Scott Rand in the World of Time [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Comics in the late 1930s and early 1940s were a mixed bag. Having spectacular names, promising great entertainment inside, they were generally collections of stock types from the newspaper comic strips, movies, and radio. Each title had to have its Mandrake knock-off, a jungle lord or lady, a Western hero, a naval hero, etc. Amongst these types was the space hero, usually dressed in a one-piece with a fin on the hood. Sporting a ray gun, he rescued space maidens and thwarted the all-too Asian-looking Martians.

Most of the early science fiction comics are just plain bad. Minor versions of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, they are sadly dated today. It's easy to see why SF historians have written them off as largely irrelevant. Still, they are a weak reflection of what science fiction was in the early pulp years. One comic that I find fascinating in this regard is "Scott Rand and the World of Time" by Otto Binder (writing under the Eando Binder pseudonym) with artwork by his older brother, Jack. The three segments that comprise this masterpiece of silliness appeared in Top-Notch Comics #1-3 (December1939-February 1940).

What makes this particular comic interesting is the timing. Jack Binder had previously written and drawn (as Max Plastid) the "Zarnak" comic for Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936. After that stint, he drew comics for the Harry A Chesler shop, which "Scott Rand" was produced for. This group of creators wrote and drew comics, then sold them to packagers such as MJL who produced Top-Notch Comics. In many ways, Scott Rand's adventures were a continuation of Zarnak's, featuring similar ships and costumes in color.

Also at the same time, Otto Binder was creating science fiction history at Amazing Stories with his tales of Adam Link, the robot ("I, Robot" had appeared in January of 1939). Goofy by today's post-Asimovian standards, these stories were an important watershed for robot characters. So why was Otto Binder writing script for Harry Chesler? In 1939, there were only three solid and reliable SF magazines: Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. More pulps were on the way, but it was almost impossible to write SF full-time. Otto had to have more markets, and instead of writing Westerns he turned to the pulp's little brother, comics. He would leave Chesler in 1941 to become the top writer of Captain Marvel at Fawcett and later work for DC on the Superman line. Jack Binder left Chesler as well in 1940 to work for Fawcett, Lev Gleason, and Timely, where he worked on the original Daredevil. He would create his own comic shop in 1942 until his retirement.

True to the Flash Gordon formula (which had been around since 1934; earlier if you consider that it stole its inspiration from 1929's Buck Rogers), the team of adventurers in "Scott Rand" has an older, bald, cerebral leader in Dr. Meade. Meade's inventions, such as the time-car, allow our heroes to be heroic. Contrasted to Meade is Scott Rand; young, wavy-haired, blonde, and muscular. Partnered with Thor, a Viking from the year 200 AD, the team has plenty of brawn. Finally, the last member is Princess Elda, who is beautiful and exotic and completely useless, needing to be rescued frequently and acting as cheerleader to Scott or lab assistant to Meade.

The first installment takes Dr. Meade and Scott into the past. They go back to 200 AD and see Vikings attack Rome. The Romans hold their own, killing all but Thor, whom Scott saves. After this, they go to Egypt and save Princess Elda from being sacrificed to the god Ishtar. Dr. Meade, in an unusual show of force, guns the Egyptians down with a machine gun! Putting the time-car in neutral (a phase between time-worlds), Meade teaches the two newcomers how to speak English. It takes a long time but no time at all.

Now the sharp-eyed will notice some stunning errors here. The Vikings as a phenomenon belong to the 10th Century, not the 2nd. Binder has mistaken Goths for Vikings. The "god" Ishtar is actually a Babylonian goddess and was not worshipped by the Egyptians. Otto may have known better, but is writing so fast he doesn't really care. What are a bunch of little kids going to say about it? It only gets better from there. The time-car goes back 10 million years to the time of the dinosaurs! The frisky dinos (one brontosaur looks like it is trying to get intimate with the time-car) are repelled using hand grenades.

In the second part of the story, the crew return to 1940. Thor has a hard time of adjusting, attacking a taxi with his hammer, so Dr. Meade does the only logical thing. He takes them into the future because it is safer. (It's hard to argue with logic like that, but hey, this guy invented time travel.) They land in 2000 AD, in a futuristic New York that is under attack. On a large radio set, they hear that Martians are attacking in a battle fleet. (Here is one of those SF anachronisms that make you smile. Binder can conceive time travel, but not the Internet, or even television for that matter. He's not alone.) Scott and Thor join the military, while Meade goes to work in military intelligence. Elda... well... Elda looks pretty. Scott and Thor are so good at flying fighter ships that the Martians target them, but Scott uses a land gun and takes out the Martian leaders. The time travelers are heroes. (At no time does Dr. Meade suggest they take the time-car into the past and warn the Earth of the impending invasion. Good thing he is a genius.)

