Operation: Peril
Entry updated 9 June 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1950-1953). American Comics Group ACG. 16 issues. Artists include Ken Bald, Ogden Whitney and George Wilhelms. Scriptwriters include Richard Hughes. #1-#6, 52 pages; #7-#16, 36 pages. At first each issue had three long strip series (#1 and #3 also having an additional one-off strip), some short text stories, plus various short strips (usually non-fiction); from #12 the series strips increased to four.
Operation: Peril was initially a mixed bag of adventure strips, mainly of sf interest for the series The Time Travelers that ran from #1 to #12. From #12 it is subtitled "G.I.'s in deadly combat!" and from #13 is almost entirely Korean War stories, plus some patriotic material ("Great American Sea Heroes"). "The Great God Brahma" and "The Thing That Talked" in #1 and #3 respectively are supernatural Horror strips.
The Time Travelers opens with Scientist Tom peeved about fiancée Peggy dragging him to an auction of newly discovered Nostradamus manuscripts. Foreign agents (see Cold War) also want them, as the seer had predicted nuclear World War Three in 1955 and "all his other prophecies have come true". The agents believe the secret of a "magic counteragent" to "poisoned particles" are in the documents. Peggy outbids them and whilst examining the manuscripts finds a blueprint titled "Tempus Machina": "Why, Tom! That's Latin for Time Machine!" This, it is suggested, was how Nostradamus could predict the future so accurately. Tom dismisses that idea but notices "this strange armillary design of interlacing elliptical curves – it might be the answer to my cyclotron problems!", only to subsequently complain that the upgraded cyclotron now make objects disappear. Overhearing this, the lurking spies use it to get rid of the couple as they steal the blueprint. In fact they have undergone Time Travel to sixteenth-century France, as Nostradamus had planned and as he explains after they rescue him from a lynching; the "Tempus Machina" was designed to bring whoever built it to him, as sixteenth-century materials are inadequate for its construction. His Precognition is the result of "mystic powers" (see Superpowers). Regarding his forecast for nuclear war in 1955, he says the mineral that absorbs radiation can only be found on Venus. Fortunately his device "covers both time and space instantaneously" (see Transportation); he then shows them how to return to the present.
#2 has the couple back in 1950, supported by the US Government and with Tom incorporating an improved time and space device into a Rocket to take them to Venus; but a spy's sabotage lands them in Earth's prehistoric times where they meet cavemen (see Origin of Man) and Dinosaurs (see Scientific Errors) before repairing their Spaceship and arriving on Venus. They are captured by Telepathic Amazons, whose Queen, angered by newly arrived Russians threatening her people with genocide by "deadly germs", decides to have Tom torn apart by one of her 10-foot (see Great and Small) Slave males in the local amphitheatre. He defeats both the giant and a Monster, which impresses the Queen enough for her to aid them; the Russians are devoured by man-eating plants (see Biology), whilst Tom and Peggy return to Earth with the radiation-absorbing metal.
In #3 King Arthur [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] is visited and aided against Morgan Le Fay's forces when motorcycle-riding soldiers dressed as knights are transported from our era. #4 has Tom planning to solve the radioactive-waste Pollution problem by dumping it on the Moon, but the spaceship is sabotaged and it goes to Saturn (see Outer Planets) instead; there they see the immense fleet of flying saucers (see UFOs) that form Saturn's rings, having waited there for centuries until Earth is advanced enough to be worth conquering (see Invasion). Tom tells Peggy to "Switch the time machine back almost all the way – to the age when every living thing shared a universal language"; enabling him to speak to the Saturnians (the device effectively acting as a Universal Translator). However, Tom ends up in an amphitheatre fighting a giant humanoid and a monster, again. With help from the oppressed locals the couple escape and reach Saturn's base on Earth's moon (the reason for the original sabotage); though this is guarded by sirens (called Sirads), Peggy's beauty means she breaks their hold over Tom. In #5 they meet the female pirate Anne Bonny, whom – as with many women he meets on his travels – Tom ends up kissing, but only in the interest of the mission; he also acts so as not to change history (not something that has concerned him previously). #6 has Emperor Ego attempting to bring past armies to the present and conquer the world; he acknowledges modern weaponry means they will die in droves, but considers the supply of soldiers inexhaustible: as a distraction Tom and Peggy are tricked into going to Atlantis just before its flooding (see Disaster). #7 has them visiting Easter Island in 750 CE to discover who made the giant heads; mundanely, they are idols built by a tribal leader just prior to invading Incan Peru.
A journey to Mu in #8 has the couple appearing as giants in the landscape; Tom explains this is an "illusion of time ... our bodies are still in the present – and since the relationship of time and space is a matter of distance – the further back we go into history the smaller things will seem" (see Time Distortion): a small adjustment to his remote control corrects this, but when the villain gets his hands on the remote he starts the spaceship's turbojets, which buries Mu under the desert sands (presumably the spaceship was still giant-sized). #9 involves a visit to the Arctic when it had a subtropical climate (see Climate Change). In #10 Russian agents hijack the spaceship, taking it to 4000 BCE, the age of King Midas: they believe he used alchemy to turn base metals into gold and wish to use the technique to destroy capitalist economies. In fact Midas started his legend (see Mythology; Transmutation) to conceal his use of slaves to mine gold. #11 has a flaming green comet heading towards the Earth: this had last appeared in Roman times, so Tom and Peggy travel there to see what averted it then, discovering it is a planet burning only on one side (flaming seas apparently), with the far side being Earth-like. A usurper plans to conquer our planet, but is overthrown and its monarch restored – however, their present-day descendants are warlike and also wish to conquer Earth. In #12, examination of their skeletons reveal Rome's 6th Legion suffered from uranium radiation poisoning whilst in Britain – despite there being no such deposits in the UK – so the couple travel to that era. They aid Boadicea by collapsing the cliff where the 6th Legion is encamped into the sea, said cliffs holding the uranium deposits which are thus sunk beneath the waters, presumably to be washed away leaving no trace.
The Time Travelers are the Operation: Peril cover stars for #4-#10; this artwork is often entertaining, though unrelated to the tale inside. During #1 the time machine stayed in the present, sending people to the past; but from #2 it travels in time too. Though the basic storylines are mainly typical of comic-book sf, they are varied; there are pleasingly absurd moments and some eccentric scientific explanations (see Absurdist SF). Peggy is fairly passive: probably her biggest role is in #4, which is reliant on her being beautiful (see Women in SF); there are occasionally more proactive women, such as an archer in #10 (see Feminism). Though Nostradamus has Psi Powers, after #1 he is not mentioned again and there are no subsequent Magical elements; for example, Merlin in #3 displays none. [SP]
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