Number 263

Cold war on a cold moon

In the 1950s we lived in a state of paranoia. A lot of people believed that at any time atom bombs would rain down on us. It was the fault of those damn Reds, you know, the Enemy.

Luckily it never happened. But I wasn't surprised when I read "Lunar Trap" in Race For The Moon #2 in 1958, that the Enemy would be up to no good when we all got to the moon. Imagine my surprise at the soft ending. Imagine someone thinking we could ever be at peace with those guys! Decades after reading this story I read of a real-life plan by the U.S. military for installing bases on the moon by 1965, where we could have nuclear weapons pointed at the Soviet Union. Now that's paranoid!

Jack Kirby drew--and I presume, wrote--a good story with an interesting premise. In the 1950s the idea that a woman could be in charge of men seemed ludicrous to us Americans; surely that was only a commie idea. But Kirby--despite a leering remark, "A lady colonel. Now this is more to my liking!"--handles a potentially sexist situation pretty well.

Unlike most of his monster stories this time he only indicated the monster with partial, silhouette or long shots. Inking is by Al Williamson.