Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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Joe Kubert both writes and draws the short tale, "A World Destroyed", which is the secret origin of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, as well as a warning about the dangers of atomic war on Earth!
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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John Broome and Gil Kane one-up Kubert with the next story, "The Day the Sun Exploded!"
Basically, it all about the sun becoming super-hot and mankind's attempts to survive the deadly warming of the Earth! There's a twist ending, so what they think is happening isn't quite what happens, but overall it serves as a decent if often implausible tale about the dangers of global warming and how we might respond to it.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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"The Invisible Spaceman" is a nice story about the first man to travel to the moon and back. When he comes back, he finds that he is invisible due to the fact that he is vibrating at a strange rate! Plus, anything he touches is shocked or destroyed! So he seeks out the world's leading expert on vibrations, a hot scientist chick, to get help! But first, he has to find a way to get her attention!
This was a pretty solid story, with a nice ending. Possibly the best of the issue.
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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Starting Strange Adventures #66:
"The Fish-Men of Earth", by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, tells the story of an alien invasion, which begins with the aliens making our atmosphere significantly denser than it is at the moment, such that people have to swim through it! The atmospheric change also has the effect of making most of our weapons useless, making us helpless prey for the conquering aliens. Our heroic scientists have to find a way to defeat the invading alien forces!
This was a fairly nice tale, which I could definitely see being used as the basis of a Green Lantern story six or seven years later!
[ August 03, 2010, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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John Broome and Harry Sharp give us "Explorers of the Crystal Moon", in which Li'l Tommy is left at home all alone by his parents. He happens to be visited by two aliens who walk right through the wall, ignoring the locked door. After spending some time making fun of primitive Earth technology, which has barely advanced at all in the thousands of years since they last visited this primitive planet, they proceed to demonstrate some of their alien tech to Tommy. A few modifications to the primitive television first make display things in color, then full turns it into full hypnovision, which allows Tommy to experience exploring another planet like he's really there! I bet Tommy's parent will never believe him when he tells 'em this story!
This story was pretty good, though the idea that they could so easily modify an old 50s tv set into this advance piece of equipment so easily was a bit implausible. Oh, and it didn't seem as though they actually undid the modifications when they left, which seemed a bit odd. All in all, it accomplished the basic point goal pretty well, which was to extrapolate from a current technology (tv) to what a futuristic version of it might be like.
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Last issue gave a movie director saving the Earth, and in this issue we have yet another tale by John Broome called "The Sculptor who Saved the Earth". It's all about a talentless, penniless sculptor who suddenly becomes successful when strange innovative abstract sculptures start appearing in his studio out of nowhere. Suddenly, he becomes famous as one of the most daring, innovative sculptors around, but trouble strikes when it turns out that these sculptures are actually devices from the future, which are vital to future civilization!
Another solid if not exactly mind-blowing Broome story. It reminded me a bit of Lewis Padgett's "Mimsy were the Borogroves".
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Lastly, we have "The Jungle Emperor", the follow-up to last issues "The Gorilla Who Challenged the World". In this part of the story, Hamilton and Barry have the gorilla from last issue proclaim himself "The Gorilla Emperor", and demand that the governments of Earth surrendor to him and his gorilla army! It's up to that scientist dude who cause the gorilla to turn super-intelligent in the first place to find a way to stop him, since all of our weapons seem useless against his now uber-powerful gorilla technology!
This is a pretty awesome story. I kept wanting to call the "Gorilla Emperor" Grodd throughout the whole thing! There's also a pretty cool plothole in the story, which could easily be used if they wanted a return appearance of the Gorilla Emperor!
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
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Ooh! I forgot to mention that Hamilton leaves us with a message about the dangers of trying to interfere with the course of evolution, suggesting that we should instead let it make its own slow progress or something like that.
Still a relevant point of view to consider in this day of genetic engineering!
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Strange Adventures #57 delivers some really solid tales!
It opens with "The Spy from Saturn!", by John Broome and Sid Greene. Aliens kidnapping and replacing Earth people is pretty much a staple of the sci fi genre, but this is a pretty nice example of that kind of tale. It opens with Earth scientist Mark Dawson boarding a ship on an important mission to another planet. Only, it turns out it's not really Mark Dawson but an alien imposter sent to take Dawson's place. It seems the Saturnians are far more advanced than Earthling in most forms of technology, but their weapons are inferior, so they send their spy, Kban-Tiri, to replace a leading Earth scientist to gather info on our weapons. The spy quickly meets his counterpart, tries to overcome him, but seemingly fails.
The story trades then on the reader's uncertainty as to whether the character they are following is really the alien or the human he is meant to follow. If the human overpowered the alien, then why does he seem not to know basic facts about his life? There's basically enough ambiguity that actually makes the story work.
Anyway, I thought this was a solid effort.
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Bill Finger and Sy Barry give us "The Moonman and the Meteor". Fred Cory and Judy Rogers are a romantic couple currently on the verge of breaking up because they can't agree on whether to have a large or small wedding, when suddenly a meteor crashes into the front of Fred's car. This near death experience brings the two back together, and they decide to have a medium-sized wedding, and to keep the meteor as a symbol of the fact that they should never argue again.
