In We Fought the Earth’s Last Dragon (My Greatest Adventure 49, Nov. 1960), a locked trunk purchased at a Connecticut auction sends two treasure-hunting Yankees to Oregon’s Saddle Mountain — and a confrontation with a dragon.
One is greedy, the other responsible and altruistic, and they have to learn to work together to use the contents of a sorcerer’s strongbox to stop the menace they’ve unwittingly unleashed. Nick Cardy provides the art.
Meanwhile, over in Mystery in Space 63, Adam Strange is busy being turned into a gas and vacuumed up — very much the kind of peril that would plague the Flash, also drawn by Carmine Infantino.
Strange Adventures 121, my favorite issue of that title, featured stories by Gardner Fox — The Wand That Could Work Miracles, a “Space Museum” tale called The Billion-Year Old Spaceship and Invasion of the Flying Reptiles. All offered science fictional wish fulfillment.
A hole opens in time, releasing invulnerable pteranodans from a hundred million years ago over Washington, DC.
Yikes.
Luckily, a plucky husband-and-wife team of scuba-diving scientists, Jim and Rhoda Trent, have found a plesiosaur frozen in ice (Schwartz’s titles were always resolutely feminist, their female characters smart, stylish, cool-headed and brave).
Befriending the revived dinosaur, whom they nickname Ol’ Pleasure, the Trents — by offering themselves as bait on water skis — are able to use the plesiosaur to defeat the pteranondans.
My favorite part was the last panel, with the Trents happily tossing fish to their plesiosaur pal at a seaquarium.
The story was probably popular, because the Trents returned to help giant undersea frog people in Strange Adventures 130 (July 1961). And the cover idea — flying dinosaurs coming through a hole in the sky — was recycled for Green Lantern 30, cover-dated July 1964.
Philip Rushton wrote: I loved the fact that Schiff and Schwartz had recognizably different approaches to science fiction, with the former leaning towards fantasy and high adventure while the latter favored an emphasis on 'hard' science. It was this editorial diversity that made DC really stand out for me during the early Silver Age - at least until Marvel came along!
ReplyDeleteJohnny Williams:
ReplyDeleteDan, those three DC anthology titles provided we readers with some truly memorable stories over the years; so much so in fact that today, here in 2024 we are still giving them voice and life.
They were more often than not cleverly written stories featuring clever protagonists who beat overwhelming-odds ‘on-the regular,’ which to my mind was much of their appeal.
My only criticism (admittedly from a contemporary vantage point) was their absence of, absolutely complete lack of diversity. The worlds of those stories were invariably ‘white’ and sad to say, if This little black boy from the South Side of Chicago could notice that even back then, he (me) couldn’t have been the only one to have done so.
This fact did not stop me from enjoying them, just as seeing a decided absence of US in old movies outside of subservient roles didn’t stop me from enjoying and appreciating them for what they were, otherwise well crafted cinema.
There are still some anthology stories that are sketchy in my memory and I am thinking about posting on the details I do remember and seeing if any of you members recognize them. They’ve been living in my head for a long, long time and I think that it’s way past time they were taken out, dusted off and revisiting and revealed.
Bob Bailey:
ReplyDeleteWhile I enjoyed the Schiff books such as My Greatest Adventures and Tales of the Unexpected, it was the glorious Julius Schwartz science-oriented books such as Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures that grew to love and still do. Thanks, Dan.
Bob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteThe hard part back then was deciding which of the three I should buy with my meager allowance and still get a superhero.
I replied:
We were trapped in the same dilemma!
Cheryl Spoehr:
ReplyDeleteEven as a pretty young child, the ads for comics were often the best things IN the comics. Finding Adam Strange and almost any other comic WITHOUT Superman was often impossible, so getting any of these favorites would be lamentably undoable. I usually put S.A. first, even over Batman or Fantastic Four, because it was so hard to find. Never saw any of these issues on the racks,only at Comic Cons or shops in the seventies. Mostly, I found these stories in (Adam) Strange Adventures (reprint editions) or From Beyond the Unknown in the seventies. And Dinosaurs in Strange Adventures were just as scary in my adult years,as in my childhood. Loved Dinos like any other kid, but not when drawn in S.A.! Even " Ol' Pleasure" was terrifying, "good" dino tho it may have been. Soon, three astronauts would be thrown back in time to face the scariest Dinosaur creatures of the past,THAT issue I WOULD find and keep throughout childhood...
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteIn Jack Schiff's books, there was always some mysterious magical item just laying around for some intrepid hero (or bad guy) to pick up.
Julie's books tried to create a more SF-ish background, even if somewhat absurd. OK, absurd. But who cared? Just as a hole opens in time unleashing invulnerable pteranodons plucky scientists release a frozen plesiosaur from ice? Gardner Fox somehow made the most unlikely events seem commonplace and everyday. I would say that Fox did in writing what Curt Swan did in the art -- take unbelievable and incredible events and make you believe they could happen.