Comic Book Resources

You know, I think if we could only answer that question, we'd know the secret of the universe.

I'd wager it has something to do with giant space crows.

And I'd be sorta right according to this site, which is jam-packed with old funny book synopsi and analysis:

Secret of the Scarecrow World (1958). Writer: Gardner Fox. Art: Carmine Infantino. Based on a cover by: Gil Kane. A new teleportation device accidentally leaves a giant scarecrow off Earth's North Pole. This story shows many Fox techniques and themes. It deals with the invention of teleportation, and its use in space travel, a theme of Fox's Adam Strange tales and other works: Adam Strange was making his debut at the same time this story appeared. It features a married couple who work together as scientists, as in Fox's Space Museum stories, and elsewhere.

The story features a Fox cycle - for a discussion of Fox cycles, please see the article on Adam Strange. Here, teleportation from one location to another, then back again to the original location, is a complete cycle. As usual in Fox cycles, this leaves the original situation unchanged at the end. This cycle is close to the zeta-beam cycle in the Adam Strange stories, which also centers on teleportation between planets. In both cycles, there are strange features that affect the teleported half way through the cycle: charging with radiation in the zeta-beam cycle, change of size here. These cycles are also used in similar structural ways. Here Earth faces a menace (an interplanetary invasion), just as the planet Rann typically faces a menace in the Adam Strange tales. And the hero here uses the existing cycle to "interfere" with this menace, just as Adam Strange often uses his zeta-beam cycle to interfere with and defeat menaces to Rann.
Another structural use of the cycle recalling other Fox tales: the story includes a "change of protagonist for the cycle, on a massive scale", as in the Adam Strange tale "Planets of Peril" (Mystery in Space #90, March 1964).
This story also deals with another Fox concept: the cycle with a flaw in it. The time travel in "The Two-Way Time Traveler" (Strange Adventures #143, August 1962) is also flawed. Fox's dialogue actually uses the word "bug" to describe this engineering problem: an early use of this computer term in a fiction story.
While the story is based on a cover by Gil Kane, it twists the cover situation around, giving it a different meaning than it has in Kane's cover. It is more a rationalization of the cover, a plot dreamed up to "explain" it, than a straightforward use of the covers idea as a story premise. This is typical of the way Fox did not always closely use Kanes cover concepts.

Because Julius Schwartz, that's why!

Actually, teleportation accident, alien invasion.

Well it would scare me off that is for sure.

My first thought was "Where did they get a tree bog ehough to male that pole out of?"

I'm wondering how the aliens know that giant thing sticking out of a planet is a scarecrow? Is it just sheer coincidence that whatever world they are from also has similarly constructed scarecrows, and crows for their scarecrow to scare?

Sure, maybe they've been observing Earth, but then, they'd probably know why the scarecrow was built, wouldn't they?

Wow. The explanation really does kill the buzz.

Damn, Tony Stark should look into this the next time the Skrulls or any other race try to pull something like this...

A Skrullcrow! Brilliant!