COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Weird Science 17 Universal
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Grade:
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5.0
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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2038178021
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Owner:
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GAM
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Weird Science #17 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) on pages 81 and 82.
On page 81, Wagner introduces fantasy/science comics as follows “…for a more horrific kind of crime-comic has been putting in its appearance. This is what I call the crime-terror kind of crime-comic, and it shades off at its far end into the purely absurd fantastic-science type of comic-book, of which there are an increasing number. Indeed, I found a story in Weird Science no 17 in which there appears a publisher who, when asked how business is going, replies “Terrible! If it weren’t for the science-fiction craze, I’d be out of business!’.
On page 82, Wagner refers to Weird Science #17 again “Weird Science no 17, mentioned above, has one of the most inordinately loathsome covers I have encountered on any comic-book. Owing to the ineptitude of the drawing, it is difficult to distinguish exactly what is meant to be, but in general it seems to depict an oozing, pus-ridden monster, a mixture of octopus, ape, and giant ray, squeezing to death a beautiful agonized girl. The contents, in this case, match the cover, two pictures showing blondes, dresses trousses to the lap, being trampled to death, one by an unspeakably ugly monster and the other by a mob of American citizens making for Miami Beach on a public holiday! We may pause a moment for this latter. For this story is as simple a slice of anti-intellectualism as you could wish for. We see the usual stereotype of the professor that is supposed to be a satisfactory substitute for us spellbound masses, bespectacled, absent-minded, clearly the kind of man who would get a flunking grade in Bloomingdales, lecturing his class on ‘the law of averages’. He waxes loquacious over the possible collapse of his law, and we see in pictorial form what might happen if everyone in American decided to take a vacation to Miami Beach or Ebbets Field at the same moment. Chaos would come again, according to the prof. Finally, we see him affirming that the law has broken down today and that ‘our society is going to suffer terribly!’ Then comes the pay-off. We see his class. There is only one student present of out 378. In other words, profs are cranks and their jeremiads are to be ignored. There is a final twist at the very end, where the single ‘student’ attending the lecture gets up as the prof flings out another warning and reveals himself to be the janitor of the building, who replies, in crackerbarrel calm, ‘Wal, I wouldn’t worry ‘bout it none, Perfessor! Y’see…ah’m the janitor here … an t’day is Sunday.’
Wagner’s anti-intellectualism story example comes from the story “Off Day!” contained in Weird Science #17. His examples of “trampled blondes” are pulled from the stories “Plucked” and “Off Day!”
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