Myra North, Special Nurse
by Ray Thompson and Charles Coll
My friend Art Lortie, science fiction historian extraordinaire, pointed me toward the
unassuming Myra North, Special Nurse, who ran in the daily comics from 1936 to 1941. For
the most part, she was nothing more than a special nurse, but some episodes, particularly
in the Sunday strips, were more fantastic than others. Art told me of the 1937 appearance
of a machine that saw into the future (“The Mechanical Eye” which concluded on 28
March 1937); a later story (“The Mystic Dragon,” 10 Mar 1940 to
13 Oct 1940) finds the nefarious present-day Zero back in the time of
Scheherazade and Sinbad (although it’s never said whether he’s an actual time
traveler).
Art Lortie’s guide and scans include 141 pages of new and reprint material from comic books, too, although I didn’t spot any time travel therein.
Now then, just visualize how important it might be if we were able to see what was
happening a year from now!
“Myra North, Special Nurse” by Ray Thompson and Charles Coll (24 January 1937).