478 POST-APOCALYPTIC NARRATIVES
Many comics stories have dealt with the eminent destruction of Earth, but it is
typically either saved at the last minute by the story’s protagonist, or the end of the
world serves as the punch line for the story. Often, these latter stories were there to
prove a point or teach a cautionary lesson. Th e stories revealed how Earth fell into decay,
but few went beyond that to establish any substantial “life after the end of the world”
scenarios. For example, in Weird Tales of the Future #6 (1953), the story “Plaything”
features a perfect utopian Earth with civilization prospering until unexplainable envi-
ronmental devastation destroys society. To explain the destruction, the narrator pulls
back to show Earth as a toy for a child-like god who has decided to play catch with it.
Th ese kinds of stories attempted to reinforce the unexplained forces of the universe and
how susceptible humankind was to the whims of nature.
Other narratives were informed by a sense of the futility of all human undertakings.
Th ese particularly were infl uenced by the destruction and devastation of World War II.
In “ Return” from Weird Science #5 (1951), the story focuses on a shuttle of scientists that
leaves Earth just prior to atomic war, and returns some 500,000 years later to see if life
still exists. Th ey encounter a world of oversized humans who had not technologically
progressed beyond the world in which the travelers had left. When they inquire as to
what happened, they discover that the world is ignorant of the long ago atomic war
and trace their history back only 200,000 years. Th e story ends with the present-day
scientists, aware of impending doom, deciding to take a shuttle into space; thereby cre-
ating a cycle of avoiding or ignoring the destruction. “Flight of the Future” from We i r d
Tales of the Future #2 (1952) also presents a desolate future. Th e story tells of a mur-
derer who escapes to a future by volunteering for suspended animation. He reawakens
20,000 years in the future, when humanity has decayed into hulking imbeciles. Th e only
human alive turns out to be the man he believed he had killed in the past. In the fi nal
scene, the two last intelligent humans kill one another, leaving the lumbering masses to
further devolve.
While the Comics Code in 1954 did not specifi cally forbid post-apocalyptic
narratives, Part A, Section 6 states that “In every instance good shall triumph over evil
and the criminal punished for his misdeeds,” and Part B, Section 2 states that “Inclusion
of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to
illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor as to injure
the sensibilities of the reader.” Such restrictions severely limited the types of narratives
told, since the destruction of civilization by most means implied evil triumphing over
good. Publishers often avoided this potential conundrum by placing post-apocalyptic
stories on other planets, thereby bypassing any debate about the moral representa-
tion of a destroyed Earth. Th e main exception to this came in the form of the Classics
Illustrated adaptation of Th e Time Machine (1956), which followed the published
adaptation of Wells’s Th e War of the Worlds (1955).
However, the mid-20th century was awash in post-apocalyptic themes in books,
radio, and fi lm. Many started as novels only to be turned into fi lms (and some even
comics) later on. Films such as War of the Worlds (1953), Th e Time Machine (1960),
