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[crashryan]

I always wondered how Murphy Anderson came to draw this comic. As far as I know he did nothing else for Dell/Western. It's a terrific job, too. Anderson captured William Lundigan's likeness nicely. The only thing that is out of place is the spaceship design. The TV show based its hardware on Chesley Bonestell's designs, the ones he developed for the Willy Ley-Wernher von Braun space travel books. Anderson's rather rudimentary rocketship sticks out from the slick artwork like a sore thumb.

The story is more mature than your typical TV comic. It seems to have taken pieces from TV episodes. I haven't seen the show since 1959 so I remember almost nothing, but on IMDB someone describes the scene where McCauley, drifting in space, repeats his name over and over so the crew can get a fix on him. Then again, most of the comments were from people who also hadn't seen the show since 1959. Maybe this guy was remembering the comic book!

Link to the book: 1083 - Men Into Space

[Captain Audio]

I downloaded all episodes of Men Into Space many years ago and burned them to discs.
I remember the ep with McCauley adrift repeating his name so they could track his trajectory.
An interesting tid bit, the spacesuit he wore in that ep was an actual spacesuit made by the US Navy for extreme high altitude flights, most likely by balloon at that time. Some of those balloon flights got very near the edge of the atmosphere.
Later eps used a simpler costume grade space suit, little more than a coverall with a realistic helmet and neck ring seal.
This was a great series, ahead of its time in some ways but dead on its time frame in other ways.