The final portion of the tale begins with Dr. Meade and Elda's being captured by Kruzzo the Ice King of Mars. Scott (whose hair is now brown for some reason), Thor, and the unnamed leader of Earth go in pursuit, taking out Kruzzo's pirate fleet near the equator of Mars. Here they learn that not all the Martians are bad, only those working for Kruzzo. The heroes fly to Mars's south pole to infiltrate Kruzzo's base. They sneak in, find the captives, then fight the Martian pirates. Dr. Meade throws a rock into the air apparatus and blows up the baddies while the good guys escape. This last portion seems weaker than the previous two, and no one cried to see the series end here.

So why is "Scott Rand in the World of Time" so bad? Did it not have one of SF's hottest writers at the time? A man who would create Mary Marvel and Supergirl, writing over 50,000 pages of comics in his career? Yes, but "Scott Rand" was early in Binder's career, and written at lightning speed. The comic shops of 1940 pumped out pages at a terrific pace, with little concern for legacy. This was grunt work for low pay. Ideas were stolen, snatched from whatever was hot at the time; whatever was tried and true (though different enough you wouldn't get sued). Even later masters like Will Eisner and Jack Kirby tore through page after page, trying to keep the wolf from the door. The opportunity for greater creativity and care would have to wait until the comics industry abandoned the shop model and replaced it with the bullpens of companies like DC and Marvel. Otto and Jack Binder would make those contributions with Captain Marvel and Superman in the years to come.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Adam Link: The Autobiography of a Mechanical Man [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Sympathetic robot characters were not the norm in the 1930s. Robots were either the tools of mad scientists or out-of-control monsters. Isaac Asimov's fame as an SF writer rests partly on his tales of likeable robots. He created the famous "Three Laws of Robotics," logically deduced rules that robots would have to follow to be used safely in society. Asimov wrote entire novels around possible issues with the Three Laws and how robots would be accepted or not by humans.

But this was in the 1940s. Asimov's first story, "Robbie," was written in 1939 and did not see print until September 1940. Authors who predated Asimov include Neil R Jones with his stories of the Zoromes and John Wyndham (under his real name of John Beynon Harris) with "The Lost Machine," but most influential was Eando Binder (Earl and Otto Binder, a brother team). They created Adam Link, a robot who is judged by humanity, but not found wanting. The stories of Adam Link appeared in Amazing Stories between January 1939 and April 1942. The first of ten stories was entitled "I, Robot," because the narrator of the piece is the robot itself. This was revolutionary. Nobody had ever told the story from the robot's point-of-view before. When the stories were collected in book form the title I, Robot (1965) was selected. This was also the name of Asimov's first robot collection (1950), with the Binders' permission.

The original Binder stories are more like episodes in a novel. (In fact, when it came time to collect them, the story titles were dropped and only chapter titles were given.) The first story, "I, Robot" ends with Adam Link in prison, waiting for his destruction. The second part, "The Trial of Adam Link," has Adam being represented in court by Dr. Link's nephew, Thomas. This story ends with the case lost and Adam's facing death again. The next story has reporter Jack Hall finding the people Adam saved from a fire (and a small child from a speeding car), who speak out and free him. It is these two stories that will form the television adaptations of the future. "Adam Link in Business" has the robot searching for some form of meaning and employment. Jack Hall is interested in Kay Temple, but she falls for the metal man. Adam is forced to leave so that Kay can fall in love with a human. The story leaves off as Link goes on a new journey. What will happen to him next? These cliffhanger endings worked well to force editors and readers to ask for the next portion of the tale. In consecutive episodes, Adam fell under the control of an evil scientist, created a metal mate named Eve, then became a detective to save her from the Black Fist Gang's frame-up, and he became an athletic champion to win over public opinion and the right to have American citizenship. He even fought for humanity against alien invaders. Not bad for a robot.

Asimov casts a big shadow, but SF fans still have a fondness for Binder's Adam Link. The stories were adapted into comics and television. First in 1955-56 with EC's Weird Science-Fantasy #27-29 (March/April 1955 through May/June 1956). Adapted by Al Feldstein and drawn by Joe Orlando, the last three issues of this title adapted "I, Robot," "The Trial of Adam Link," and "Adam Link in Business." Feldstein's adaptation simplified the stories a little, but otherwise were faithful. Joe Orlando's art was low-key by EC standards, drawing Adam with a pointed conical head.

"I, Robot," the original story, received two television adaptations, first by the original Outer Limits (November 7, 1964) and again in the new version of Outer Limits (July 23, 1995). The best thing about these two, very similar versions is that Leonard Nimoy was featured in both. In 1964 he played the journalist Jack Hall (renamed Judson Ellis) who acts as a kind of foil to the lawyer, Thurman Cutler (played by Howard Da Silva) who represents Adam Link and loses. In the 1964 episode, the lawyer is not the relative. That is the beautiful Marianna Hall as the professor's niece, Nina Link. In 1995, Nimoy got to play Cutler himself (and wins the case) with his son Adam Nimoy directing the episode. Cynthia Preston is the prof's daughter, Mina Link, now playing foil in place of the reporter.