Anyway, they tie the knot (apparently incredibly quickly), but soon word gets out about their meteor, and everybody from scientists to loony meteor-collecting film directors are trying to buy the meteor from them. They won't sell, however. Then this man claiming to be from another world shows up, and tells them they must give him the meteor, or Earth is doomed! But they're too smart to fall for that trick, after all, he doesn't even look like a real alien... but could he be?
This was an okay tale, but nothing particularly special. The moonman's story is actually kind of interesting, and is probably the best part of it. I found it somewhat interesting that just being bald with a slightly over-sized cranium wasn't "alien" enough for the lead characters, so there's this cool sequence of the moonman trying to disguise himself as a more stereotypical Hollywood alien.
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Eryk Davis Ester
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What was it Cobie said about Otto Binder's interest in communication/miscommunication among us and aliens? That plays an important role in Binder and Kane's "The Riddle of Animal X". Zoologist John Lloyd is surprised to return from a month long research expedition to find his son Tommy playing with a new pet, something which looks a bit like a kangaroo, but which, on closer inspection, is like no animal on Earth. Tommy has been trying to teach it to speak, but seems to be having more success in imitating its sounds. Anyway, they quickly discover that it comes from an alien ship, and it's humanoid master is unconsious onboard. Reviving him, they find that the alien seems to have suffered some brain damage, and is behaving quite irrationally, just repeating the same sounds over and over again. So they must try to find a way to help the alien and his pet.
This is a solid tale, though the "twist" is pretty obvious, it is nonetheless well done.
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Lastly in #57 we have John Broome and Carmine Infantino's "Spaceship Under the Earth". This was a really great tale that I could easily see having been a Twilight Zone episode. William Manson, a uranium prospector, discovers a great source of underground radiation, and, searching further, discover it belong to a strange ship underneath the ground. After investigating for a few minutes, he accidentally triggers a self-destruct mechanism.
Wandering through the desert after the explosion, Manson comes across two scientists working on a top secret project, who agree to take him in while he recovers, and make him promise not to reveal their secret work. It turns out that they are building a space ship to travel to Mars. The ship turns out to look remarkably like the one Manson had previously stumbled across, which creates a mystery. Adding to the tension, there's a coule of escaped convicts on the loose, who, once they find out about the spaceship, figure it would be easy to muscle their way in to controlling Mars, see?
This story is really first-rate, with both the mystery of the identical spaceships and the tension of the criminals on the loose making for really entertaining reading!
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Eryk Davis Ester
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#58 opens with "I Hunted the Radium Man", by Dave Wood and Carmine Infantino. It's the story of Police Captain Dillard and his attempts to apprehend "Mr. X" (not to be confused with the Gorilla Emperor, who also was labeled "Mr. X" by the police!). Mr. X is a mysterious criminal whose stealing the city's radium supply, but his fingerprints are blank, his face won't photograph, he walks through walls, can't be held by a jail cell or cuffs, has no pulse... etc. Could he be an alien? And can the police stop him? Well, the answer to the last question is "no"!
This was an okay story, but not anything special. The ending is not what you expect, so I suppose that's good, but it's far from the best story in this issue.
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Eryk Davis Ester
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Bill Finger and Sy Barry's "Prisoner of Two Worlds!" is pretty awesome!
So, Darwin Jones is sitting at home one day, when this alien police officer contacts him through his TV. It seems there's this alien criminal, Kren, who's hiding out on Earth. Since Earth's atmosphere in inhospitable to their race, the Torgians, they can't come to Earth, since they lack whatever means Kren is using to survive on Earth.
So DJ and his Dept. of Scientific Investigation set about trying to apprehend Kren, but realize they can't arrest him, because he's broken none of our laws. Well, first they try to apprehend him as an illegal immigrant, but it turns out Kren was actually born on Earth in the U.S., and is therefore not an illegal at all! I'm sure if Lindsay Graham were around, this minor fact wouldn't stop him from throwing Kren in Guatanamo and water-boarding him a few times for the hell of it, but instead Darwin Jones decides to wait until he can catch Kren in some actual crime! Along the way, DJ also has to learn the secret of how Kren is able to survive on Earth!
This is a really solid story. It's nice watching DJ think he has reason to hold Kren repeatedly, and then it turns out not to work. The ending could've been weak if it didn't rely upon DJ cleverly figuring out some facts about the alien.
I don't know if there are any more Darwin Jones stories in this collection (I think this is his third appearance overall), but if they're all this good, I'm looking forward to them!
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Eryk Davis Ester
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John Broome and Gil Kane bring us "Dream-Journey through Space" in which Hal Jord... er... Howard Wright keeps having dreams in which he is drawn to this alien planet to assist the natives in overthrowing the computers which they originally built to serve them, but which they have since become so dependent on that they can't do anything for themselves. They hope that Wright's Earthman ingenuity might be useful in helping them. So Wright has to figure out some way to liberate them from control of the machine overlord. Of course, it doesn't really matter if he succeeds, because this is all a dream, right?
This is another story that reminds me a lot of the kind of thing that would later be used in Green Lantern. In fact, it's kind of a prototype of all those GL stories where Hal is drawn into the future to help them solve their problems. Anyway, this is a solid tale, though it probably suffers from being too brief.
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