Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Dan Morton's Space 1958


I picked this up for a buck as a modern example of retro 1950s "good girl" sci-fi art. It definitely stays true to form, as each of the three eight-page stories is a classic "twist-in-the-tale" like old EC comics--that is, every story has a big "surprise" ending that is usually foreshadowed circa page 2. For example, in the story "Full Circle" we learn that the boyfriend of a female space miner went missing a year ago in the Arcturian sector; now that the girlfriend has reached that sector, her and her friends kill what they think is an evil alien--only to learn in the shock ending that that alien was her boyfriend, mutated by the crazy planet. Oh the humanity! Anyway, the stories really are vintage 1950s, and the artwork has a similar authentic feel, though perhaps a bit more gory than was sometimes allowed in that time period. Looking on-line, it appears there never was a second issue of Dan Morton's Space 1958, which I take to mean that the nostalgic, over-sixty senior citizen crowd just isn't as big a comic audience as Dan Morton thought.

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