A great many of us grew up reading Dave Berg in Mad magazine, most notably his Lighter Side Of... features. So deeply ingrained is that association that we often forget that he worked in comics for well over a decade before joining the staff at Mad back in '56. In fact, he even worked as part of the Will Eisner Studio and did features for Timely/Atlas/Marvel.
Since we'll be looking at Venus sometime soon, let's go to a back-up tale in issue #13 of that comic for a look at his work five years before he joined up at Mad (author unknown) -
It's been said before, but - I'm off!
G'night all.
art by Dave Berg for Venus #13 (1951)
This would have been an appropriate post for tomorrow (Oct. 30), the 80th anniversary of the Orson Welles "panic broadcast."
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple of comic book stories using the "Orson Welles as the boy who cried Martians" premise. In a late 1940s Spirit story by Will Eisner, the actor/producer Awesome Bells witnesses a UFO landing, but no one believes him, because ten years earlier he caused a panic with a hoax invasion-from-Mars radio drama.
In an EC Weird Science story, radio producer Carson Walls starts a panic with a science fiction radio show about a Martian invasion. Fifteen years later, the radio network broadcasts a rerun, with frequent disclaimers assuring listeners that it is only a play. Meanwhile, real UFOs land, with alien invaders. Witnesses can't get the authorities (police, FBI, Army, Air Force) to believe them. "Calm down, ma'am, it's only a radio show." "There's always someone who didn't receive the memo," etc.
In DC's The Shadow Strikes #7 (1990), actor/director/writer/producer Grover Mills creates a radio series based on the Shadow's exploits. At the end, an offhand remark by the real Shadow gives Mills the idea to do a radio drama about an invasion from Mars.
IIRC, there was also a Flintstones episode where a publicity stunt to promote a rock band caused an "invasion from outer space" panic.
All of that said, I've seen a few articles in recent years saying that there was no widespread panic in 1938, and that the publicity about it was exaggerated by newspaper publishers to discredit their competitor, the radio broadcast industry.