Classic Sci-Fi comic books

I’m looking for reprints (or just affordable originals) of classic Science Fiction comics. Some type of collection or trade-paperbacks would be even better.

I’m talking about stuff from the 40s/50s/60s with aliens, robots, space-ships that look like retro-futuristic rockets, etc.

Can anyone recommend some good ones and where to find them? Thanks.

EC comics Weird Science, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science Fantasy.

EC reprinted it’s entire run of comics from the 60’s a couple of times, most recently in the early 90’s. These can be found relatively cheaply on eBay.

There also was a series of annuals that reprinted the entire run of the EC books collected into three to five squarebound comics. These are a bit more expensive, but enable you to get the comlete run all at once. Also available on eBay.

Most expensive are the hardback books, which go for anywhere around 75.00 for a set to more than $100. The reproduction is in black and white, but it is very high quality because it was taken from the original artwork, not scanned from existing color copies.

Thanks Number Six, I’ll look into those.

As an addendum, I don’t want anything from too late into the 60s because it seems like they started getting too psychadelic and colorful, with girls in miniskirts, etc, and almost a whole “Monkees” type feel to it. I’m looking for something with an aesthetic closer to movies like Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth, and The Iron Giant.

I have a complete collection of Space Cabby, Star Hawkins and Star Rovers from DC Comics. It’s fun as a period piece.

DC put out a trade paperback called Mystery in Space which is a sampler of the various sci-fi offerings from DC in the 50’s and 60’s (and a little later stuff). You might want to check that out.

Just out of curiosity, should you place Jack Kirby’s artwork for The Fantastic Four in the early-'60s or late-'60s camp?

[Longer post lost due to browser crash]

You mean would I? It’s hard to say . . . I have some of those very early Fantastic Fours and the artwork, stories, and dialogue are all very dated and “campy”, yet I still love and cherish them.

As for how to categorize them . . . I would probably throw them in the Lee/Kirby pile because I really don’t know of anything (especially anything before them) that has the same look and feel.

Mystery in Space was mentioned above as a sampler od DC comics, but I have to note that it was the title of a DC comic in the late 1950s/early 1960s featuring Adam Strange. Pretty nat stuff. Like a lot of comic SF, it was written by a science fiction writer (Gardner Fox, IIRC). There were other stories besides his in the book, as well. DC had another title at the same time – Space Ranger, or something, I can’t recall exactly. Again, a lot of general odd SF stories in them.

DC tried to write real SF stories. Marvel went for the gut – horror and action. They had several anthology series that featurede SF stories. Tales to Astonish (which later featured Ant Man/Gianyt Man), Journey Into Mystery (which later hosted Thor) and other series gave us a lot of random SF and Giant Monsters.
Boys Life magazine in the 1960s had a monthly comic strip of futuristic space explorers. The Catholic comic Treasure Chest had some space adventures, too.
Heck, check out some of the Scrooge McDuck comics – at least two stoiries show him in outer space.
I think the kind of thing you’re talking about are best represented by newspaper strips. Look up colections of old **Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford, Buck Rogers, **etc.

My favorite (or second favorite tied with the Adam Strange stuff) was the Atomic Knights. Truely surreal stuff–post nuclear-holocaust sf with people in old-time knights-in-armor type armor (that had somehow become radiation proof ) riding around a blasted and desolate landscape on giant mutated damations—IIRC, they worked Triffids into the mix (under another name-trefoils?) too…

Deeply, deeply surreal.

Also early Legion Of Super-Heroes stories were written by Otto Binder.

Fenris

I second the EC sci-fi stuff (although I personally like their war comics even more). Most of the square-bound paperback “annuals” Number Six mentions are still available thru Diamond.

–Cliffy

DC put out two anthologies with a similar name: Mysteries in Space (1980, Murphy Anderson “Adam Strange” cover) and Mystery in Space (circa 2000, Mitch O’Connell “Captain Comet” cover). I prefer the older one, but according to bookfinder.com, it costs about fifty bucks more than its later version. Not sure I liked it that much better.

In the 80s and 90s, Mark Schultz wrote and drew one of the most beautiful SF series ever, Xenozoic Tales (a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs). This is a lot more recent than you’re asking about and the “Green” politics get very tiresome, but the art is simply the best ever and it compares favorably with Alex Raymond, Wally Wood and Al Williamson. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not.