Tit-Bits Science Fiction Comics
Entry updated 23 December 2023. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
UK Comic (1953). C Arthur Pearson, Ltd. Six issues. Most artwork and scripts by Ron Turner. 2-3 stories per issue. Cover in colour, but strips in black and white. A seventh issue was completed but not published in the UK, but was later released in France as Aventures de Demain #21 (1957).
Issue #1 opens with "The Dome of Survival": back "in the finite depths of time" (see Time Abyss), Pluto's (see Outer Planets) deteriorating atmosphere killed its starfish-like inhabitants – save for five in Suspended Animation within the aforementioned dome; they await another planet becoming habitable. One of their monitoring Robot ships duly returns with two astronauts from Earth: the now woken sleepers study them and deem Earth suitable for colonizing. However, en route the astronauts manage to kill the Plutonians and crash-land the Alien Spaceship: its advanced Technology is studied by the United Nations to birth a new era of progress and peace. In "The Inner World" a Scientist Miniaturizes himself and a Spaceship to prove that nuclei are suns and their orbiting electrons planets (see Great and Small). Unfortunately the inhabitants of an electron planet capture him and, deciding humanity poses a threat, prepare to eliminate it. However, a rescue party frees him and they escape: in an act of genocide the graphite block containing the planet is taken to the Australian desert and blown up by an atomic bomb (see Nuclear Energy).
In "The Scourge of the Carbon Belt", Martians allow Earthmen to "explore and exploit" the wilder parts of their planet in return for a percentage of the profits, but when a survey team discovers rare mineral deposits they are attacked by renegade Martians, who (as well as having Spaceships) ride Dinosaur-like creatures and use bows and arrows. "The Deimos Deadline" has Earth beginning the Terraforming of Mars by using the uranium discovered on Deimos to turn that moon into a sun, so heating Mars and releasing the oxygen in the soil. Whilst they are preparing Deimos, disc-like objects appear and begin absorbing the power of the Earthmen's machines. They are fought off: whether they are lifeforms or machinery is not discussed, nor that they (or their makers) are condemned to extinction by Deimos's transformation. "The Ninth Moon" has Major Rex Raider and Captain Jon Carlson of The Interplanetary Patrol thwart a plan by the inhabitants of Callisto (see Jupiter) to "deviate Mercury, Venus and Earth from their orbits so they plunge into the Sun ... Jupiter will move nearer the Sun and again become inhabitable". When Rex calls this mass murder, he is told it is survival of the fittest (see Social Darwinism). In "Planet X1 The New World" a new planet enters the Solar System; its trajectory means it will "take up an orbit between Venus and Earth, the Earth will recede from the Sun". So it is decided that humanity must migrate to the new planet, despite its being surrounded by a naturally occurring Force Field ("an inverted warping of the planet's gravitational field"); a way through is found. The warlike Martians also want to colonize the planet; they are defeated but allocated a continent, only to prove perfidious, planting atomic bombs under the continent taken by humanity (they are foiled). In "Planetoid Plague" a company hired to clear the Asteroid belt are puzzled when planetoid numbers go up not down, and collisions with ships become more frequent: it turns out that a Martian salvage company is operating artificial asteroids to wreck spacecraft.
At 68 pages with only 2-3 strips per issue, the stories are less rushed than their contemporary US equivalents and have a greater fondness for Infodumps. They are full of bluff military types, engineering, science, treacherous foreigners (that is, Martians) and the assumptions of Empire (see Imperialism); there are few women. Aside from some hasty panels in later issues, Turner's vivid, lively artwork impresses. [SP]
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