Strange Worlds #1

Captain Dave Kenton of the Star Patrol finds himself disgraced and stranded on the planet Flayal—but when he learns the Coalsack Pirates have struck again, he hatches a dangerous plan: go undercover as a renegade to infiltrate their hidden fleet and locate the force-field engines holding them prisoner in that dark corner of space. Once inside the pirate stronghold, Kenton stumbles onto Maeve Malloy, a space reporter trapped in the same nest of thieves, and the two must work together to destroy the engines and signal for rescue before Captain Balda and his ruthless crew discover their true intentions.

In "Dead Man's Tale," a desperate man named Myron Morgan steals a mysterious elixir from a mysterious tramp, only to murder him when the truth of its power is revealed. With the elixir granting his every wish, Myron rises from poverty to unimaginable wealth—until he realizes the liquid is nearly gone. Desperate to preserve his life, he hides the bottle away, but when his young daughter accidentally breaks it, the consequence is immediate and irreversible.

When a storm-tossed boat carrying the warrior Crom, the princess Tanit, and her companion Lalla washes ashore in a forgotten jungle, they're quickly captured by the ape-men who serve the brutal king Rou—ruler of the crumbling city of Akka and guardian of the monstrous Spider God Spraa. Left for dead after a brutal ambush, Crom must track his companions through a savage maze of ancient ruins and face down impossible odds to prevent them from becoming offerings to Spraa's hunger.