The Lost UFO Book of Otto Binder

Inour previous article on  Our Space Age by Otto Binder, we covered the basic history of the 1960s flying saucer newspaper series. Thanks to Louis Taylor, we now have more episodes from the feature, and insight to Binder's plan for a UFO book based on the series. 

On June 29, 1966, Otto O. Binder wrote a proposal to publisher Joe Simon about a non-fiction book on UFOs. Binder was a science fiction writer who also had a distinguished career in comic books scripting the Captain Marvel characters. Joe Simon, along with Jack Kirby created Captain America and characters in the 1940s, but in 1966 was editing a line of comics for Harvey, a group of adventure and super hero comics branded as “Harvey Thriller.”

Louis Taylor, host of Information Dispersal, recently obtained a rare item, Binder’s proposal for the UFO book, along with photostats of the pages that were intended to make up its content. Binder’s plan was for a 64-page collection reprinting the UFO episodes of his syndicated comic strip feature illustrated by Carl Pfeufer, Our Space Age. Binder had over 200 panels of UFO illustrations with more in production. He planned to supplement the 43 pages of UFO reprints with new material, an essay on UFO history, a science fiction short story, a directory of saucer books and magazines, a list of “personalities,” and a page on the very latest UFO sightings and news.

Binder’s plan was for Simon to print it as a black and white comic book, but he hoped that it could be displayed with magazines and seen by adults, not racked next to Batman, Archie and Richie Rich.    

His letter enclosed the below note with a sample of the strips, with hos suggestions about how they could be grouped into themed chapters:

Contactees, History of UFOs, All About UFOs, Theories About UFOs, one on Sightings, and a chapter on witness reports sent in by readers.

Here’s a sampling chosen by Louis Taylor of some of the more interesting of Binder’s submissions from Our Space Age.

These pages appear to be copies of what was sent out by the Bell-McClure Syndicate to newspapers that subscribed to their service. The panels would bet cut and printed Monday - Saturday.

 

The book was never published. Our Space Age continued producing UFO episodes into 1969, so there was an additional three years of material beyond what Otto Binder was proposing to collect in 1966. Luckily for us, we have archivists like Louis Taylor striving to rescue and share lost UFO history.