Space Western Comics #43

In the dusty frontier of 1953’s Arizona, a sudden meteor shower interrupts Army maneuvers—only to reveal that the falling rocks are no ordinary debris. When the meteors begin moving with eerie purpose, revealing themselves as hard-skinned, bulletproof invaders, it falls to the sharp-eyed Spurs Jackson to stop the Meteor Men before they overrun the desert.

In "The Battle of Spaceman's Gulch," Hank Roper finds himself unexpectedly face-to-face with Jawa, a Neptunian artopod and leader of a scout crew preparing to invade Earth—far from the costumed fans and mock rocket ship he’d been expecting. With the real alien and his insectoid companions closing in, Hank must rely on quick thinking and a little frontier cunning to survive the standoff.

In "Visit Spurs Jackson at his Spaceranch in Spaceman's Gulch," the curious Jo pays a visit to Spurs Jackson, a frontier-minded spacer who’s made a name for himself tending to the strange Saturlopes—alien creatures that dwell in Saturn’s rings and survive by feeding on mineral rocks. Written by an unknown hand and illustrated by an unknown artist, this one-page tale offers a quiet, character-driven glimpse into the oddities of life on the edge of the solar frontier.

In the shadowed reaches beyond the Moon, a secret Soviet space post oversees a grim operation: flying saucers ferry enslaved workers to lunar mines under the guise of interstellar travel. Lousak, the cold-eyed overseer of this orbiting outpost, commands a machine of oppression that moves unseen across the void.

In "Trip to Mercury," Strong Bow journeys with Laughing Frog and another member of his Mayan tribe to a forgotten pyramid in Mexico, drawn by ancient tales of Princess Karna’s disappearance. What they find inside defies belief—a spaceship that carries Strong Bow to Mercury, where he is captured by the enigmatic Axar, only to break free and uncover a shocking truth about the princess who has remained untouched by time.