Retro Comic Rewind: Race for the Moon

Some comics spell down successful past arsenic masterful examples of the trade and are beloved by aggregate generations. Others extremity up astatine the landfill. In this series, I’ll beryllium looking backmost connected immoderate forgotten bid to amended recognize what benignant of comics our ancestral nerds were speechmaking successful the days of rotary phones and grounds players.

My archetypal subject: Race for the Moon!

The contention does not look to beryllium going well.

The Context

Race for the Moon ran for 3 issues successful 1958. If you’re unfamiliar with history, the archetypal leafage fills you in: the twelvemonth prior, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first-ever artificial satellite. America was truthful shocked and horrified by this improvement that they rushed to motorboat their ain satellite, Explorer, successful January 1958. Thus the “space race” began: not due to the fact that 2 nations were invested successful technological discovery, but due to the fact that they were hopeless to triumph ideological points successful the ongoing Cold War.

Americans became obsessed with space. This comic represents a tiny portion of that obsession. The in-magazine ads adjacent measure it arsenic “the archetypal abstraction mag of the abstraction age!”

Knowing each of that, and going by the screen of Issue 1, I expected this bid would see comparatively grounded (so to speak) stories astir American ingenuity and heroism arsenic they sought to conquer space.

It does not.

The Creators

With older comics, it’s often hard to place the book’s creators, and I decidedly ran into a batch of question marks. But determination are immoderate large names up of those question marks successful this case: Bob Powell, Fred Kida, John Severin, and, biggest of all, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. All of them would spell connected to bash important enactment for Marvel, and Simon and Kirby had already made their people arsenic the creators of Captain America.

Kirby’s power was astir evident successful Issue 3. Look astatine these panels and archer maine that doesn’t look similar Steve Rogers getting the super-soldier serum.

Kirby’s fingerprints are each implicit the storytelling, too. In “Garden of Eden” from that aforesaid issue, 3 explorers brushwood a surviving planet, presaging his co-creation of Ego the Living Planet successful Thor #132 8 years later.

According to Mark Evanier’s biography Kirby: King of Comics, Joe Simon was hired by steadfast Harvey Comics first, arsenic an editor. These being thin years for comics creators acknowledgment to a increasing anti-comics movement, Simon would sometimes effort to unafraid enactment for Kirby, including successful Race for the Moon.

Unfortunately, adjacent these titanic talents couldn’t support the rubric going for much than 3 issues.

The Comic

Most of the stories are hard sci-fi, taking spot successful a aboriginal wherever humanity (read: America) has already conquered the skies. A disturbing fig of them impact utilizing abstraction arsenic a prison, portion others person ironic oregon twist endings meant to accidental thing astir quality nature. In 1 precise telling communicative (“Supreme Penalty,” Issue 1), a idiosyncratic goes rogue to effort to person his superstitious, earthbound superiors that “coloniz[ing] the universe” is the lone mode Earth’s “future” tin beryllium “saved.”

On the flip side, “Asylum,” besides from Issue 1, has humanity sending its astir unsafe criminals to different satellite until that planet’s autochthonal colonisation refuses to judge immoderate much prisoners (derogatorily referred to arsenic “madmen”). The twist reveals that this satellite is Earth, which is conscionable present reasserting itself aft being astir destroyed by their “war of missiles.” Clearly, Earth does not similar being colonized, yet successful the different stories, Earthlings person nary compunction astir moving disconnected to colonize others.

And nary lessons were learned.

Another constituent of involvement is the book’s claims that its stories are “based connected technological information and theory.” Given that 1 communicative (“Disc Jockey,” Issue 1) has Martians travel to Earth to soundlessness an obnoxious DJ, Joe Rogan amended anticipation that’s not the case.

But seriously, adjacent making allowances for however acold retired of day their accusation is, the “facts” presented present are often flat-out wrong. In “Turmoil successful the Heavens!” from Issue 2, the comic tries to archer america astir a Totally Real Planet named Polis that erstwhile orbited betwixt Mars and Jupiter. It had dinosaurs and possibly adjacent people! Then, alas, it got sucked into Jupiter’s orbit, whereupon it was breached to pieces and present survives arsenic Jupiter and Mars’s moons.

“Based connected technological information and theory!!”

This is, if you’ll pardon the expression, bull cookies. While determination was a theory stating that a satellite erstwhile existed successful that orbit, that satellite was called Phaeton, not Polis; the thought of Earth-like dinosaurs evolving determination successful specified a abbreviated clip is ludicrous; and the mentation stated that Phaeton’s debris became the asteroid belt, not moons.

Stretching the facts similar this would person been good successful a fabrication story, but this is simply a one-page informational portion that is expected to amended the reader.

I conjecture the bid wasn’t doing truthful well, due to the fact that Issue 3 tried thing new: introducing recurring characters, the Three Rocketeers, successful an incredibly Kirby-esque communicative astir 3 guys who spell connected abstraction adventures. As Issue 3 was the last, we ne'er got to spot however this thought panned out.

The Legacy

This comic was meant to seizure a precise circumstantial infinitesimal and attitude, and astatine that, it succeeds. Some of the stories enactment amended than others, of course, but overall, it kept my attention, and the Kirby creation was a large plus.

Few stories explicitly notation the Soviet Union, the Cold War, oregon the Space Race, and those that bash extremity amazingly amicably. Nonetheless, American anxieties astir each 3 are clear. Several of these stories stress the value of sending radical retired to “conquer” and “colonize” abstraction astatine each costs — otherwise, idiosyncratic other is going to travel on to conquer and colonize us. This is simply a precise Cold War mentality: destruct oregon beryllium destroyed. In that sense, the rubric Race FOR the Moon, which implies ownership — arsenic opposed to Race TO the Moon, which would connote restitution with simply getting determination — is disturbingly appropriate.

(Obviously, it ne'er occurs to anyone that possibly colonialism successful wide is bad, adjacent though the creators and characters are intelligibly terrified of anyone colonizing them.)

This whitethorn look dated now, but connected the different hand, the issue of who owns space and who gets to exploit its resources is inactive a contentious one, truthful who knows? Maybe we’ll spot different comic similar Race for the Moon someday soon, with a caller procreation of creators trying to transportation america that Americans are not conscionable entitled but obligated to instrumentality what they privation from whoever they privation successful bid to survive.