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Oscar. Oscar was created by “James Norman,” the pseudonym of James Norman Schmidt (Gimiendo Hernandez Quinto), and appeared in four stories in Fantastic Adventures, from 1940 to 1942, beginning with "Oscar, Detective of Mars" (Fantastic Adventures, Oct. 1940).

Hodar, a stage magician, performs a mock conjuring which somehow brings a Martian to Earth. Oscar, the Martian, is 4'5" tall, with a feathered bottom, a human face, and a tulip-shaped nose. Martians converse by odor, and Oscar can read the odors of everyone he meets and of the places he visits. He finds that his sensitivity to smell, and his bulletproof skin, makes him very effective at detection. He solves murders and fights zombies, among other enemies. Oscar is “penguin-shaped…salmon pink skin, my conical ears, my pertly flared tulip nose, and my feather clothing—black tails, white vest and front which I can take off like an evening suit.”

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