CSBG Archive
A Year of Cool Comics – Day 122
Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here‘s the archive of the moments posted so far!
Today we continue a multi-part look at the various notable recurring features in Strange Adventures over the years – today’s spotlight is on Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino’s Space Museum!
Enjoy!
The very first Space Museum story in Strange Adventures #104 was drawn by Mike Sekowsky, but the rest of them were drawn by Carmine Infantino.
They were all written by Gardner Fox.
The set-up for Space Museum was extremely straightforward. Howard Parker and his son Tommy would visit the Space Museum every month (Space Museum would show up every three months in Strange Adventures) and in their visit, Tommy would see an artifact, which would lead into a story about the importance of that object (often the object was seemingly ordinary).
Here’s an example, from an early story…
Here’s a couple of samples of intro splashes for other Space Museum stories…
and
These were just solid, well-told adventure stories built around a catchy framing device.
The Space Museum was memorable enough that it has popped up a few more times over the years, especially when Dan Jurgens had Booster Gold WORK at the Space Museum before he became Booster Gold (in fact, it was by stealing various artifacts FROM the Space Museum that Booster was able to go back in time and become a superhero).
7 Comments
Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!
May 3, 2010 at 6:10 am
I always got a kick out of the one in which humanity can’t explore space until we perfect a working disintegrator gun. Because obviously there’d be no drawbacks to that sort of technology being commonly available….
Jacob T. Levy
May 3, 2010 at 9:11 am
That’s… just… wow.
I guess “because the Silver Age, that’s why.”
Anonymous
May 3, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Why is it I get the feeling that there was a bet involved…as in “I bet you can’t write a story where someone saves the world with a [blank].”
Captain Flash
May 3, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Never thought I’d see the world saved by wristwatches, haha. Awesome!
Ethan Shuster
May 4, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Wow, I had no idea of the connection to Booster Gold. He did work in a 25th Century museum from when he first appeared. Was it still Jurgens who specified THIS museum?
PeterCSM
May 15, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I wish that man would tell me the incredible answer to that amazing invasion.
Marto
September 15, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I can’t wait for DC to put out a complete Space Museum collection the way they did with The Atomic Knights. Star Hawkins? Well…maybe.