Number 1276: “It's a woman's world!”

This is the fourth and final posting of our silly science” theme week. I've saved this one for last, because when I first read it I was slack-jawed with amazement. Yep, sixty years ago in these United States we had a whole different mindset about gender roles, did we not? I grew up in that era; my mom was a housewife and stuck to her “traditional female” role. It was how we saw the world, and role-reversal is the gimmick of this story, from Mystery in Space #8 (1952). Boys reading it in those days would think this would never happen! When Mrs. Pappy and I got married in 1969 the feminists (we called them “women's libbers”) were making headlines, and from my own spouse I could feel the change a-comin’!

In 1971 feminism was so threatening to some men that a book like this could be published.

This Mystery in Space story, written by John Broome under the pen-name John Osgood, and drawn by Bob Oksner and Bernard Sachs, had a publication history that straddled the feminist movement, before and after. It was reprinted the same year as The Feminists, in 1971 in From Beyond the Unknown #11 (where I first saw it), and in 1980 in the Simon and Schuster compilation, Mysteries in Space, the Best of DC’s Science Fiction Comics.

The last two panels of the story are howlers. You'll see when you read them. Talk about a male fantasy. “Okay, you chicks had your fun, now move on over and the boys are back in charge!” As all of us have noticed in our 2012 society that kind of talk may have worked in 1952, but not now.

Number 1109


Heroes out of time


Consider this to be another story anti-comic book crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham might have trouble with, if he ever saw it. As I showed you in Pappy's #1039. Dr. Wertham was unduly exercised over Superboy going through time and interacting with historical figures. In "Heroes Out of Time," published in Mystery In Space #3 (1951), the historical figures are brought forward in time to combat a menace. Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon help defeat Dr. Indigo Maylor and his army of giant carrots. Besides misrepresenting real people in a comic book plot, maybe Wertham would also have a problem with walking carrots. (They remind me of Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot comics.)

Franklin and Napoleon were real people, Maylor is—to the best of my knowledge—not. "The last American hanged for black magic" is someone I couldn't find after exhaustive research (OK, I admit; I googled the name and didn't find an historical person.)

I love the first part of the story. The characters are lovers, fellow scientists working on two separate projects next door to each other. The man just can't get his experiment on plants to work, but his scientist girlfriend just happens to have invented a time machine to bring people from the past to help! Uh, fella...drop your stupid carrot project and get on board your squeeze's time machine thing. There's a lot of potential there.

The name of author Robert Starr is a pseudonym of Manly Wade Wellman. The artwork is by Bob Oksner and Bernard Sachs.

Number 1013


The Cosmic Secret


Edmond Hamilton, writing here as Hugh Davidson, had a long career in the science fiction, weird tales and comic book field. I believe he wrote mainly, if not all, his comic book stories for DC, under editors Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz. The story, "Secret of the Ages" is a fantasy about living for centuries with an "elixir of youth." It's a variation on the type of story I showed Monday, from The Twilight Zone. In "Secret of the Ages" a scientist, Roger Bacon, predicts the scientific miracles that will come to the human race in time. An acolyte, Alleyn (later Allan) Kent takes the elixir, keeping him young for centuries while he follows scientific progress, keeping the formula for the "greatest secret" from his villainous rival.

The artwork is by comic book journeyman John Giunta, who drew comics from the 1940s through the '60s. He died in 1970; Hamilton died in 1977.

From Mystery In Space #2, 1951:

Number 990


Mothman to the flame


This well drawn story by Gil Kane and John Giunta is from Mystery In Space #3, 1951. Kane learned his comic art lessons well since the 1948 crime story of his I showed you in Pappy's #787. In "Vengeance of the Moth" with Kane's powerful drawings of the human figure in action you're getting an advance look at his work on Green Lantern and The Atom a few years later.

The story has nothing to do with space, despite appearing in Mystery In Space. It likely belonged in Strange Adventures, and perhaps it was placed in this comic to fill up a hole left by an artist who wasn't as fast as Kane.

Number 885


Spores From Space


Frank Frazetta worked on this 8-page science fiction strip from Mystery In Space #1, 1951. I believe the Fleagle Gang, Kurtzman's nickname for Frazetta, Williamson, Torres, Krenkel, etc., may have helped draw this strip.The usual Frazetta signature is missing, although there is a small colophon in the lower left corner that looks like a double-F. The early issues of Julius Schwartz-edited Strange Adventures and Mystery In Space credited writers, but not artists.

"Spores From Space" is like a reverse global warming, a new ice age is setting in. The heroes believe the spores are an alien threat and send a missile to blow up the asteroid where the aliens live.

[SPOILER] Melting all the snow and ice would create massive flooding, which isn't mentioned in the story. It's too bad the aliens weren't hostile after all, just trying to help, and the Earthmen blew them up for nothing! Ha-ha. Well, shit happens.

Number 846

The World Saver comes through again

I'm an old science fiction reader but I shouldn't assume that everyone knows about Edmond Hamilton. He began his writing career in 1926 with a story, "The Monster-God of Mamurth" in Weird Tales, and was one of the most prolific and successful writers of science fiction up until his death in 1977. Hamilton, through his connections with DC editors Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, wrote many comic book stories, most anonymously.

Hamilton was known amongst science fiction fans variously as World Saver, World Wrecker, Universe Saver, etc., for his plots, which often involved Earth being threatened with total destruction, with a hero saving the whole planet. So it is with "The Comet Peril!" from Mystery In Space #2, 1951, a story that gives Hamilton a byline. (He has another story in the issue, too, under the pen-name Robert Starr.) It's one of the future-in-the-past stories I've mentioned before: stories that were written years before the future date in the story, which we are now reading years after the date has passed. It's pretty obvious our planet didn't get hauled out of orbit by Halley's Comet's in 1986.

Artwork is by Murphy Anderson.