MARS ATTACKS MONDAY!

Len Brown wrote all the text on the card backs. "I got away with a lot back in those days," he recalled. "I don't think management even bothered to read the backs. They were very worried about the artwork being offensive, but they let me write about any gruesome thing I wanted!"

MARS ATTACKS MONDAY!

Parents, teachers and lawmakers alike were in an uproar over the violence depicted in these cards (shades of the pre-Code comics era!).

"At the time", Len Brown remembered, "We actually kept a file of all the complaints we received. Our Civil War set was just as gory as Mars Attacks. I suspect it was because it was historical, people felt that kids were learning, so the violence was okay."

MARS ATTACKS MONDAY!

"I remember being unhappy," Len Brown recalled, "when we put these captions on the front of the cards. When we were planning the series, and as the paintings were coming in, we didn't realize that's what we were going to do: take about a quarter of an inch of the finished art and cover it. I always felt bad about that."

NEXT: CREEPING MENACE!