The first television version may have sparked an interest in another comic version. More likely it was an adaptation of "Adam Link's Vengeance" in a fanzine, Fantasy Illustrated #2, adapted by Otto Binder and drawn by D Bruce Berry and Bill Spicer. This piece won the Alley Award for Best Fan Comic Strip of the Year. Binder was interested in adapting more of the Adam Link stories, but who would publish them? The unusual choice was James Warren's Creepy. Known for down-beat horror, the magazine in its early days was edited by Archie Goodwin and attracted the likes of Frank Frazetta, Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall and Steve Ditko. The new adaptation by Otto Binder would be drawn by Joe Orlando, the original artist of 1955!

As you'd expect, Binder's adaptation is accurate and he gets to tell five more episodes about Adam Link. Orlando's second time around as artist is interesting because rather than replicate what he did ten years earlier, he uses the black and white medium well with gray shades and a more realistic look. He drew Adam differently too, abandoning the conical head for a more human one. In the end, the Creepy adaptations were well done, but ended too soon when the Warren company fell on hard times. In the end they published "I, Robot" (Creepy #2, April 1965), "Trial of Adam Link" (Creepy #4, August 1965) "Adam Link in Business" (Creepy #6, December 1965) "Adam Link's Mate" (Creepy #8, April 1966) "Adam Link's Vengeance" (Creepy #9, June 1966) "Robot Detective" (Creepy #12, December 1966) "Adam Link, Gangbuster" (Creepy #13, February 1967), and "Adam Link, Champion Athlete" (Creepy #15 August 1967).

Except for the 1995 Outer Limits episode, Adam Link's career ended here. And it's not surprising. He had a lot more competition by 1967. Robots were appearing in all kinds of media from books like Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to television with Lost in Space and Astro to films like Forbidden Planet to comics like The Metal Men. Likeable robots are here to stay and Earl and Otto Binder did their share to make them a permanent part of the science fiction fabric.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Four-Color Sci-Fi: Science Fiction Writers Who Wrote Comics [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

When radio became big across America in the late 1920s, there were those who worried it would kill pulp magazines. The magazines quickly adapted though and the two mediums complemented each other. In one case, radio even created one of the biggest selling Pulps. The Shadow began as nothing more than a narrator's voice and an evil laugh by Orson Welles. The voice was fleshed out into a fantastic character and that hero became Street and Smith's top title, selling out every two weeks. Other radio shows such as Suspense and X-Minus 1 adapted stories from magazines.

No, it wasn't radio that killed the Pulps. It was three other media enemies that came about in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The first of these was the paperback. For the soldiers fighting in World War II and Korea, the smaller size made more sense than larger magazines, and after the war was over, well, people just kept reading them.

Television was another very powerful enemy. Unlike radio, the TV networks weren't interested in adapting Pulp fiction. They were producing their own style of stories, largely based on earlier radio titles, and besides, it was free. All you had to do was buy a TV.

The last and most insidious of the enemies of the Pulps was their own spawn, the comics. Many of the Pulp publishers created comic lines to match their Pulp titles. You had Planet Stories, so Planet Comics. These cheaper-to-produce, but comparably priced publications ate away at Pulp profits. By 1955 most of the Pulps had either died or mutated into fiction digests (like Astounding Science Fiction or Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.)

This change in market affected many writers. Some of Science Fiction's writers had no choice but to write both kinds of stories. But before we look at these writers, it is important to mention two SF alumni who had a profound effect on comics. These were Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger. The duo began as editors and SF fans. They were involved in creating the first SF literary agency, and for helping to launch the first World SF Convention in 1939. As rabid fans, they knew everybody, though they did not write stories or draw pictures.

In 1944, Schwartz started AA Comics, the company that one day would become DC, where he would work until 1986. Weisinger became the editor of the Superman line, a post he held until 1970. Schwartz headed the changes in 1956 that would see comics move away from the methods of the comic strip packagers of the 1930s toward more modern approaches to superhero story-telling. And to do this he needed good writers. One of these was Gardner Fox who would give us Hawkman, as well as Batman's utility belt. He eventually worked on every major DC title during the Golden Age. Fox is best known for comics, but he also wrote for a few Pulps like Weird Tales and Planet Stories. Another unlikely comic star was Harry Harrison who started as an artist for EC (pencilling for Wally Wood) and even wrote the Flash Gordon comic strip for a decade. Unlike today, being a comic book writer was not something to brag about (possibly even lower than being a Pulp writer) and so Harrison used many pseudonyms before breaking into SF publishing as the creator of The Stainless Steel Rat.

