"Damnation, I've run out of air!"

February 19, 2008 8:19 AM

Please help me find a poem/comic book story -- it takes place on Mars and ends with the line "Damnation, I've run out of air!"

It was published in a sci-fi/horror comic, possibly Alien Worlds, less likely Twisted Tales, most likely something else; it was doggerel, and as I remember, it took place on Mars, and may have involved a stranded spaceman meeting a beautiful Martian or something along those lines, and then running out of air in his space suit.

posted by breezeway to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Response by poster: I've done some more research, and it might be a 1977 Wrightson/Cuti collaboration from the Pacific Comics title Creepy #87, reprinted a couple years later in #113, the Berni Wrightson special ish, called "A Martian Saga." But I don't know for sure; I know I owned #87 as a kid, it was the Mars book with three vertical panes on the cover, but I'm not sure if the story is the same one I remember, or just another red herring.

I'm gonna check some of the comic stores here in NYC for Creepy #87/113, and I'll report back with my findings.

If anyone has Creepy #87/113, I'd love to know if "A Martian Saga" is the poem I'm thinking of, in case my search here turns up nothing. Thanks.
posted by breezeway at 8:34 AM on February 21, 2008

Mod note: Final update from the OP:

I found it. "A Martian Saga," written by Nicola Cuti, is from Berni Wrightson: Master of the Macabre #3 (Pacific/Eclipse, 1983). It's possible that Master of the Macabre is a special anthology series and that it was in fact first printed elsewhere, but that's the book I owned as a kid.

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posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:51 AM on March 18, 2014