Captain Cosmos Day!

Nicola "Nick" Cuti was born on this date in 1944.  Cuti was an important writer and editor at Charlton, Warren, and DC among others. He created Moonchild the Starbabe, and he co-created with Joe Staton my favorite superhero E-Man. He is a winner of the Bill Finger award. Today's focus is the hero he created and actually played in self-produced little TV episodes -- Captain Cosmos! 

Nick Cuti (writer, artist, editor, and all-around nice guy) had a TV show he'd been trying to get off the ground for years now. It's titled Captain Cosmos -- The Last Starveyor and it starred Nick himself in the title role.  Later a pilot did get made, but it was with a different cast, and a second comic came out featuring some of those alterations. Again, the great Joe Staton was on the artwork. I got the comic, but I'd never seen the pilot episode.

 

There was a pilot planned but scrapped. but it spawned a comic from Hamilton Comics in 1997 by Nick and his longtime E-Man partner Joe Staton. It was numbered zero. The story was titled "Never Leave Me..." and had the good Captain and company transport an alien woman with strange powers over nature to a distant planet. 

Later a pilot did get made, but it was with a different cast, and a second comic came out featuring some of those alterations. Again, Staton was on the artwork. I got the comic, but I'd not yet seen the pilot episode. The story in this 1998 story is titled "The Beast from Hyperspace". (That's artist Jim Janes under the mask as the villain "Gon" from the episode and not the story inside by the way.)

In an e-mail exchange with Nick many years ago, I commented on these comics, and he very graciously sent me the graphic novel version which includes the stories and contents of the first two issues (numbered #0 and #1) and a new story too. This "graphic novel" is identified as issue #2 of Captain Cosmos. There's also a new story titled "Lost in Transit" and sees the daughter of Captain Cosmos get misplaced during a teleporting accident. 

The ashcan contains the first two Captain Cosmos stories. 

And there is a #4 issue of the comic (Nick skipped #3 considering the #0 issue to count as the real #1 -- even now you can't escape that wacky Charlton numbering -- it must get in the bloodstream somehow). I've not got it, but it seems to be another story that previously appeared in abbreviated form in Even More Fund Comics, but it does sport a new Cuti cover. There's also a fumetti version of the first Captain Cosmos TV show. 

I found a DVD version of the existing shows titled "The Gray Ghosts" and ordered it lickety-split. It was charming. The DVD contained the pilot and two additional shows which use the character in a more kid-friendly mentoring role called "Cosmic Theater" are blended together in a story that points back to the series origins and the old space operas of TV from the 50's. Space Patrol, Rocky Jones Space Ranger and Tom Corbet are clear inspirations for these shows. The DVD offers a new episode beyond the "Gray Ghosts" storyline, though it could be linked in quite easily. There is even in one episode a segment of Space Patrol and a cartoon called Lunar Luger, both vintage items.

 

I'm not going to tell you these are great shows. They're not. The lack of funds shows up all over. There's an alien planet that looks just like the park the humans start from, with fences and roads and everything. There's some very tepid acting. The main set, the command cabin was apparently set up in Nick's dining room. But there's also some pretty decent acting, and some of the better stuff is from Nick himself. This ain't Shakespeare, but it is charming and it's fun. The storyline that formed the original pilot is clearly the best of the bunch and more of that would've really made this pretty good. The sound on the DVD is pretty spotty, but you'll find the virtual backgrounds pretty good at times. The funniest thing about the whole deal is that one character named Zen-Ya is played by at least four different actresses (maybe five) and that's explained by making her a shapeshifter of sorts who changes bodies like we change fashion. It's a clever solution to a hilarious problem. Also, each issue of the comics features material on the old TV shows that inspired the character. There are tons of photos from old 50's TV to feast on as well as a couple of essays on Space Patrol and the like. 

Captain Cosmos looks a lot like Nick Cuti and that's no accident as Nick plays the good Captain in the several homespun episodes of the "show" he has self-produced. Low budget but charming, they speak eloquently of a love for old-fashioned ideals, something I can certainly identify with.

In the novel Spin a Web of Death we get a thorough back story for Captain Cosmos, an older yet still eager space explorer who like so many folks anywhere and anytime is making a living in the real world while still hoping for adventure. As a young man he was part of an ill-fated program call the "Starveyers" which sought to accurately chart the space ways. Now he's a man of heart and failed farmer and family man who hauls cargo for men he has limited respect for.  Adventure drops into his lap when he is asked help evacuate a planet which is about to destroy itself. He finds a few strange alien races and perhaps even romance, but certainly danger as the mission becomes more about courage and even foolhardiness.

The book begins a bit slowly as we learn about the world of Cosmos, his history and his sense of duty. We learn of his fascination with old-fashioned TV shows, and this detail actually becomes quite important in a story which takes us into his mind in some odd and at times fascinating ways. I wish this story had ended before it did, as we are given a portrait of a man who does what he wants, what he needs to do despite the consequences, and those choices can reap a bitter harvest. But that's not the story here. This is romance, pure and simple in all the senses of that word.  

And now there's a second Captain Cosmos novel titles Halloween Hollow. I never knew about this 2018 novel featuring the Starveyer as he confronts Halloween. but snatched it up eagerly when I learned of its existence. This is a weaker novel than its predecessor with a plot that reads more like a video game than a true novel. Cosmos and his crew are tasked with taking new life-sustaining batteries to a planet which celebrates Halloween all the time and is in fact a place filled with strange habitats that appear to be Halloween carnivals and various other such things. We presented with wide array of classic monster images, most explained by way of alien races. Perhaps the weirdest thing is that one of the crew is an alien who resembles and behaves like a clown. It's a strange and chaotic ride, perhaps an attempt by Cuti to evoke the feel of a Halloween carnival event, but its uneven at best. It is a swift read though. 

Nick Cuti was an unabashed fan of those old space shows which once upon a time populated the TV screens. He made his own version, a memorial of sorts to those vintage shows and now a memorial to Nick himself.

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