Number 1802: Men in Space: Swift Morgan

This is the beginning of a theme week: Men in Space. It's for those intrepid men who brave the terrors of space, be they aliens or space pirates. First up, some space pirates, courtesy of the British space hero, Swift Morgan.

Swift was featured in a series which ran in the early fifties in a British comic paper. It was created and drawn by artist Denis McLoughlin, assisted by his brother, Colin, who scripted.

McLoughlin was an artist who drew in a style influenced by Americans. He was a prolific cover artist for UK editions of American and British crime and mystery novels. He also did pulp magazines (covers and interior illos) and comic books. His career,which ended by suicide in 2002, was capped by twenty years of drawing the UK Commando series. I bought the book, The Art of Denis McLoughlin by David Ashford. I am impressed by the quality of this artist's output in a combination autobiography, biography and illustrated catalog of his work.

I found the story online, reproduced from a black line comic interior. The color (sorry, I mean “colour”) cover is scanned from the The Art of Denis McLoughlin. (More below the story.)

The book I am refering to is a 950 copy limited edition, which I found available from a third party seller on Amazon.com, at a very reasonable price.

The prolific McLoughlin was also well known for his Western illustrations. He was fascinated by the subject, and had a large reference library at his home .

Here are a couple of his cover illustrations from the book, which show his versatility in style and subject matter. I especially like his moody, noir-styled illustrations in deep shadows. He drew some beautiful women, too...a must for pulps and paperbacks.

Number 978


Flying Saucer Day at Pappy's


Today marks the 64th anniversary of the headline in the Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record, which claimed the Air Force had recovered a crashed flying disk. The story was quickly retracted, but the story has blossomed into something that has a life of its own, still causing discussion over six decades later.


At some point aliens from space were said to have been recovered from the crash site, so our postings today feature little alien guys.

First up we have Swift Morgan, scanned from the 1954 Spaceways annual from the UK. The writer/artist is famed British illustrator Denis McLoughlin. Since I know little about this artist, due to the paucity of information on this side of the Atlantic about comics from the UK, I've included a link to the Wikipedia entry on McLoughlin, who died in 2002. Even though the annual with the story is dated 1954, according to sources the story itself comes from 1949, and is an early entry in the comic book flying saucer mythos.

More aliens, this time white and not gray, come from Dell's Flying Saucers #1, 1967. There were several UFO "flaps" around that time, and interest was high. These three stories appear to have been coordinated to make the aliens look like one species. The tales themselves, while part of UFO lore, are a bit suspicious as to their credibility. I'll leave that to you to determine. As for me, I'm a skeptic, but even so, I love the iconography and images of flying saucers, and have all my life.

The stories are drawn by José Delbo, Sam Glanzman and Sal Trapani.