Number 2302: Captain Marvel and the space dragon

I have always assumed that Captain Marvel stories were done for youngsters, probably ages eight to twelve years. The drawings are usually fairly innocuous for comic books,* and Otto Binder, who wrote most of them, had a sense of humor so they can’t be taken seriously. This is also a story where someone says they can defeat a space dragon by gathering up “atomic rockets” and Captain Marvel does just that. He collects 1,093 atomic rockets, which if aimed at Earth might end all life on the planet. It never ceases to amaze me when I read in comic books — I have shown the phenomenon before — where the hero is handed nuclear weapons to use at his own discretion to end a threat.

The dragon is discovered by prison inmate Bozo Smith. I like that Captain Marvel works toward Bozo’s rehabilitation, even though his capture by Captain Marvel sent him to prison.

The story originally appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #104 (1950). I scanned it from a 1953 Captain Marvel Annual from the UK. The whole annual (all 32 pages) is in color, which is unusual for reprints from the UK.

Grand Comics Database does not guess the writer and artist, so I’ll take a (hopefully educated) guess that it was written by Otto Binder, and drawn by the C.C. Beck studio.

*About 1953 Captain Marvel turned to horror for some of the stories, when horror comics became the vogue. Here is a link; just click on the thumbnail.