A strange visitor from another
planet who uses his superior powers to aid ordinary people — the very premise
that kicked off superhero comics in 1938.
But in the darker and more
sophisticated storytelling pioneered by EC Comics a little more than a decade
later, a different variation would be played on that theme.
In He Walked Among Us (Weird
Science 13, May-June 1952), writers Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein and artist
Wally Wood tell us the tale of Jerome Kraft, a 2963 space explorer whose
mission is to study an alien planet inhabited by primitive humanoids.
Using his advanced technology,
Kraft is able to feed the hungry with dehydrated food pills and heal the sick
with wonder drugs. But the high priests don’t like the idea of Kraft helping
the “rabble” of the lower caste, and demand that he only aid the rich…
Two thousand years later, when
terran space explorers finally return to the planet, they find it inhabited by
“Kraftians” who decorate their cities with, and wear, an image of the rack —
the torture device upon which the ancient rulers put their savior to death.
The benefactor of humanity and
civilization who is repaid by being murdered. It is, as the explorers muse,
“…rather a familiar story.”
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