Written by Various
Illustrated by Various
Published by Archie Comics
In all my years of reading comic books, I don’t believe I ever actually ran across an issue of Cosmo the Merry Martian, the short run Sy Reit/Bob White series that came out in 1959, the year I was born.
Oh, I’d heard of it, seen the covers in Overstreet, and vaguely knew the character from his many cameos—usually courtesy of Fernando Ruiz—in new Archie comics of the past couple decades.
But I had no idea the original was an actual mini-series with an ongoing plotline.
Actually, with its rambling, episodic story it reminds me more of a newspaper comic strip which—since there’s never an actual ending to an ongoing strip—just moves on from one plot to the next.
Both art and story here are great fun, though, as Cosmo and his sidekick Orbi crash land on the Moon while headed to Earth.
There they meet Oogs, colorful little Carl Barks-like Moon people who accompany them on to our world.
Over the course of the original six issue run, they also check out Venus and Saturn and more Martians show up searching for them, too!
This collection also includes some of the more recent appearances of Cosmo along with the entirety of the 2018 reboot first issue which finds Cosmo now looking more like longtime videogame hero Mega Man in an all-new, not bad anime-inspired adventure.
All in all, in spite of the clash of early Silver Age and recent Modern Age styles, a nice mix of nostalgia and good solid entertainment. It’s easy to see from this how Cosmo, the Merry Martian has become a cult favorite over the years.
Now, finally, more readers have access to it and can find out for themselves.
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