THE MAGIC OF ATLANTIS was an anthology edited by Lin Carter collecting various Atlantis-set fantasy stories from the pulp era. On the low end we have Carter’s own contribution (okay, nothing special) and a Robert E. Howard King Kull story (I don’t find Kull brooding about the nature of reality terribly interesting). On the high end we have one of Clark Ashton Smith’s Poseidonis stories and an Edmond Hamilton fantasy, “The Avenger from Atlantis,” in which a bodysnatching Atlantean scientist spends centuries hunting down the bodsnatching schemer who caused the sinking.
Overall the collection is fun but the sexism annoyed me. Not that I’m unfamiliar with the sexism of that era’s specfic, but having the women be either sex objects with no personality or bad girl sex bombs got old fast. The only exception was Nictzin Dyalhis’ “The Heart of Atlantis,” which has a female protagonist (it’s one of the middle-ground stories in the book).
I’m a sucker for the old Julius Schwartz SF comics Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures so it was inevitable I pick up the collection DC FINEST: Gorilla World from the early 1950s (it also includes the space adventures of Tommy Tomorrow, a backup in Action Comics). This includes a number of series characters (superhero Captain Comet, scientist Darwin Jones, the Space Cabbie and Interplanetary Insurance agent Bert Gordon) and a lot of standalone stories. Not the best of the series but still fun for me despite the frequent absurdities (a road crew accidentally turns a road into a moebius strip, for instance).
Sometimes they’re quite clever. In “The Counterfeit Earthmen,” the inhabitants of Saturn’s moon Titan refuse to believe Earth astronauts are from Earth — if there’s intelligent life that close to the sun’s light it would have to be blind and navigate by sonar! In “Gorilla World” (shown by Murphy Anderson above) a couple get sucked into a parallel timeline where gorillas have evolved to the equivalent of humans. The couple go on display in a freak show but it turns out they’re very happy — the husband was a sideshow act on our Earth and the gorillas treat him a lot better. Definitely not for everyone’s taste but it is mine.
The first SUPERMAN SILVER AGE OMNIBUS isn’t as much to my taste — Mort Weisinger’s stable of creators always aimed their stories slightly younger than Schwartz seemed to. That said, this covers a wildly creative period including the debut of Brainiac (captured by Curt Swan above), the first appearance of the Arctic Fortress of Solitude, the introduction of Bizarro, Supergirl, Metallo, the first Earth-One Mxyzptlk appearance — well, it’s a creative time for the mythos, as I blogged about here. Balanced against that we have the sexist treatment of Lois Lane and a lot of Wayne Boring art (once considered the definitive Super-artist, I’ve never been able to get into his work). As always with old comics, you pays your money and you takes your choice. I certainly don’t regret spending the cash.
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