Number 1568: Mekano — a wonder, not a marvel

Mekano (not the X-Men villain of the seventies) was a one-shot character appearing in Wonder Comics #1. Mekano, a large robot, falls in love with a human woman, Sandra,* after doing a bash job on some Nazis. The story is drawn by Bob Oksner, who in 1964 would draw this lovestruck robot:

Robots in love would have some real problems, so maybe it’s a good thing for Sandra that Mekano didn’t appear again. Do robots have fantasies? We are assured in a caption on page three that although this story is fantasy, so once were airplanes and telephones, and that currently “great scientists are working with mechanical men.” **

From Wonder Comics #1 (1944):

*A spoiler, since it is discovered in the next-to-last panel. Sorry.

**And a fine job those great scientists did, too, as evidenced by this picture of my personal robot, Isaac. He is shown here attending to me in the fifties when I was a boy. I wish I still had Isaac, but in the early sixties I traded him for the down payment on a used car.

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Number 1316: Pappy's tastes change, and oh, the Wonder of it all

As part of my ongoing growth as a Golden Age comic book fan, Wonder Comics #11 (1947) fits in. I bought it in 1978 (paid about $6.00 as I recall), and hated it. I bought it for the Graham Ingels cover, and noticed there was a Graham Ingels face on the girl (right side of the “Wonderman” double-page spread), but the rest of the comic seemed dopey to me; also goofy, silly, stupid...

But that was then and this is now, and I don’t even have to go back as far as 1978 for the change. It has happened recently, within the past couple of years, when I saw the things that formerly offended me now pleased me. I like Wonder Comics #11 for exactly the same reasons I hated it 34 years ago.

Personally, I now like a comic book where an outer space villain, Dr. Voodoo, wears a string tie. I like that another character looks like a smiley-face with a strangely shaped head. I like that the method of planet-hopping isn't by rocket ship, but by something called a “Vacuum Spiral.” Perhaps my change in tastes is that I am still evolving as a comic book reader — or, based on your opinions of my personal tastes, devolving.

I showed another oddball story from this issue in Pappy's #1090 in January, 2012, “Dick Devens of Futuria.”

Art by Bob Oksner.

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