Science fiction was born in the pages of American magazines like Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction during the 1920s and 1930s.
But early Australian science-fiction comics like Silver Starr and Grip Grantham didn't look to the work of 'serious' authors like Robert A Heinlein and Isaac Asimov for inspiration. Instead, they 'borrowed' from American comic strips such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. |
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Crammed with lecherous villains, bug-eyed aliens and gleaming spaceships, Australian sci-fi comics of the 1940s were interplanetary flights of fancy. |
By the 1950s, advances in rocket technology promised to turn the fantasy of space flight into science fact. Yet the nuclear arms race underlined science's destructive potential. The Invisible Avenger exploited Australia's postwar fears of invasion by communist hordes, while the heroes of Silver Flash used advanced technology to defend Australia.
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New directions in science-fiction literature and cinema set a different course for Australian comics during the 1980s and 1990s. Films such as Mad Max and Bladerunner painted a bleak picture of societies ravaged by ecological crisis and nuclear war, themes which were echoed in comics such as Shock Raider and Earth. |
Zero Assassin tapped into the notion, also explored in the novels of William Gibson, of a world where people sought escape in the 'virtual reality' of computer-generated environments.
As the 21st century drew near, Australian comics looked to the past for inspiration. Tales of the Ovoid evoked the visual trappings of the 1950s 'space race', while The Crumpleton Experiments put a futuristic twist on the scientific advances of 19th-century Victorian England.
Illustrations
Top Stanley PITT (cover artist, 1925–2002), Silver Starr Super Comic No 1, Sydney, Young’s Merchandising Co, 1949
Bottom and Right Dillon NAYLOR (cover artist, born 1968), Tales of the Ovoid No 3, St Kilda, Cowtown Comics, 1997 (detail)
