Number 600


The Marvel Family and the Great Space Struggle


The Marvel Family #75, from 1952, is a comic I've wanted to show for quite some time. It's drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger, good in itself, but written in his inimitable Captain Marvel style by Otto Binder. Otto, who was science fiction writer Eando Binder (he started out collaborating with his brother Earl, hence Earl and Otto Binder), had a light touch with dialogue and captions, and kept the stories moving fast, with some funny moments.

I like that it's one of those future-in-the-past stories, which I define as a story with a year designated as the future, and yet is in our real world past. We get to see how far off the mark the predictions are. In "The Great Space Struggle!" 1960 is the future year, just eight years from the date of the comic book, but already far enough--according to the story--that we have rocket ships heading for other planets. Binder ignores time travel paradoxes. The Marvels would meet themselves in the future, just eight years older, and their future selves would remember and anticipate what was going to happen in 1960, blah blah blah...

It's a fun story with fine artwork.