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Originally Posted by sheepherder
Gary, do you remember Charlton Comics??? Gunmaster??? Sarge Steel??? These are all new to me...I have to wonder if comic books were 'regional' back in the 50's. 
I'm still a bit skeptical about the Johnny Cloud version of 'Ghost Ship of Three Wars' (or whatever the title was). Cloud seems to have been a WW II pilot, whereas the story I recall had the WW I pilot going through the time rift...And finally returning to WW I...That Johnny Cloud story was in a 1952 comic book, I have to wonder if a comic that old would still be around when I was reading them in 1960 or so...Maybe...
All three of the 'ship of X wars' seem to be available on eBay. If I can work up the energy to actually bid/buy one, I'll scan the story and share it.  |
Take another look at the text on the comic's cover I provided Sheepherder. It doesn't say Johnny Cloud was in the story entitled "The ship that fought in three wars". It says "Featuring Johnny Cloud the Navajo Ace".....(within another story in the same issue) and notice it says "
ALSO the startling ship that fought in three wars". So the 3 wars plane was an ALSO story separate from the Johnny Cloud one, but still in that same issue. Now that one that you posted the cover of, that says Johnny Cloud dives through time to fight the ship that fought in three wars,....I can't account for that one and am not familiar with it if it starred Johnny Cloud. The only one I was/am familiar with was the one with the cover I posted of the WW1 biplane shooting down the zeppelin, getting its tail hit by a ME109 and fighting a Mig jet. and although it was in the same issue along with another story about Johnny Cloud, it was a different story. Several stories in the same comic. That might allay some of your confusion about that.....but then still.....there is that one you posted the cover of that says Johnny Cloud dives through time to fight the 3 war ship. Strange. Maybe they just recycled the story in that issue and put Johnny Cloud in it. I know comics frequently would reprint a story from years earlier. Sometimes they would even reprint the story and also change it a little bit. Maybe that's what happened in the one you posted the cover of. The one I posted the cover of, I got from a friend who I traded comics with in the 1960's. I even remember getting that particular one since I liked its premise so much. And it always stuck in my mind which is why I recognized it when you mentioned it.
An interesting thing, is there was an old early 1960's Twilight Zone t.v. episode very similar. Where the WW1 pilot was in a dogfight, and went through a strange cloud, and winded up landing his WW1 biplane fighter at a U.S. airbase in the early 1960's. He had his fighter and documentation, but of course the 1960's officers all thought he was nuts. As it turned out, his wingman who was in the dogfight along with him against the Germans, had stayed in the air force and later became a General whose nickname was "Old lead bottom" because of a wound he received in the butt flying in WW1. Well when the WW1 pilot found out that his buddy (now the much older and a General... "Old lead bottom") was coming to the base for an inspection, he realized that if he didn't get back to his time and dive on the Germans and stop them from killing his buddy, that his buddy wouldn't be able to exist in the future. So he got away from the officers, and ran to his plane, took off, flew back into that strange cloud, and saved his friend "old lead bottom" from being killed. Unfortunately he was killed himself doing that. At the end of the episode, when old lead bottom arrived at the base, and was asked by the officers about his WW1 flying partner and showed the documents of his former WW1 flying buddy, he asked "What's this all about? How did you get these documents and things from my WW1 friend who saved my life and lost his?". The officer told him, "Sit down old lead bottom, I have something to tell you" and that was the end of the t.v. episode. Anyone else remember that one?
Now did the comic cause a Twilight Zone writer to write that t.v. episode, or did the t.v. episode cause the comic author to write the comic? I don't know, but they are somewhat similar. I also remember another Twilight Zone early 1960's episode where a passenger airliner flew back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. Then tried to get back to their own time only to wind up at La Guardia airport in the 1930's and the episode ended with them trying to get back to the 1960's again. Another time traveling airplane story.
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