498 – Earth Isolationism

A panel from "The Man Who Stopped Space Flight" in Action Comics #167, February 1952
A panel from “The Man Who Stopped Space Flight” in Action Comics #167, February 1952

In Action Comics #167 (February 1952), the Tommy Tomorrow feature has a story called “The Man Who Stopped Space Flight”: an eccentric “Earth isolationist” scientist develops a mechanism to halt all space flight in the solar system. Tommy foils the plan and teaches the scientist the error of his ways by pointing out all the different things in everyday life that depends on extra-planetary items, including “bolts of Neptunian steel”. This one of the few examples of science fiction in DC comics that actually tried to say something socially relevant for the time (McCarthyism) without using a hammer to drive it home.