EC Comics

The prototypical comic book weird story anthologies were EC’s titles that began in April 1950 with Crypt of Terror. I don’t know whether that title and EC’s other horror comics had any time travel (because I was forbidden from reading those!), but Harry Harrison, Wally Wood and their fellow artists managed some in the titles that were more geared to sf.

I’m aiming for a complete list of EC’s time-travel vignettes, but the list as of now is only partial. The first one I found was in Weird Fantasy #13 (May/June 1950), which was actually its first issue. That was part of a ruse to take over a second-class postage permit from A Moon, a Girl . . . Romance (which ended with #12). They stuck with that numbering through the fifth issue (#17) when the postmaster general took note, and the next one was #6. I did kinda wonder how many of those romance readers were surprised when Weird Fantasy #13 showed up in their mailboxes.

There was a sister title, Weird Science, which began in May/June 1952 with #12 (taking over the postage permit after Saddle Romance #11). It had many time travel stories, starting with “Machine from Nowhere” in #14 (the 3rd issue).

Weird Science and Weird Fantasy were not selling that well, so EC combined them into a single title—Weird Science-Fantasy—with #23. Alas, there was but one time-travel story, “The Pioneer” in #25 (September 1954), about which EC’s site says A man attempts to be the first to successfully time travel, but there are some casualties on the way. . . .. By the way, the whole run of EC comics would be 4 stars, but it gets an extra ½ star because of Al Williamson’s adaptation of “The Sound of Thunder” in Weird Science-Fantasy #24 and the beautiful Frank Frazetta cover on the final issue (#29) of Weird Science-Fantasy.

In 1955, the Comics Code Authority banned the word “Weird,” so the title became Incredible Science Fiction with #30. The four-issue run had only one time-travel tale (“Time to Leave” by Roy G. Krenkel in #31).