Eerie #139 Warren Magazines, February, 1983
In novels like Slan, The World of Null-A, and The Silkie, A.E. Van Vogt explored the superman concept. The strange left turns of his stories are sometimes criticized, but he wrote his fiction through a hypnagogic technique, taking brief naps to come up with new plot angles. I find the dream logic of his stories intriguing.
Some dreams are, of course, nightmares. Van Vogt often explored the theme of monsters as well as supermen. He offered unique takes on the science fiction monster genre in novels such as Voyage of the Space Beagle, a clear precursor to Star Trek.
The story here, Black Destroyer, was published in the July 1939 issue of Astounding and adapted for Marvel Comics by Roy Thomas, Dan Adkins, and Jim Mooney in Worlds Unknown 5 (Feb. 1974). The tentacled, cunning super-panther Coeurl is not the kind of kitty you want to bring home, but he ends up on board the exploratory starship Space Beagle anyway. The events that follow were echoed in the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien.
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