July 1960: When Turtles Attack!

In their DC science fiction anthology title Strange Adventures, editor Julius Schwartz and his staff demonstrated an understanding of the dreamlike quality of the childhood mind.

As an example, let’s take issue 118, appearing on newsstands early in 1960, which cover-featured The Turtle Men from Space by writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky.

Boys in 1960 often had pet turtles in little plastic water dishes that sported a plastic palm tree, and even more frequently owned green plastic “army men” (sold in bulk for as little as a penny apiece in clear plastic bags during the decade, before the Vietnam war eroded their popularity).

Massage those interests a while in your subconscious, and you might come up with the idea that turtles are armored, and military tanks are armored, so…

In that issue, you also got the stories Threat of the Planet Wrecker and The Indestructible Menace and a full-page ad for the first issue of a new comic called Green Lantern. A Spotlight on Science feature answered questions about whales and water pressure, how to test water for hardness and the phases of the moon. 

This was back before Americans began to regard verified, factual knowledge as a threat. You got your dime’s worth.

“The good old days when scientific discoveries were accepted and respected,” Bob Doncaster wrote. “Oh, and I still like turtles.”

“That's what made The War That Time Forgot series so great. Your plastic army guys vs. your plastic dinosaurs," Larry Eischen wrote. “Good times!”

I poured over DC’s two- and three-cover house ads each month, imagining what might be behind those covers. Elsewhere that month, the Mercurian criminal Norvo used an amnesia ray to turn Cryll against Space Ranger (Space Ranger’s Super-Enemy, Tales of the Unexpected 51), and a giant lens intended to communicate with the planet Venus accidentally freed energy monsters (I Unleashed the Light-Ray Creature, My Greatest Adventure 45).