Comic Book Review: Space Adventures Volume 2 by various creators
Space Adventures, sometimes titled “Science Fiction Space Adventures” or other temporary titles, was a science fiction anthology comic book series published by what would become Charlton Comics starting in 1952. It featured early work by such later famous artists as Dick Giordano and Steve Ditko. This volume features issues 6-10.
The volume begins with “Two Worlds!” Air Force pilots “Tex” Waring and Johnny Wilde are on a cross-country flight when they spot a flying saucer. It’s a very large craft, and the inhabitants allow the Earthlings to land on its upper surface using magnetic braking.
The aliens explain that they originally inhabited two moons of Saturn in very close orbits around the planet. As they progressed, each moon became aware that intelligent life existed on the other. As soon as space travel was invented, they went to war for a thousand years. Eventually, one side developed hydrogen bombs they exploded on the other moon to force a final surrender.
But it was a pyrrhic victory, for the explosions had altered the other moon’s orbit, and eventually, the two inhabited worlds smashed into each other. This caused the rings we now see around Saturn. A large portion of the Saturnian population survived thanks to their robust spaceship industry, and relocated to the nearest habitable planet, Mars.
Mars, it turns out, was already a dying planet when they got there, and has been becoming ever less livable since. So now the Saturnians are looking to relocate to Earth. Having learned from their previous mistakes, at least a little, the aliens want to try negotiation first. The Earth pilots will be allowed to liaison with their government to see if some land can be ceded to the Saturnians, and the two species will share the planet. If the answer is “no” then the Saturnians will feel justified in using force to just take the entire planet.
Tex and Johnny agree to take the message to Washington, but fail to notice their instruments, particularly the compass, have been affected by the saucer’s magnetic brake field. Nor did the aliens realize this might happen….
“Back to Earth” with art by Dick Giordano and Art Cappello is the last story in this volume. On the planetoid Xerxes, humanoid robots, once the slaves of the humans, have risen up and now the humans are the slaves. But a man named Landu has a plan. He leads a small uprising, which is actually a decoy operation for a daring plan to steal a spaceship for a group of humans to get back to Earth and seek help for the human slaves of Xerxes.
We follow Landu and his right-hand man Mandor as they continue with the plan, regretting each necessary sacrifice as the robots mercilessly annihilate the different decoys. Finally, they reach the ship, though Mandor has to slug Landu to get him to come aboard. Too bad the food detail didn’t make it!
Then there’s more sacrifices on the three-month flight…since this is a pre-Code comic book, this includes cannibalism. But it will all be worth it if they can reach Earth and have them send soldiers to free their people! Right?
And yes, it’s pretty obvious from the stories that this is a pre-Comics Code series. They’re as likely as not to end on a downer note with humanity, or at least the ones we’re following, doomed to horrible death. There’s even one that ends with the suicide of the protagonist, a definite no-no in just a few years.
There are, of course, the standard setups, like the ambitious man who accelerates his own evolution only to end up discovering that sometimes the fittest for survival are the simplest. The discovery that the planet we’ve been looking at is Earth all along. The arrogant alien would-be conqueror who fails at perspective, and so forth.
Perhaps the most interesting story is the cover story for issue #7, “Transformation”, art by Dick Giordano. It is the not too distant future, and the Earth is teetering on the brink of World War Three. A group of scientists, led by Dr. Lars Kranston of the World Medical Center, decides they’d rather not stick around to be drafted into that war or blown to bits by atomic weaponry.
They, along with Dr. Kranston’s secretary and sweetheart Betty, take off in a rocket ship to Mars. The ship crashes, and Dr. Kranston is apparently the only survivor. Some months pass, and Dr. Kranston gets bored with exploring the area near the crash site. To find a way of not being crushed by thinking about the total isolation, Dr. Kranston decides to work in the largely intact lab.
There the medical scientist finds notes on “transformation of sex.” At first it’s just an amusing notion, but as Dr. Kranston considers it, she realizes she no longer has any desire to be a man. There’s just enough supplies to perform the transformation once over the course of several months.
There’s two twists, the first of which is that back on Earth, World War Three was avoided by skillful diplomacy and a new era of peace has begun. But because the scientists didn’t tell anyone where they were going, no one has any clue to look for them.
Also, it turns out Betty survived the crash, but with traumatic amnesia so she wandered away. Turns out Mars is pretty survivable, if not thrivable. By the time her memories return, Betty is completely lost, and it takes her more months to work her way back to the ship. By the time she arrives, Dr. Kranston has completed the transformation, much to Betty’s despair.
What’s striking about this story is that unlike other comics and science fiction stories of the time, the gender change isn’t forced on Dr. Kranston, or a last-panel twist. She chooses who she becomes, even if her reasoning might seem flawed. Very striking for the early 1950s!
This volume just reprints the comic book issues as is, with all the coloring goofs, advertisements, and filler prose stories intact. There’s no extra material about the writers, artists or background of the stories.
This is a bit pricy of a volume, so unless you’re a big fan of the artists or have a particular interest in pre-Code comics, you might want to see if your library can lend it to you.
