comics that logic forgot

DC superhero comics in the late 50s and early 60s were all about science.  lots of real science was presented in Flash comics, Metal Men comics, the Atom comics and even Green Lantern featured all sorts of practical knowledge, along with the fun science that made our heroes go.

I got this Showcase for Xmas (well, not really, but Julie will forgive me for saying so).  I had never read many war comics, just not a fan overall.  and I never saw one of these growing up, as the series seems to have run it's course about 1968 or so.  I am sure I would have read them had any of my older friends had a spare issue, but it never happened.

anyway, the stories are fun, even if I cringe at all the death and dismemberment of the various dinosaurs and other critters that happens during the stories.

it appears that during the war in the Pacific there were thousands of islands populated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.  the seas were also full of giant fish and crustaceans as well, and they never attacked "the enemy" just our boys as they sought to defeat the foe on the land, air and sea.  I never knew dinosaurs were so discerning.  and here we thought Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991) was the first evidence of monsters going after US soldiers!

eventually DC started running some repeating characters- "The Flying Boots", "Robot GI" (named Joe... hmmm...) and then the Suicide Squadron.

I'm only about halfway through the book, lotsa stories.  of course, these dinosaurs are complete monsters.  they charge at any people they see right away, even if they are eating something or fighting something else.  these things are brutes!

I miss these types of dinosaurs, as science has now turned them into mere animals.  but that's a rant for another time.

even the plant eaters like the Apatosaurus and hadrosaurus (trachodon) are given violent personalities to menace our various heroes.  often times they are incredibly oversized, picking up submarines and other military hardware easily.

most of the stories are about 13 pages long, which would be about half the book.  not a lot of time for characterization.   it's funny they lack even the rudimentary science employed by the other DC books at the time, since this would have been a grand opportunity to show they could teach the readers something.  instead we get the words "... out of the dinosaur age" in nearly every story.  sometimes more than once!

lotsa fun!