Number 1476: Interplanetary Robinson Crusoe

Writers and aspiring writers, take note if you have problems finding plots for your stories. Just steal. Or if you prefer, call it “homage.” Like this shorty from My Greatest Adventure #24 (1958), written by a fan of author Daniel Defore. It saved a lot of trouble by just taking some incidents from Defoe’s work and transplanting them to a science fiction adventure. Not only that, but it created instant reader identification because Robinson Crusoe is a work so well known it’s practically imprinted on our brains at birth.

I like the artwork by comic book journeyman Jim Mooney, and I got a kick out of the hero finding raw diamonds that look like cut stones lying on the ground. It may have had something to do with editor Jack Schiff telling Mooney to make it obvious to their young readers that the stone were actually diamonds, because the kids might not recognize them as such in their uncut form.