When we were first getting into podcasts, my partner and I grabbed onto The Thrilling Adventure Hour like a burr grabs onto a sock. The rollicking stories and old-timey radio aesthetics brought us closer to entertainment our grandparents remembered. We deep dived into "Marshal on Mars" and "Beyond Belief" while dabbling in The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and elderly Sherlock Holmes broadcasts. As time went on, however, we realized nostalgia's rosy glasses could only take us so far. The same experience happened in miniature with this comic anthology.

The anthology contains short comics for each of the The Thrilling Adventure Hour's series, including "Marshal on Mars," "Phillip Fathom," "Colonel Tick Tock," "Tales of the USSA," "Captain Laserbeam," "Amelia Earhart," "Ace American," and "Down in Moonshine Holler." The stories are funny and feel at once self-contained and part of a serial. The art is varied and adorable. The filler false advertisements for cigarettes and coffee have hilarious Depression Era charm. Charming is a good way to describe this book. It's meant to be a charming bit of pastiche nostalgia, at once a love letter and a satire of old storytelling tropes and forms.

However, I feel Acker and Blacker fail to fully transcend the problematic storytelling elements these old forms contained. Over hundreds of episodes, these not-so-happy-making elements wear a listener down, and the same happens in this anthology. It's easiest to see in "Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars" and "Tales of the USSA." "Marshal on Mars" is intended to be a parody of old radio Westerns like The Lone Ranger. Some of the problematic elements of Ranger stories were their poor treatment of women, LGBTQ folks, and Native American characters. As evidenced in the comic and the radio show, "Marshal on Mars" tries to poke fun and overcome these elements. Red Plains Rider is a talented bringer of justice in her own right and is respected planet-wide. Croach is treated like a character with his own concerns and character/plot arcs. Queer relationships are mentioned and presumably accepted galaxy-wide.

That's where the justice stops. Nevada's romantic pursuit of Red Plains Rider is supposed to be funny, but in the comic, his constant pestering of "hey do you wanna marry me" comes off at best as annoying and at worst as work-place harassment. Croach and his fellow Native-American metaphor Martians suffer worse. Like Tonto before him, Croach is abused and under-appreciated. He's the constant butt of jokes, and his culture is seen purely as a source of comedy. Any possible romantic relationship between him and Sparks is seen as gross, misery-inducing, and unsustainable, which would be fine if Mars had...literally any LGBTQ folks to offer positive rep. Mars is populated by only cis straight people (and robots), apparently.

I'm less familiar with the "USSA" stories, so I'm going just off the comic here. I'm putting it under spoilers because the thing is so short.

A similar trend of sort-of-but-not-really overcoming problematic elements is seen again in "Tales of the USSA" comic. This story is an obvious parody of Star Trek. One of the many progressive moves the original Star Trek series did was to feature a black woman professional, Lt. Uhura, and an interracial kiss between her and the Jewish Captain Kirk. In the "USSA" Captain Peeples's marriage to Zo, a black woman bridge officer, is a clear homage. They kiss and it is adorbz. I am ready to like this comic. One thing Gene Rodenberry couldn't do with TOS is feature an explicitly queer character. When an Asian- and queer- coded ensign is assigned to the landing party, I thought Acker and Blacker were going to build on Roddenberry's work and have that explicit queer character with a happy ending. Nope. With zero fanfare or remorse, the Ensign Brank Manlius is killed. Captain Peeples, who the ensign deeply admired, doesn't care about the ensign's death. He brushes it off as another sacrifice for empire and moves on. It's really rather dark.

To say my feelings were mixed about The Thrilling Adventure Hour's comic is an understandment. There are some humorous moments and an obvious love of the form. There are terrible moments like described above. It was more than okay. It was less than stellar. I guess read this anthology if you're a fan of the show, but don't make an effort to seek it out before finding your limit on the bad kind of old radio nonsense.