Number 1568: Mekano — a wonder, not a marvel

Mekano (not the X-Men villain of the seventies) was a one-shot character appearing in Wonder Comics #1. Mekano, a large robot, falls in love with a human woman, Sandra,* after doing a bash job on some Nazis. The story is drawn by Bob Oksner, who in 1964 would draw this lovestruck robot:

Robots in love would have some real problems, so maybe it’s a good thing for Sandra that Mekano didn’t appear again. Do robots have fantasies? We are assured in a caption on page three that although this story is fantasy, so once were airplanes and telephones, and that currently “great scientists are working with mechanical men.” **

From Wonder Comics #1 (1944):

*A spoiler, since it is discovered in the next-to-last panel. Sorry.

**And a fine job those great scientists did, too, as evidenced by this picture of my personal robot, Isaac. He is shown here attending to me in the fifties when I was a boy. I wish I still had Isaac, but in the early sixties I traded him for the down payment on a used car.

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Number 1316: Pappy's tastes change, and oh, the Wonder of it all

As part of my ongoing growth as a Golden Age comic book fan, Wonder Comics #11 (1947) fits in. I bought it in 1978 (paid about $6.00 as I recall), and hated it. I bought it for the Graham Ingels cover, and noticed there was a Graham Ingels face on the girl (right side of the “Wonderman” double-page spread), but the rest of the comic seemed dopey to me; also goofy, silly, stupid...

But that was then and this is now, and I don’t even have to go back as far as 1978 for the change. It has happened recently, within the past couple of years, when I saw the things that formerly offended me now pleased me. I like Wonder Comics #11 for exactly the same reasons I hated it 34 years ago.

Personally, I now like a comic book where an outer space villain, Dr. Voodoo, wears a string tie. I like that another character looks like a smiley-face with a strangely shaped head. I like that the method of planet-hopping isn't by rocket ship, but by something called a “Vacuum Spiral.” Perhaps my change in tastes is that I am still evolving as a comic book reader — or, based on your opinions of my personal tastes, devolving.

I showed another oddball story from this issue in Pappy's #1090 in January, 2012, “Dick Devens of Futuria.”

Art by Bob Oksner.

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Number 1090


"Buck Rogers-Flash Gordon stuff"


In the 2011 book, Becoming Ray Bradbury by Jonathan Eller, Bradbury described a literary party in New York in 1951, where he met members of the New York City Ballet. He said they criticized him. As he put it: "Someone said, 'You're writing what? This Buck Rogers-Flash Gordon stuff. You're a science fiction writer.'" For someone like Bradbury, attempting to make science fiction and fantasy more literate, this was a cutting remark.

Anyone looking at these 1940s stories, "Dick Devens in Futuria" and "Tara", both regular features of Wonder Comics, would see the kind of pulp science fiction those New York City Ballet members were talking about. It's entertaining, but I understand Bradbury's problem with his work being lumped in with it. I appreciate Bradbury for his literary approach to the genre, but science fiction is a pretty wide field, and there's also room for "Buck Rogers-Flash Gordon stuff."

From Wonder Comics #11, 1947, artist not known:












From Wonder Comics #18, 1948, art credited to Gene Fawcette by the Grand Comics Database, but as pointed out by Lysdexicuss (see comments for this post), it is more likely drawn by Mort Meskin. The cover is by Alex Schomburg:

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