' stamp indicates voluntary compliance with the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers' earlier precursor code.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1952 by Eastern Color (under the Famous Funnies/Famous Funnies Publications imprint), cover price 10 cents, 36 pages, bi-monthly frequency.
- Cover penciled and inked by Frank Frazetta (signed) — one of his earliest signed cover credits on a celebrity-licensed title — depicting Buster Crabbe in a science-fiction alien encounter scene.
- Interior science-fiction story penciled by Al Williamson with Roy Krenkel contributing background architecture, and Frank Frazetta inking figures alongside Williamson and Krenkel — an early, pre-EC example of the trio's collaborative 'Fleagle Gang' working method.
- Williamson himself stated that he recruited Krenkel specifically to render background architecture for the story, while Frazetta concentrated on inking figures — a division of labor the group would refine at EC Comics later in 1952.
- The issue features a science-fiction lead story in which Buster Crabbe travels to Mars and meets an alien woman, departing from the predominantly western-frontier genre of most other issues in the run.
- Copyright is held by 'Buster Crabbe Enterprises, Inc.,' indicating a direct licensing deal with Crabbe's own business entity — not simply a publisher-driven celebrity book.
- The series ran 12 issues (1951–1953); Eastern Color subsequently published Buster Crabbe Comics was followed by Lev Gleason's The Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe (4 issues, 1954), making this run part of the first of two distinct 1950s comic series bearing Crabbe's name.
- A page from this issue was reprinted in the comics fanzine The Rocket's Blast-Comicollector #94 (1973) as a full-page grayscale reproduction of page 7 — an early instance of fan-press documentation of the issue's artistic significance.
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Reprinted in The Rocket's Blast-Comicollector #94 (1973)
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