Weird Science Volume 2: The EC Archives (graphic novel review).
The second volume of ‘Weird Science’ continues reprinting them in an odd order, these from the original # 5-12, so we still haven’t seen the early issues. From an editorial perspective, the haphazard order often prioritizes the best issues/stories to attract younger readers who may not have encountered them before. As an archivist, and this is really my first time reading them, I would rather have read them in the right order to see how these anthologies evolved.
This is especially important because Al Feldstein, who either wrote or co-wrote all the stories in this anthology, was constantly evolving his style and ideas. Doing that has to show some story evolution, if for nothing else than how different artists interpreted the scripts.
It’s also a hunt for the stories that really hit paydirt, and that was with Weird Science #10, where each story really was…well…incredible and a lesson not to take what it seems for granted. The Maidens Cried, illustrated by Wallace Wood, serves as a cautionary tale about the superficial nature of beauty. The Jack Kamen-drawn ‘Reducing Costs’ has a scientist with two inventions that help each other to fill cinema stadiums but then has a slight mishap depending on what size you are. Considering its age, ‘Transformation Complete,’ drawn by Wood, has a scientist not wanting his daughter to marry using his new prototype serum to change her boyfriend unknowingly into a woman. When his daughter discovers the truth, she finds her own solution. You do have to wonder if this is the first-ever transgender story. Joe Orlando’s artwork for this issue, ‘Planetoid,’ depicts apparent humans exploring planets in search of uranium, only to discover more than they anticipated. Writers Feldman and Gaines are revisiting an old theme of theirs here, but the art carries it off.
Weird Science #11 also has an outstanding collection. The Wallace Wood-drawn ‘The Conquerors Of The Moon!’ has a uranium-hunting company wanting to make their work cheaper by teleporting air from the Earth to the Moon and inadvertently draining the home planet. Bet that was never in the manual. The Jack Kamen-drawn “Only Human” has five men and one woman instructing a computer AI orally. It picks up one of the men wanting to date the woman and falls madly in love itself and refuses to cooperate with its programming. The Joe Orlando-drawn ‘Why Papa Left Home’ is a time travel story neatly tying up loose ends. Today, it might seem like a cliché, but back then it must have felt really new.
There’s a fair bet that ‘Weird Science’s editors didn’t know the order of the stories coming in to qualify those two particular issues as gold-dust but these are really quality SF and worth you picking up this volume.
GF Willmetts
January 2025
(pub: Dark Horse, 2023. 214 page large softcover. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-50673-338-8)
check out website: www.darkhorse.com
