Number 2554: Having the time of his life...or death

I like stories about time travel, aliens from other planets, dinosaurs, and Murphy Anderson’s artwork. So we have all of those elements in “The Cycle of Time.” A driver hits and kills a man with his car, some alien scientists land and claim they are from Alpha Centauri. The aliens and the hit-and-run driver then all go back in time.

Those alien “scientists” say that Alpha Centauri is “a solar system trillions of light years away from the Earth and the sun.” I looked it up: Alpha Centauri is a galaxy, not a solar system, and it is 4.367 light years away, not trillions. Some scientists, eh? At least they have a time machine. (Note: I neglected my homework. Go to the comments below and read the corrections for my errors about Alpha Centauri. Chagrined, but glad to be set straight. Pappy)

Artist Murphy Anderson was one of my favorite artists in DC Comics, and I liked his work on the series, Atomic Knights, in early '60s issues of DC’s Strange Adventures. During his career Anderson did a lot of science fiction, including a couple of stints as the “Buck Rogers” artist in newspapers.

There are no writing credits for “The Cycle of Time,” but Jerry Siegel was the editor, and a guess would be that he may have written some of the stories.

From Weird Thrillers #2 (1951):

Number 1580: Powell surprinted

Artist Bob Powell took some chances with the crummy reproduction of most comic books by including things like the surprints in both these stories from Weird Thrillers #3 (1952). A surprint is created by inking a drawing on a separate sheet of clear acetate, then using it as an overlay on the primary artwork, where it is photographed separately. It was then engraved onto the blue plate, and printed without the usual black lines around it. Sometimes in the printing process if the pressmen weren’t paying attention or didn’t care, the surprint got the bad end of bad printing. But here the surprints show up well.

The other thing I’ll mention is that with some editing (like changing a panel of a man run over by a car), either of these stories would have fit comfortably into a post-Code comic book. They aren’t horror stories as we usually think of them.