Every Sunday morning we showcase a classic comic cover, complete with compelling commentary, for your cordial contemplation. It’s the Classic Comic Cover Corner!
Weird Science #5 – January 1951
Cover art by Al Feldstein
Last week we discovered that even though Kim Jong is gone, North Korea still be illin’ (someone had to say it.) The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has released a propaganda film that depicts a sleeping man dreaming of a nuclear assault on the United States, all set to the smooth eighties sounds of Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie. Watch the video here.
Being the “Satanic” capitalists that we are, we’re more upset about North Korea’s copyright violations of “We Are the World” and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 video game than we are about the fact that a country with atomic weapons clearly intends to use them against us (or at least dreams about doing so.)
The truth is we’ve been under the threat of a nuclear attack since the day we dropped the “Little Boy” A-bomb on Hiroshima back in 1945. But back then at least our imaginative comic creators were proactively exploring some back-up plans in case of nuclear annihilation.
If science, Weird Science that is, has taught us anything, it’s that if all else fails we can always make a last ditch migration to another planet – preferably one where war does not exist. At least that’s the plan on the cover of Weird Science #5 (1951) where a group of scientists narrowly avoid being nuked and head off into the stars, looking for a fresh new start.
Not much has changed in sixty-plus years, except that the world is an even a more dangerous place than it was back then and that we’re no longer naive enough to imagine that a simple rocket ship can save humankind.
