In Action Comics #149 (August 1950), the Tommy Tomorrow storylines jump 60 years ahead when the writers must have realized that only forty years was too soon for the science fiction they had in mind. Turns out even being 100 years ahead was too soon!
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DC’s Strange Adventures debuted in June 1950. The magazine shipped continuously for a couple decades and was DC’s first pure science fiction comic book. The first issue features a lesser known explorer of space: Chris KL-99, who was the first baby born in space and was named by his parents after Christopher Columbus.
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Just a couple months after debuting its new lineup of anthology comic books, EC introduces Weird Fantasy #1 (March 1950) to keep Weird Science in weird company. I loved the stories in this book! One involved keeping a human brain alive, another involved time travel, and yet another featured inter-planetary space travel with a twist […]
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Rounding out EC’s new line of horror comics is Weird Science, an anthological science fiction comic taking over the numbering from “Saddle Romances”. The stories are very reminiscent of The Twilight Zone TV series (1959), including an alien that has a third eye :-).
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In All-Star Comics #49 (August 1949), the JSA continues to chug along. This story reveals that the JSA have a surprising amount of sophisticated technology – a computer lab that analyzes crime data from newspapers, and video chat technology borrowed from the Amazons: It’s funny that these things, which were 100% science fiction back then, […]
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Tommy Tomorrow makes his way from “Real Fact Comics” to something more fitting: a feature in Action Comics #127 (October 1948). In this first story, he is given the task of collecting alien fish from the solar system for a new Space Aquarium and we meet some stock supporting characters (Joan Gordy, a radio reporter). […]
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I’ve talked a bit about crazy fantastical Batman and Robin storylines before. In Batman #41 (April 1947), we get the first truly far-out-there storyline, “Batman, Interplanetary Policeman”. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are identified as Batman and Robin by Martian alien scientists visiting Earth. These scientists have observed Batman and Robin for years with their […]
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In Real Fact Comics #6 (November 1946), the character of Tommy Tomorrow is introduced, stretching the bounds of what I might call “fact”. In “Columbus of Space”, Tommy is the highest scoring graduate of Rocket College, class of 1954. He is chosen for Operation Mars and becomes the first mortal ever to set foot on […]
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Since the transistor was invented in 1947, I was surprised to see “electronics” mentioned in Sensation Comics #46 (August 1945) until I remembered that vacuum tubes had been around for a few decades by then. Even so, it’s called “the new science of electronics” on the splash page. It’s pretty odd timing since the atomic […]
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The science fiction angle continues for Siegel and Shuster in this Federal Men tale from December 1936. In it, this four page “imaginary tale” from the futuristic year 2000 shows federal agent Jor-L fighting bandit queen Nira-Q. The name Jor-L was of course re-used for Superman’s father on Krypton. This issue also shows the title […]
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