1950: THE NEXUS OF MARVEL "REALISM" PT. 1

 In my 2023 essay THE EXCELLENT SEEDS OF HIS OWN DESTRUCTION, I said in part: 

...comic book SF took on its own schizophrenic division in the very early 1950s. Going by my partial reading of the early issues of DC's flagship SF-anthology comic, STRANGE ADVENTURES (1950), I would say that DC remained steadfastly committed to the "gosh-wow" method. In the same year that ADVENTURES debuted, William Gaines' EC Comics published its two SF-titles, WEIRD FANTASY and WEIRD SCIENCE. EC experts would know more than I of Gaines' reading-proclivities. But for whatever reasons-- which probably include the proclivities of contributors like Wally Wood-- EC's two magazines proved to be more in the spirit of "philosophy-SF" that had been best propagated in the forties by ASTOUNDING MAGAZINE and in the fifties by THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION (said magazine having begun in 1949). To further support the sense of a changing ethos, American cinema suddenly began investing heavily in "thinking-man's SF," with DESTINATION MOON in 1950 and both THE THING and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL in 1951. 

I now feel that the term "philosophy-SF" is misleading, especially in terms of gauging how the tropes of science fiction, even those communicated mostly through SF-films, influenced early Marvel. The term doesn't quite capture the essence of "What Made Sixties Marvel Successful." There are Marvel stories from the 1960s that had varying degrees of philosophical significance, but philosophy was not a constant factor in Marvels rise to success, as one might say that philosophy was important to the fiction of Robert Heinlein (who was, incidentally, one of the contributors to the groundbreaking Hollywood SF-film DESTINATION MOON). The two factors in Marvel's meteoric sixties success were (1) the concept of a vast, intertwined universe of genre-heroes, and (2) the sincere attempt to give all these heroes and their villains at least a modicum of characterization. 

Now, of these two factors, the idea of a comics-company using a "shared universe" was not derived from any other medium or genre, since Marvel, in its 1940s incarnation of "Timely Comics," had already played around with heroes meeting each other, as had other publishers of the period. But the second factor, that of characterization, may owe a substantial debt to advances in the way SF in various media used the same factor, beginning ten years before the advent of the Marvel Age of Comics. 

I mentioned above that in America prose science fiction received a boost in terms of sophisticated treatments when the MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION was launched in 1949, and the same is true of its competitor GALAXY MAGAZINE, launched in 1950. I assume both magazines sought to monetize the public's growing awareness of "space-age" technology, just as producer George Pal did with DESTINATION MOON, followed by many more raconteurs throughout the 1950s decade. And I would assume something similar influenced the way three comics-companies launched science-fiction anthology-titles in that same pivotal year of 1950.

EC Comics-- WEIRD SCIENCE and WEIRD FANTASY, June 1950

DC Comics-- STRANGE ADVENTURES, August 1950

Atlas (formerly Timely) Comics-- JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS, September 1950.    

Of these three companies, DC made no major inroads in using multifaceted characters; STRANGE ADVENTURES remained in the 1940s mode of gosh-wow SF. William Gaines, though, sought to produce more deeply textured SF-stories, even if he had to swipe from the best authors, such as Theodore Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury, to accomplish that feat. But what of JOURNEY, the first SF-anthology comic published by Timely/Atlas/Marvel? Which side of the characterization fence does it fall upon?

"To be continued" in Part 2...