Thrilling Tales From The Stars

In 1964, Millennium Comics attempted a science-fiction hero, the Martian Marvel, set on ancient Mars before it dried out in Thrilling Tales from the Stars. The Martian Marvel was never a spectacular success. In 1966, the Martian Marvel was killed off (by accelerated dehydration of Mars, in parallel to the atomic bomb). His book was turned into a science-fiction anthology featuring limited series set on different planets. Many of these series happened during the heyday of Ganzar Prime (which was assumed to be many millennia or billennia before the present), home of Mentor. The stories were loosely connected by the continued existence of planetary civilizations rather than individual characters, who tended to receive one adventure only and occasionally did not survive it.

Thrilling Tales was often heavy-handed on aliens as symbols, but a bright spot appeared when Oregon-born Millicent Virginia Chernova took over as primary feature writer. She united the various planets into her ‘Cosmotopia’ and heightened the characteristic individuality of the protagonists.