“War Dogs of the Golden Horde” by Peter Scanlan. Del Rey Books, 1997.
“Martian Deathtrap” by Ken Steacy. Del Rey Books, 1997.
During the development of Mars Attacks, illustrators Wally Wood and Bob Powell produced hundreds of drawings, many of which are lost to history. Some development sketches have survived, including the early Martian concept designs above and on next two pages.
“Jet Interceptor.” Previously unpublished development sketch by Wally Wood. This concept would eventually become “Death in the Cockpit” (card no. 12 this page). Donated from a private collection.
Before it was called Mars Attacks, the series was test-marketed as Attack from Space. Previous page and below: A rare one-cent display box.
Uncut Attack from Space card wrapper.
Mars Attacks display box.
Mars Attacks card wrapper.
Uncut Mars Attacks UK edition card wrapper.
No. 3, “Attacking an Army Base”
Following public backlash after the release of Mars Attacks in 1962, Topps toyed with the idea of releasing a more toned-down, less offensive set, reportedly asking the original artists to retouch the offending images on several cards to remove the excessive gore and sexual overtones. Although the project was never completed, thirteen of the altered paintings eventually saw publication in 1984 when Rosem Enterprises released them as Mars Attacks—The Unpublished Version (starting on this page).
No. 6, “Burning Navy Ships”
No. 8, “Terror in Times Square”
No. 11, “Destroy the City”
No. 15, “Saucers Invade China”
No. 17, “Beast and the Beauty”
No. 19, “Burning Flesh”
No. 21, “Prize Capture”
No. 29, “Death in the Shelter”
No. 30, “Trapped!!”
No. 32, “Robot Terror”
No. 36, “Destroying a Dog”
No. 38, “Victims of the Bug”
Dad painted Mars Attacks when I was about nine, at the same time he was becoming a real person to me. It was then that I began to actually know my father as someone other than the grown-up who bossed me around and sang a jazzy bedtime-lullaby version of “Three Little Fishes” while bobbing his cigarette in the dark of the bedroom I shared with my little brother.
My father began to have a personality separate from what he imposed on me, and I began to listen to his opinions as something other than orders from on high. He had no shortage of opinions; my father was all opinions, all the time. For example, the civil rights movement: he was for it. Religion: he was against it. And, of course, most pertinent to this book, Mars Attacks: just a bunch of bug-eyed monsters he painted for bubble-gum cards.
Dad had a brash personality. He was talkative and flamboyant, and he had a deep appreciation for—and commitment to—irreverence, and a very strong appreciation for the funny and fierce stuff of which people are composed. And he thought children were very much people. We weren’t tiny angels who didn’t know how to tell a lie. We weren’t small cardboard figures who only had sugary syrup sloshing around in our heads. Dad knew damn well that we were ferocious little warriors, bloodthirsty and cruel, and delighted by horror.
In other words, Dad was the perfect artist for Mars Attacks.
His studio was on the third floor of the brownstone we lived in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In the same room was our one and only TV, so I was often sitting there watching Soupy Sales or Sonny Fox while just a few feet away Dad was wreaking death and destruction on the human race.
Dad worked at a drawing table he bought at the estate auction of one of his illustration heroes, J. C. Leyendecker. He would sit on a tall stool with a splintered and tattered straw seat covered by a threadbare folded-up towel. Wearing a green eyeshade, he painted with a magnifying glass in his left hand hovering over his paintbrush, so he could add all the tiny little details to his masterpieces.
Each Mars Attacks illustration began as a pencil sketch by Bob Powell. They were very detailed, very finished, and Dad would paint directly on top of them in gouache. Dad had a story about how he came to paint in gouache. The very first staff art job he ever had, back in the 1920s in Minneapolis, was with Fawcett Publications, which published Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, a humor magazine that had bought a few of Dad’s cartoons. During the interview, Captain Billy, who ran the place, asked if Dad knew how to paint in “goo-wash.” “Oh, sure, of course. Done it a million times!” my father said, and he got the job. As soon as he was out the door, Dad made a beeline to the library and had a hell of a time looking up what “goo-wash” was, having no idea how to spell it. It was one of the most enduring and enriching lessons my father ever taught me: If someone asks if you know how to do something, lie. Dad got a lot of assignments and learned a lot of new things by following that maxim, and so have I.
Dad would sit at his table, unwrap Powell’s sketch, and start painting. He was a fast painter, and he counseled me never to let an art director know how fast you are—they won’t pay you as much if they know you do the painting in half the time they think it takes you.
He’d paint glaring Martians sending their minions into battle, snatching moist young women from their beds, and siccing mammoth murderous bugs on our hapless world to crunch us up and spit us out. One of my favorite paintings was of a Martian burning the fur and flesh off a dog in front of a little boy on a sunny suburban street. In the original painting, there was only a skeleton left leaping in the air, but Topps sent the art back with the admonition that it was too gruesome. All along, dad had been grinding out Mars Attacks image after Mars Attacks image depicting Martians eviscerating humans as horrifyingly as they could. But a doggy? Never! So Dad painted the flesh and fur back on so that kiddies could sleep with images of frying dogs—frying, but properly furred!—dancing in their heads. America’s children have Joel Shorin, president of Topps and guardian of young, impressionable minds, to thank for that gallant decision!
But Dad did not work alone on Mars Attacks. Unbeknownst to Norm Saunders, veteran of a thousand covers for pulp magazines and paperback books, he had a secret helper in the form of his nine-year-old daughter, Zina—me. I would wait for Dad to leave his drawing table for the day, and carefully review his work. It was always nearly flawless, to my expert, albeit exceedingly young, eye—but note the “nearly.” I always found that the length and density of the eyelashes on the women my father drew fell sadly short of what I knew to be the properly glamorous shape and size of a B-movie girl’s lashes. So I would “fix” them, adding my own swipes of black paint to their eyelids. “Ah! Now, that’s eyelashes!” I would say to myself, before carefully washing out the brush and replacing it where he had left it.
When I asked my father, years later when I was in my twenties, if he was aware that I used to revise and improve his Mars Attacks paintings, he said, “Of course I did—I’d just paint it out and fix ’em back up.”
So he said. But when I look carefully—really, really carefully—at those women being mauled by the lusty Martians my father painted fifty years ago, I swear their eyelashes have a suspiciously Zina flare.
Pre-Mars Attacks, circa 1958 to 1962, a young Zina Saunders poses with her father, Norm, in his studio. Zina recalls, “For many of Dad’s assignments he would take photos of my mother and himself, posing in costume, as photo reference, setting up his Polaroid on a tripod using a timer. Sometimes I would join in.”
Bonus Trading Cards
LEN BROWN, former creative director at Topps, where he worked for over forty years, is a writer and editor best known as the co-creator of Mars Attacks and of the comic book series T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. He lives in Texas.
ZINA SAUNDERS is an author, illustrator, and animator. Her work has appeared in publications such as Mother Jones, the New Republic, the Nation, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in New York City.
THE TOPPS COMPANY, INC., founded in 1938, is the preeminent creator and b
rand marketer of sports cards, entertainment products, and distinctive confectionery.
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Mars Attacks Page 3