Space Opera in the Comics (and Beyond)
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science-fiction themes, such as Amazing Stories (see right), started to
spring up in the early days of the 20th Century? And by the early ’30s, science
fiction came to the comic strips, in the form of Buck Rogers, in both the daily
papers and in the Sunday sections. The Buck Rogers full-page Sundays, which
were large, 22″x15″ pages, were true riots of color.
Then, in 1934,
Flash Gordon blasted off in the Sunday comics for a run of about eleven years –
by Alex Raymond, whose style seemed to change almost completely every few years.
Raymond’s color Flash pages from 1934-1944 are all worth looking at, and the
period from 1935 through 1939 is considered to be when he did his best work.
The first comic books with science fiction themes were titles like
Planet Comics and Science Comics, which were basically cops and
robbers stories played out on a science fiction backdrop. It was Space Opera.
The first comic books to go beyond Space Opera were the EC titles
Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, published in 1950-54. They
presented stories that made you think. Stories about issues. Stories with
messages.
And although the Atlas comics and the ACG comics of the same
period (1950-54) had occasional sparkles of brilliance, no other comic books
have approached the stature of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy in
the eyes of sci-fi fans.
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