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Thursday, June 15, 2006

EC - The Teacher From Mars (Orlando)

The Teacher From Mars
art by Joe Orlando, story by Eando Binder & Al Feldstein
Weird Science-Fantasy #24[#2] (1954)

This was adapted from a short story by "Eando Binder" (brothers Earl and Otto Binder). Along with the Bradbury adaptations among the few writing credits to appear in EC Comics.

This story has a Martian coming to Earth to teach at a school. He faces a lot of mocking and prejudice, with some background of the Earth/Martian history being dropped along the way to explain it.



In the end, the teacher finds out that his son was killed defending the father of one of the students who tormented him the most, and they lived happily ever after.

The story is actually a lot better than a short description implies, with a lot of good solid 1950s sci-fi concepts thrown in and some good surprising character bits. It's also a great example of Orlando's art from the time. He seemed to change a lot during his run on EC, starting off with more of a comic strip influence, but seemingly picking up a lot from his fellow EC artists as the years went on. Lots of touches of Wood influence in stories like this.

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