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.

UFOs and Our Space Age by Otto Binder

 

Otto O. Binder, as described in the introduction to the Inventory of the Science Fiction Archive of Otto Binder housed at Texas A&M University’s Cushing Memorial Library:

“Otto Oscar Binder (1911-1974) began writing science fiction with his brother Earl under the pen name Eando Binder and was first published in 1932. … by 1938, according to S-F authority Sam Moskowitz,’Eando Binder had become one of the three most popular writers in the field.’ ... [Otto] Binder had a talent for plotting, and was credited with being one of the more imaginative writers of the period. He largely left the S-F field in the 1940s to write continuities for the Captain Marvel comic book series, which he did for 17 years. … Binder also wrote more than 300 nonfiction articles, and wrote extensively on unidentified flying objects.”

Binder wrote a saucer story in Captain Marvel Adventures # 98 from 1949

Binder wrote about UFOs in both science fiction and nonfiction over the years in many books and magazines. His chief nonfiction books on the topic were Flying Saucers Are Watching Us in 1967, and What We Really Know About Flying Saucers in 1968.

Our Space Age 

In 1960, Otto Binder launched Our Space Age (originally), a daily feature syndicated by Bell-McClure. It was illustrated by Carl Pfeufer (1910 – 1980), an artist who had drawn comics for Dell, Centaur, Fawcett, Marvel and other publishers.

Our Space Age focused on rockets, satellites, and space exploration, and The Fabulous Fifties blog has a sampling of early panels from 1961 – 1962.

March 22, 1962

Jan 5, 1963

Binder combined his interest in flying saucers and comics in several of his Captain Marvel stories, but in 1965, he did it again as nonfiction for Our Space Age. In 1966 UFOs became the sole focus of the series, as seen below in the advertisement for the series. Binder frequently urged readers to send in their own sighting reports, and also directed them to contact Ray Palmer of Flying Saucers magazine and Jim Moseley of Saucer News for further information on UFOs.

Our Space Age covered a mixture of classic cases, profiles of UFO witnesses, and recent sighting reports. We’ve assembled a sampling of the episodes from across the run of the series.

Sept. 28, 1965

Oct. 1, 1965

Oct. 4, 1965

Oct. 27, 1965

Sept. 28, 1965

Jan. 24, 1966

Feb 19, 1966

Feb 23, 1966

Feb 28, 1966

Aug. 5, 1966

March 24, 1966

June 1, 1966

June 14, 1966

June 23, 1966

Aug. 6, 1966

July 7, 1966

July 8, 1966

Aug 17, 1966

Binder's series featured all aspects of the UFO experience: contact, abductions, humanoids, UFO performance, ancient astronauts, hoaxes, and more.

Sept. 6, 1966

Sept. 29, 1966

Oct 31, 1966

Nov. 1, 1966

Sept. 28, 1967

Dec. 3, 1966

July 20, 1967

Oct. 16, 1967

Oct. 10, 1968

Oct. 14, 1968

Oct. 14, 1968

Sept. 25, 1969

The Human Flying Saucer

In 1966, Binder reunited with C. C. Beck hoping to recapture the magic of their Captain Marvel success. What we got instead was Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer. It only lasted three issues. Deliberately silly in the wake of the campy Batman TV series, we mention it here chiefly for presenting a panel from Our Space Age in color in each issue, as seen in the collection above.

Otto Binder's Legacy

Our Space Age ran from 1960 - 1969. Binder died in 1974 at the age of 63, but he left the world with a wealth of fantastic characters and stories. For more information on the life and work of Otto Binder see, “Before the Golden Age-Eando Binder,” from the site, Tellers of Weird Tales.

Bill Schelly wrote Words of Wonder, the biography of Otto Binder, which was reviewed by UFO researcher Martin S. Kottmeyer. Since then, the book was re-released in 2016 as: Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary by Bill Schelly.