There's another fun sci-fi horror tale in the August - September 1953 issue of Weird Mysteries #6 (see our previous post), and this one comes loaded with plenty of EC Weird Science and Wally Wood style illustrative inspiration, right down to that crazy, uncivilized climax! Prepare yourself now for blast off...
4 comments:
I really like the opening scene, but partly for the wrong reasons. Obviously it isn't the only space story to do this, but it makes some of the "scary" space creature look kind of "cute."
(It's like the museum of captured space creatures in the OUTER LIMITS episode "The Duplicate Man" - it's a good episode, but the most dangerous space creature looks like a big rooster!)
Now we know where Gene Roddenberry got his Star Trek plots from!
This one goes really heavy on the metaphor, so much that you know exactly where it's heading and kind of stretches creditability. Both civilizations not recognizing each other as civilizations is kind of hard to believe, but needs to be there to make the mechanics of the story work.
That said: I adore the art. There's a lot of EC and Wood in this, and other EC sci-fi artists. I love the sleek 50s rocket ship, the cool squishy aliens (looks like they could come right off a Topps card!) The spacesuits, the machinery, sure, it's not exactly original but its a great job.
Page 3, panel 3, those are great monsters!
Considering how people on Earthe treat one another, is it wrong for the beings on planet 2-A to call us barbarians?
This has been an idea considered among the UFO crowd, maybe the reason aliens avoid contact with Earth is due to our uncivilized nature. Who is the civilized and who the savage?
Alien horrors from 50's comics, one more section of horror delight found in the subterranean chambers of THOIA.
MADE FROM REALISTIC SPACE COLORED PLASTIC
A buck was enough money at the time to make me think they actually offered an element of quality in that space set somewhere. That's the kind of gamble I'm willing to take!
This story was telegraphed of course, but the pleasures are in the details anyway. Those are some excellent alien peoples, suitably monstrous and strange to be mistaken, at least on first contact, as predatory fauna. The story plays a little bit of a trick on us in that they are not wearing clothes. Clothing is a indicator of civilization and status. It's interesting to imagine the city design of beings so acclimated to the yearly environment that they didn't need protection, and so socially distinguished that they didn't need costume.
The locals here still seem to understand both concepts, though, just stripping the Earthelings of their duds enough for embalming while preserving their modesty. I like that they are displayed again with the suits. A nod toward the alien civilization's cultural anthropological interests, sure, but also expedient. It's easy to taxidermy a space suit. One assumes all the relevant biological matter was scooped out and stuffed into clear glass specimen bottles for display at some other kind of facility. The exhibit we see only really requires the heads.
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