Don Martin...Science Fiction Artist!?!

Amazing but true, so here's a treat for Melvins & Madmen alike! Prior to his long stint at Mad magazine, one of my favorite humor artists tried his hand at SF illustration! During the late 50's, you could find his stuff in the pages of Galaxy magazine alongside Ed Emsh, Virgil Finlay & Wally Wood. Yow, that's pretty fast company!




First up are a trio of fine illustrations from a light-hearted tale by Avram Davidson, which involves alien invaders' need for false teeth (i'm not kidding, and there's even a sequel too!).




Galaxy seemed to excell in these frothy and urbane pre-Twilight Zone SF stories, and having these types of stories assigned to Martin shows the editorial care that went into the magazine at this time.



The other illustrations are more of the same, including "Lulu" by Clifford D. Simak.

X Minus 1 did a very loose adaption of that story and the storyline gets kind-of compressed in the process. Here's the X Minus 1 episode of that story by Clifford D. Simak -
"X Minus 1 - Oct. 31st 1957 - "Lulu"