But Harrison was one of the last. Before him were the stars of the 1940s. Writers like Eando Binder, actually Otto Binder (who continued to write under this weird pseudonym after his brother Earl no longer wrote with him), that gave SF the robot hero, Adam Link in Amazing Stories from 1939 to 1942. While writing SF Pulp, he also wrote Captain Marvel for Fawcett. He would write for Captain Marvel Jr and co-create Mary Marvel with Marc Swayze. He worked for DC in the late '40s and '50s, creating the early stories of Bizarro for Superman and co-created another super chick, Supergirl. Otto left comics for magazine editing. He became an avid supporter of UFO lore along with his old editor at Amazing, Raymond A Palmer.

Manly Wade Wellman is best known today for his occult detectives, John Thunstone (Weird Tales) and Silver John (Fantasy & Science Fiction) but he wrote all kinds of SF pulp as well as receiving a Pulitzer nomination for his historical work on the Old South. He started in comics with Captain Marvel Adventures #1 in March 1941 and ten years later would find himself testifying against his employer in court when DC comics sued Fawcett for plagiarizing Superman. (Mad Magazine would parody this case in 1953 as "Superdooperman vs. Captain Marbles".) Wellman also wrote for Blackhawk and ghosted for Wil Eisner's The Spirit while Eisner did a tour in the army in 1941. Wellman also wrote for DC's Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space in the 1950s.

Frank Belknap Long was a close friend of HP Lovecraft and began his career writing horror stories for Weird Tales. He wrote Science Fiction in the years after Lovecraft's death, appearing in John W Campbell's prestigious Astounding Science Fiction. Between 1941 and 1948 he wrote for Captain Marvel, Superman, the "Congo Bill" stories in Action Comics, Green Lantern, Planet Comics and DC's horror comic Adventures into the Unknown. During his comic writing decade, Long lived in California.

Alfred Bester wrote a small number of Science Fiction novels but each is a classic of the genre. His The Demolished Man and The Stars, My Destination are frequently included in lists of must-read books. Before these novels of the 1950s he wrote comics from 1942 to 1946. Julius Schwartz recruited him to work on Superman and Green Lantern. Bester is credited with penning the Green Lantern oath that begins, "In brightest day, in darkest night..." He also subbed for Lee Falk on The Phantom and Mandrake while Falk was in the army. Bester left comics for radio work. His wife, Rolly Goulko, was a busy radio and TV actress.

Henry Kuttner was a prolific writer in many genres, producing horror and Sword & Sorcery for Weird Tales, Shudder Pulps, hard-boiled Mysteries, as well as Science Fiction. He would marry writer CL Moore in 1940 and the two would write under a number of pseudonyms including Lewis Pagdett and Lawrence O'Donnell as well as under their own names. Kuttner would try his hand at comics in Green Lantern between 1944-46 but would return to magazine writing.

Sam Merwin Jr, like Fredric Brown and Robert Bloch, wrote in both the SF and Mystery genres. He began as an influential editor at Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder and other Pulps. He gave up editing and became a freelance writer in 1951. One of his first jobs was writing for DC's Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space until 1953. He wrote a number of SF novels and stories before returning to editing and writing for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

Edmond Hamilton started writing comics in 1946 because the Pulp markets were so bad after the War. Before this he was a regular in Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, the Clayton Astounding, and Amazing Stories. He is often cited as the co-creator of the sub-genre of Space Opera. He wrote the Captain Future novels between 1940-46. In comics, he started on DC's Green Lantern but eventually worked on all the Superman titles, Batman, and was instrumental in designing the Legion of Superheroes. He is credited with helping to create the idea of the DC Universe. We wrote the "Chris KL99" strip for Strange Adventures. This comic was loosely based on Captain Future. He left comics twenty years later in 1966, because he and fellow SF writer and wife Leigh Brackett were traveling more often.

Only Gardner Fox hung on longer. He left comics in 1968 when DC refused to give him benefits or royalties on his long canon of work. He turned to writing Sword & Sorcery and adventure novels for Tower paperbacks. Of all these Science Fiction writers, Fox has most often been garnered with awards and accolades, such as the Bill Finger Award, the Eisner Hall of Fame, and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, having worked in comics for thirty-one years.

What this infusion of SF talent did was add a dimension of imagination to comics that was lacking in the 1930s. The first comics featured a fantastic character, but once beyond the strange gimmick the story was pretty pedestrian, with the hero punching out a bunch of crooks. The Science Fiction writers expanded the possibilities of what comic stories could be until anything was possible. So while I'm watching Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern say those famous words, or Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers fight aliens from another dimension, or Batman use his weirdly dark gadgets, I think of my favorite Pulp writers and smile. Comics may have helped kill off the Pulps, but nowhere else does the flame of SF Pulps burn as brightly today.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.