Comic Review #22: Strange Adventures #75 (1956)

 

Now It's finally time for me to discuss the goofiest comics of all time! I've only read maybe 30 of the 244 issues of Strange Adventures but boy howdy were they something! I need every issue of this series in my collection so I may cradle them all like babies. They are that important to the betterment of our society. So you might be asking yourself this "What the hell are you on?" (Nothing but love for Strange Adventures. And PCP) and "What the hell is Strange Adventures?". Strange Adventures is a sci-fi comic book made by DC between 1950 and 1973. It became a reprint series around issue 217 for the most part. It gave some of the most famous and beloved superheroes of all time to us like Captain Comet! and the Atomic Knights, which were these guys who in a desolated nuclear future rode on giant Dalmatians. If that doesn't make you want to read every issue of Strange Adventures then I really don't know what will.

Strange Adventures #75 with the published date of December (most comics went on the stands months earlier, it was to show the news stand dealer or store they could get rid of the comic for new ones so this issue probably came out in October or something like that) Anyway everything about this comic could have been lame and terrible and I would still have told you to buy it because sweet baby Jesus look at that cover. Look at it. An Ape is threating to shoot a woman so that she will give him the books he needs to rule the world. How is that NOT the greatest thing your eyes will ever see. If you can say you've seen better than you are a giant liar and I hate you with a blinding passion.

Strange Adventures usually had 3 or 4 Adventures in each comic book story. This one has four, one of which yes is about an ape stealing books for world conquest. Sadly it does not live up to the sheer beauty of the cover. It turns out that the Gorilla is actually an Alien who has been changed into a Gorilla because the aliens were looking at earth and apparently in the past Gorillas had their own society. They send him to earth to learn about everything so that they may take over. Sadly he doesn't get there in time to meet the Gorilla society but human society. He learns about a scientist who's creating a ray that can turn Gorillas into humans. He lets himself get captured. The scientist turns him into a human and then back when he feels he needs more help with this project despite just showing that he can do it all by his own BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY CHANGED THE GORILLA BACK INTO A MAN. He gets spooked because he thinks someone who worked with him before is here to steal his contraption so he puts the writings on how to put it all back together into three books that he got from the library. The scientist then ends up getting run the fuck over because he was scared of the guy. The guy was actually thinking the scientist was gonna do evil deeds with his Gorilla-Human ray. It's all very silly. The Gorilla escapes and then gets the three books back and then gets into a car crash and dies. I'm pretty sure whoever wrote this story thought he had more than 7 pages to tell it. My version of the story would have had the Gorilla ride a giant Whale robot and wear Pirate clothes like Long John Silver. I don't know what he would have taken from Robinson Crusoe but I like my version better.

The other stories are much more fun but really won't take as much time to talk about. A retired blind nuclear physicist stops some aliens after he realizes that THEY too are blind. The aliens talk a big game about returning when all they need to survive and multiply is salt water but they end up jumping into a fresh water lake. Hilarious. The third story involves a man opening a box that was given to him by an alien. The box had a gas in it and the man and another alien have to find a bird that ate a frog that ate a butterfly that ate a pitcher plant that had become white because of the gas. So the gassy bird is found and saves 1,0500,00,0,0,00,0,00 alien lives. The last story involves a Time TV called Timearama. A scientist creates a TV that lets you see ALL OF TIME. He uses this to get his girlfriends mother to treat him better. She demands to see his ancestors and then tells him that she will never let her daughter marry him. You see she's a piece of shit rich asshole. Anyway he gets his concept stolen by a shady crook who tells him that he'll be seen as great by the rich asshole jerk by getting money. The shady jerk opens up a damn theatre to show people footage of shit like the pyramids being built. The creator guy feels that is not what he wanted his machine to be used for so he wants his machine back but the shady jerk is being a jerk. He gets the machine back from the shady jerk by improving on it so that it can see into the last 50 years and showing all the awful shit the jerk did. He then gets back at the rich piece of shit by showing her that HER ancestors were pirates and quacks!

This comic was wild. Every story was fun, even if the first one didn't live up to my expectations. Now to find an ridiculous amount of money so I can buy a copy of this comic. Also I could easily just rename this column from "Comic Reviews" to "Strange Adventures Reviews".