Number 1829: Power to the primates people!

Now where have we seen this story before? Man arrives on planet in spaceship, and on that planet is taken prisoner by gorillas, the intelligent species, while humans are beasts.

Power Nelson, Futureman, returns to us in this story. I have shown a couple of Power Nelson stories before, including the story after this story. So this is the first story featuring Zora, the Interplanetary Nurse, who you will also see if you click on the thumbnail below the story. The entry on Power Nelson in the website Public Domain Superheroes says that the character did not last long, just from Power Comics #1 through #23. And even so by the latter days of the strip all of the future settings disappeared and he became just an everyday superhero, contemporary to the time of publication.

Zora teaches Power a code, which she uses to confuse the enemy. I worked out a couple of the coded messages Zora sends. For page 6 panel 2 she is saying “CALLING! POWER! NELSON!” and in the next panel she says, “COME! PLANET! ATO! TROUBLE! ZORA!” Well, that was about 10 minutes of my life lost forever, but I did it for you, dear readers. The other code at the bottom of the last page you’ll have to figure out yourselves.

From Prize Comics #5 (1940). Grand Comics Database guesses the artwork is by Dick Sprang.

As promised, more Power Nelson, Futureman. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1642: Power Nelson and the googly-eyed aliens

“Google” or “googly” once described round, popping eyes. Like the popular song of Barney Google, with the “goo-goo-googly eyes.” Google-eyed* also describes the villains from Planet Sklar in this early entry from the Power Nelson Futureman series, the starring feature for a time of Prize Comics. This episode is from Prize #6 (1940). It is only slightly less oddball than another Futureman story I showed in 2010 (find the link below), which provides a strange — and also google-eyed — history lesson of the Depression-era America, set in the future of 1982.

The Grand Comics Database guesses the artist is Dick Sprang.

*I also found a Nashville Teens song from YouTube I remembered yet had not heard since it had its Top 40 radio appearance during the sixties British Invasion.

Here’s another Power Nelson from 1940,

Number 1549: Action, please!

“Power Nelson, Futureman,” from Prize Comics #16 (1941) uses the Jack Kirby template of early comic book art. Action, action, action. The art is attributed to Paul Norris, a journeyman who drew for decades, comic books, pulps and comic strips.

 Copyright King Features, original art for a story illustration by Norris from 1947.

The breathless pace of the art covers up a lot of deficiencies in the story. Our eyes are so busy goggling the punches thrown (even by a girl) that we don’t have time to think that it is just WWII comic book silliness.

Norris, born in 1914, died in 2007.

Number 717


A rocket to Uranus


The oddball-looking story with its primitive artwork and goofy-looking aliens is from Prize Comics #4, 1940. Power Nelson, called Future-Man ("Futureman" on the cover), is a scientifically produced superhuman in the advanced year of 1982. Another of those future-in-the-past stories I love.

Artwork in this episode is credited by the Grand Comics Database as being by Dick Sprang? The ? means they aren't sure. There are places where it looks to me like it could be very early Dick Sprang, and everyone has to start somewhere. Dick Sprang is my favorite Batman artist, Golden Age or otherwise.

When reading this story you're getting an allegory about the Great Depression.* During a time of economic upheaval Emperor Seng is quoting U.S. President Herbert Hoover: "Prosperity is just around the corner." (According to some sources Hoover never actually said that, but I digress.) You also get a science-fictional reference to a true life story from the 1930s, nearly forgotten today. In 1933 the Russians agreed to pay unemployed Ford workers to set up a manufacturing plant and assembly line for Russian Ford cars. Many Ford workers stayed behind after the plant was completed, but in just a few years all the Americans had been either shot or sent into the Soviet gulags to be worked to death.

So, crude as it is, the story is a history lesson.

My question is, with what currency did the Uranians pay the workers?















*The Great Depression of the 1930s, that is. Not the current Great Depression.