Even in the superhero desert of the 1950s, a lot of comic book stories might be described as “superhero adjacent.”
Super powers never really went out of fashion, only costumed crusading did for a while.
For example, take the story Bodyguard from Space! (Strange Adventures 88, Jan. 1958). Writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino give us a tale about an alien visitor from the planet Klysistron who can levitate objects, turn invisible and intangible and communicate telepathically. He announces that he has “journeyed across three billion light years of space” to protect news cameraman Jim Carson. Unknown to himself, Carson carries telepathically implanted information vital to revitalizing the alien planet’s dying sun.
Meanwhile, over in Mystery in Space 42 (March 1958), writer John Broome and artist Sid Greene provide us with Mail Rider to the Stars, an interstellar version of the Pony Express.
“A lone rocket pilot delivers mail to far-flung planets, despite all obstacles,” recalled comics historian Michael E. Grost. “It is notable for being one of the first depictions of a ‘black hole’ in fiction.
“Probably one of the best features of this story is Sid Greene’s art. There is some of his distinctive future architecture. One tower has a spiral ramp around it, reaching to its top.
“There are also some good shots of the rocket ship zooming around through the asteroids. The combination of the curving lines of the rocket exhaust and the circles of the asteroids makes for some pleasing visual patterns. Such scenes of space flight often recur in Greene’s tales.”
The issue includes The Dual Identity World by Greene and writer Otto Binder. “This is another Binder mystery about a hard-to-interpret planet: here two explorers literally see the world in two different ways,” Grost reported. “This is a most ingenious tale. It has elements of an allegory and a fable, and should be better known: it would make a great proverb, to illustrate some important ideas about perception.”
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