Expert: Chris Brown - 11/18/2010

Question
QUESTION: When I was a child  I inherited my older brothers collection of comics,  among them   were tales of the unexpected, mysteries from space, etc.    One story in particular was about an astronaut marooned on a deserted planet,, lost and alone until he came across the reminence of a destroyed ship,  from its ashes he built a radio to call home for help.   I believe this comic was used in the movie ET, for the inspiration for  "ET-Phone home"  quote, but have long since lost my old collection of comics and have no way to verify this.  it should have been a comic published between   1950 and maybe  1954,   If you watch ET  you will see panels from this comic so Steven Spielberg was obviosly smart enough to retain his copy of the comic.   If you have any idea of the name of this comic and date it was published I would be quite happy.

thanks,  allen

ANSWER: Hi Allen

I saw E.T. when it came out in 1982 but don't remember the comic book scene you describe.  I tried to see if I could find any info or scan online but didn't have any luck.  It's too bad, because there's a good chance I would have been able to identify the artist and/or company if I could have viewed a page or two (and if it was an actual old comic, as you say, as opposed to something just created for the movie).  While I have read a fair amount of these comics you mention and still have some around, I'm afraid I don't recognize the story from your description.

Tales of the Unexpected was first published in 1956.  Mystery in Space first came out in 1951 and Strange Adventures started in 1950.  These were all put out by DC, the publisher of Superman.  There were other companies putting out science fiction comics during the same period.  However, the stories of most other companies tended not to have such happy endings, especially in the pre-code era prior to 1955.  So if the 1950 to 1954 date range is correct, Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures would be a good place to look.

You can look at covers during this period, and perhaps something will trigger a memory for you.  Check out the website

www.comics.org

to see all the covers of the above titles.  If you click on the scan of a specific issue, you will also find a list of the stories in that issue.

Good luck!

Chris



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: thank you for responding..  I am  really surprised that I cant find anything on the web about this comic.   I am sure that the frames were taken directly from the comic, or purhaps redrawn in the same style.   You would think that someone would have noticed that spielberg lifted this from an old comic.  I guess someday I will just have to ask him himself which comic it was...

I do remember  many of the stories from Mystery in space,  including  The New Year's Eve of 2000 AD (1957),,
The Man Who Doomed a World (1957)  and Rip Van Winkle of Space (#27, August-September 1955)...    We also had old  marvel  comics including the old Toro, the human torch and the elastic man   Thin Man  who predated the fantastic four,  but  appear to be similar in nature to   the torch and mr. fantastic from that series.      SO I guess most of my brothers collection must have been from around the 55-57 period....    I have it in my head that it was  from a Tales of the Unexpected,  but haven't been able to place it with the covers.   Will let you know if I can place it   thanks for the  help...

Allen  

Answer
Hi Allen

Yes, the old Human Torch and Toro are fun, as well as the old Sub-Mariner.  "Elastic Man" sounds like Plastic Man, which was actually put out by another company, Quality Comics.  However, Marvel did imitate the character when they created Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, as did DC with the Elongated Man, a character that showed up in Flash comics in the late 50s.

The comics code started in February of 1955, so that makes it more difficult to say if the story you are talking about was DC or another publisher.  There are any number of possibilities, since all the sci-fi comics at various publishers went from horror-type endings to happier endings like the one in your memory.

You could well be talking about a Marvel/Atlas comic from the period like Adventure into Mystery, Astonishing, Journey into Mystery, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Marvel Tales, Mystery Tales, Mystic, Mystical Tales, Spellbound, Strange Stories of Suspense, Strange Tales, Strange Tales of the Unusual, Strange Worlds, Uncanny Tales, World of Fantasy, World of Mystery or World of Suspense.  Unlike at DC, Marvel did not have special titles for their sci-fi stories.  Their fantasy comics would generally feature a couple sci-fi stories in each issue.

Some of the above titles only ran for 5 or 6 issues, while others may have run for 20 or 30.  As well as looking on www.comics.org, you can also go to www.atlastales.com for lots of info on these.

Another company that could feature these types of stories is Charlton.  Wikipedia has a good list of all the Charlton titles and dates here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Charlton_Comics_publications

You can pick out the issues in the time frame you are interested in with a sci-fi theme, like Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, Space Wars and Space Adventures.  Like at Marvel, the fantasy titles like Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, Unusual Tales, Strange Suspense Stories and This Magazine is Haunted probably have some sci-fi mixed in too.  I think all or most of these are pictured on the www.comics.org website.

There are a couple other smaller publishers but their output in this period would have been very limited.

Getting to be a project, but not the worst way to spend a couple hours, looking at old comic covers.

Chris