JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
It seems to me that comic books have a place, sort of, in my work in the history of science and culture. They were issued and purchased in huge numbers, in the millions and tens of millions, and no doubt were perhaps one of the most significant ports of entry to national/mass culture in the pre-digital era for kids and beyond. How else is a relatively-unfiltered national theme going to reach a child in 1951? There's early t.v., some radio, maybe newspapers (with daily and Sunday comics)...and not much else, outside of comic books. So it may be interesting when it was that a first or early appearance and introduction of a major idea is delivered to a young reading world--like the first mentions of concentration camps (which appear in comic books long before they appear in school textbooks), the first use of the atomic bomb and its effects on Hiroshima, and that sort of thing. (Some of these offhand pursuits resulted in very unusual finds, like one that I reported on for what must certainly be about one of the first appearances anywhere of "E=mc2" in this exact form appearing in a comic book in 1945--and this where it was being written on a chalkboard by Einstein, making it also perhaps the earliest visual connection of E with the equation together in print before Einstein first writes using the exact equation in 1946...that sounds like all sorts of wrong and a bit goofy, and there's a lot of the use of "perhaps", but the story seems to be accurate.)
Anyway, maybe there's something useful in these found bits, and maybe not. I'm addressing this today because of another found bit and perhaps a new and probably very shrt and shallow category: artwork found on the walls in comic books. I must say I've never thought of the issue until half-a-coffee ago, when I spotted a framed artwork in the study of a space detective in the first issue of, of course, Space Detective #1, 1951. The space detective in question is The Avenger, helped along by his aide etc. Tina, and secretary Dot, as they solve crimes on Earth, Venus, and Mars--in this first adventure they are going after Mars bandit Maag, which led them to another adventure in stopping Venusian opium trade. Anyway it is all a very long way from Sam Spade (sooo close to "Sam Space, Earth Detective") and Picard's interplanetary-though-still-in-San-Francisco Dixon Hill.
In any event, here it is, the art:
(Image found at the extremely useful and massive Digital Comic Museum https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=10240&page=3)
It seems like an awfully slow bus to Abilene to get us to this point, talking about a forgotten little splotch on two forgotten pages of a forgotten comic book from 1951, but as I said, artwork in ephemeral mass publications like this have never been on my radar (and probably with just cause) though perhaps they went unnoticed because they just didn't appear? Hard for me to say as I am not a comic book person outside of looking for specific odd things, but my initial reaction to seeing the art must've rubbed up against some unconscious collected memories to show itself as being unusual, so maybe there's a little bit of "there" there.
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