Moments of romantic poignancy
aren’t necessarily what you’d expect from DC science fiction and superhero
comics of the late 1950s. But nevertheless, that’s what you sometimes got.
Take a look at the opening and
closing panels from this Adam Strange story by writer Gardner Fox and artist
Carmine Infantino in Mystery in Space
57 (Feb. 1960). In the first, a young woman alone in a broad field looks
anxiously at the sky, awaiting the arrival of the man she loves. In the last, a
young man on a beach stares wistfully at the sky, thinking of his lover a
teleport jump long light years away.
That scene, with its echoes of
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ star-crossed Martian lovers from 50 years previously, was
one of the familiar pleasures in the adventures of Adam Strange, the thinking
man’s superhero of the jet age.
His jazzy ray guns and rocket
belts might never have been of much help against giants, monsters and alien
invaders, but his scientifically trained brains and calm rationalist attitudes
always were.
Americans generally prefer brawn
to brains, however, and a house ad in that very issue — for Brave and the Bold 28 (Feb.-March 1960)
— foreshadowed the renewed popularity of the powerhouse DC and Marvel superheroes
who would change the face of comic books and popular entertainment forever.
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