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| The story TRANSFORMATION is quite a progressive tale of human worth and sexual identity. It's amazing to thing that Dick Giordano was only 21 when he drew this comic. No credit for the script is given. |
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| Imagination my surprise waking up this morning to find an old Charlton comic from 1954 splattered all across the UK media! Excitement isn’t a word long enough.
Was Dick Giordano’s Transformation in Strange Adventures 7 really the first transgender graphic story? There are many CBR members more expert than I, so I present to you the challenge of finding an earlier example (not just Sherlock in disguise or someone in drag – but true transgender) I wonder, for example, if there was an early pictorial portrayal of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando?
Anyway, on to a brief review of SA7:
Lovely Giordano cover with a rather startling phallic rocket embedded at an angle in the ground – with a round hole nearby…hmmm…. How did they get away with this stuff? The story broods with a sense of dark foreboding, nuclear war, blackmail, loneliness, death….an accident and an experiment in hormones that leads to a Mars-shattering irony – I bet you’re hooked? A six-page sci-fi masterpiece from Dead-Eyed Dick!
The rest of the issue struggles to keep pace – Frank Follo’s Doomed Civilisation has good grouping in the panels and a neat twist in the end, though, hand on heart, I guessed it. Stan Campbell’s Homecoming was a similar tale – a bit static, but Tony Tallarico’s Eternity in Space was better with a very believable space station and an amoral tale of twinned psycho-clones in sibling conflict. |
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| Additional Information |
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| Publication | July 1953 | Price: 0.10 USD | Pages: 1 | Frequency: bi-monthly |
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| Credits | Letters: typeset |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Lars Kranston; Betty Stone |
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| Comic Story | Transformation (8 pages) |
| Synopsis | Anticipating nuclear war that would leave Earth barren of life, Lars Kranston convinces his colleagues to go to Mars. His paramour Betty Stone insists that she go as well. The ship crashes on Mars. Everyone but Lars and Betty are killed, but Lars thinks she died too. Betty wakes up suffering total amnesia. Lars decides to use the supplies that survived the wreck. He manages a complete sex change. The tumultuous situation on Earth dies down. The predicted war never occurs. Betty remembers the journey. She runs Lars, who explains his sex change to a woman. Betty breaks down at the revelation. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Lars Kranston; Betty Stone |
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| Comic Story | The Doomed Civilization (5 pages) |
| Synopsis | Commander Krait's crew begins receiving transmissions from an inhabitable planet called X-3-Z. Dr. Triple interprets the message. The message states society living there faces immanent destruction through war. Krait sends ships to stop the senseless destruction. Captain Jer leads a fleet to try to stop the war, but to no avail. The last panel reveals X-3-Z was called Earth by its erstwhile inhabitants. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Commander Krait; Arn; Dr. Triple; Captain Jer |
| Notes | Writer credit by Martin O'Hearn. |
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| Text Story | Simtone Saves the Space Officers (2 pages) |
| Featuring | Space Officers |
| Credits | Letters: typeset |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction |
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| Comic Story | Homecoming (6 pages) |
| Synopsis | In the summer of 1953, Edmund Cranston presents his designs for a rocketship to Dr. Corning at a large aircraft corporation. Cranston's only request is to be on the spacecraft maiden voyage to the moon. The ship is completed and crewed by Cranston and Doctor Corning, Ellis, and Major Learner. Once in space, Cranston reveals he is Gord of Mars. He had the craft built to return to Mars after his ship crashed. The men are never heard from again on the Earth, and a dad tells his son that spaceships "wouldn't work". No further development in space travel is pursued following the incident. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Edmund Cranston; Doctor Corning; Ellis; Major Learner |
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| Comic Story | Fateful Fluid (2 pages) |
| Synopsis | When a professor perfects an elixir to transmute all it touches into gold, Kryn uses a "paralyzo ray" to freeze the professor. Kryn takes the potion for his own purposes. He puts some on his hand and turns the wall to gold. It also turns his arm and hand to gold. It continues to turn him into gold. This causes him to clumsily knock a burning hydrogen torch off a table. Its heat melts the gold-man into a golden glob of goo. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Kryn |
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| Comic Story | Eternity in Space (7 pages) |
| Synopsis | The Earth-Moon space station is a city floating between the Earth and the Moon. The city is constructed on an artificial wheel. Dr. Tero and Dr. Orso create two synthetic children. One is named Nors, the other Gri. Lars works on a fuel for spaceships. Both plan to win a contest for amazing feats. Gri steals some of the fuel and goes to Saturn. He captures an alien creature on the planet and returns with it. In a competitive mood, Nors takes out a craft Gri is not aware of. Nors takes the craft and begins using it to destroy and rebuild structures in the city. The contest is a tie. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction | Characters: Dr. Brown; Dr. Tero; Dr. Orso; Nors; Gri |
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| Comic Story | Invasion (1 page) |
| Synopsis | A Saturnian creature attempts an invasion of Earth. He takes pills to make him diminutive to avoid detection. Before he can return to his normal size, he is attacked and killed by a spider. |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction |
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| The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |
