Awesome Tales #11 (Fall 2019) is now out from Bold Venture Press and Black Cat Media.
As with issue #5, science fiction is the theme this issue, with a cover featured Tom Corbett story. For those who don’t recall Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, it was a fairly popular TV series from the space-crazed 1950s. It ran on each of the four networks (though not at the time) from October 1950 through June 1955, and spawned a comic strip, a juvenile book series (eight total), comicbooks (from Dell and later Prize), and a radio show (the character was originally developed for radio).
To kick off the story, we get an article on actor Jan Merlin, who sadly passed away recently. He starred in Tom Corbett as Cadet Roger Manning. The article and Corbett story are both by editor R. Allen Leider.
The story in this issue has Tom and friends on a secret mission to Kepler 186f where they meet with Samiel, a Keplerian. And all the Keplerians are shapeshifters. This looks to be the first of another series of stories. As someone who wasn’t too familiar with Tom Corbett, other then by reputation, this was pretty good. I look forward to seeing where this goes.
This issue is rounded out with three other sf tales.
DJ Tyrer, who had a story in issue #5, gives us “Rogue Planet,” about a new planet entering our solar system in the 23rd century. A ship is sent to investigate, and finds a threat to everyone.
Patrick Thomas‘ “Ask Not for Whom the Planet Tolls,” which is a “tale of the Startenders,” and ties to a couple of his novels about the barship Fools’ Glory and its crew. Here they stop the Grim Reaper for killing more systems. I’m not too familiar with this series, so not sure how this one ties in with the rest of the series.
Sandra Lee Rauenzahn‘s “A Voice in the Dark” is about a boy who somehow makes contact with himself in the future. And it’s a future that is a dangerous world.
It’s another good issue. As Awesome Tales seems to be back on a quarterly basis, I hope we’ll see the next issue in a few months. What might we get? The next in the Fantomas series? Or Domino Lady? I hope it’s Fantomas. Or we might get something else entirely. We’ll have to wait and see.
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