Number 1206: Captain Science and the Flower of Death!

I showed “The Flower of Death,” a few years ago. I’m re-presenting it with new scans. What I said about it then was that it was a story I chased for years without knowing what it was. I’d seen it when I was very young, maybe six-years-old, at a friend’s house. Despite being surrounded by two very cool Wood and Orlando Captain Science stories, what I remembered about the comic book was the transition of flower to ape. People write me sometimes and ask if I can help them identify a story they remember, and without fail I can't. I can't even help myself. This was a story stuck in my memory for many years that I couldn't find, and then one day opened up Captain Science #5 and there it was. Eureka!

Except...it's not much of a story. Artwork is serviceable, credited by the Grand Comics Database in their question mark fashion as being by Bill Fraccio? and Vince Napoli? So they're not sure. I wondered about the clumsy transition panels (which look like photostats), flower to ape and ape to flower, and then I found the origin of it in a gasoline ad from a 1950 issue of Life. This is another of my discoveries in Life that later turned up in comic books.

I've also included a Captain Science story from the issue because I love this Joe Orlando-Wally Wood science fiction and so do you. These are my scans from the original comic, but the story is also included in the book Wally Wood: Strange Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by J. David Spurlock. It's a trade paperback available from Amazon.com, among other bookselling sites, and if you're fortunate, at your favorite local comic book shop.

From Captain Science #5, 1951:

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Number 748


The Monster God


Wallace Wood drew this fine 7-pager for Captain Science #1, from 1950. It's the second story I've presented by Woody from Captain Science. The other is here. Captain Science is another of those comics which, while you wouldn't know it by looking at it, has ties to DC Comics. I have linked to this site before, which tells about "DC's Other Comics", but this kind of trivia is so fascinating (to me, anyway) I want to link to it again in case you missed it first time around.

The art is great, but the story is right out of a myriad of fantasy/sf sources, John Carter of Mars, et al.; a guy is transported instantly to another world to find a beautiful babe.

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Number 649


Captain Science has a "Throm"bosis


A week ago I showed you "The Death Flower" from Captain Science #5. I chased down that story I first read almost 60 years ago. I promised to show you the lead story by Wood and Orlando. Here it is, from Captain Science #5, 1951.

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Number 645


Death Flower


Every once in a while someone writes me asking to help them identify a comic book story they remember from their past. I'm usually not much help. Sorry. There was a story from my own past I looked for, and no one could help me, either. In the early 1950s my best friend had a box of coverless comic books, and every once in a while I was allowed to look at them. I was just old enough to read, and I remember a strange story of a creature turning into a flower, and vice versa.

Thirty years later I ran into the story in Captain Science #5, from 1951. I instantly recognized it from the panels with the sequence of flower to monster, then monster to flower. I can see why no one could help me with the story, because it was in a comic book with two Wally Wood/Joe Orlando Captain Science stories, and this story didn't even register on anyone else's memory meter. The Grand Comics Database lists the artists for "The Flower of Death" as Bill Fraccio? and Vince Napoli? The question marks mean they don't know for sure. My observation is that "The Flower of Death" is the onion in the petunia patch...the pallidly drawn story you'd pass over in favor of the colorful, eye-catching Wood-Orlando bouquet.* For me it was a lesson about memory and perception. On that fun childhood day looking through a box of old comics it was this story that caught my attention.

*I'm posting the lead Captain Science story on December 14, one week from today.

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