Space Crazy Comics: Mission Into Time

From Space Action #3, Mission Into Time is one of those nutty stories that is insane on several levels.

We are told that would-be astronauts have been failing for decades... since the good old days of 2014, when the first launch was attempted. (The story's present is in 2035.) The world watches a rocket launch with baited bated breath.

It doesn't go well.

Two additional panels establish that the dude works feverishly for several months on some kind of secret project to solve the problem.

Which is naturally not a spacecraft, revolutionary or otherwise, at all.

DUDE. If you can build a functioning time machine, you don't need dangerous, dirty, unreliable rockets. You DUMMY. (Also, note how cheerful he is about possibly messing up distant future history.)

As the time traveler goes through poor-man's Ditko space, we see that the writer has a quirky grasp of terminology:

Yeah, I wouldn't get into a disintegrating time machine, myself.

The future looks... Well, just take a look.

Things might have gone better if he hadn't made the faux pas of calling the locals' head scientist fat.

Okay, so that's not what he said, but it amuses me. (Also, note that the ray gun in the foreground. Its control dial appears to say [something] "VOLUM.")

They are suspicious of him, because history says there is no such thing as time travel in 2035.

Learn your basic science, and maybe I'll take your history seriously, 'kay? (Also, Peace Guards is peculiarly ominous, innit?)

Anyway, they imprison him, and he sees a space station out the window, and gets excited about it... at the precise moment somebody arrives to interrogate him.

He beats up the interrogator and the guards, steals a uniform, and scrooches somebody.

(To get some idea of what I mean by "scrooched," look here.)

He finds a futuristic vehicle and uses it to get around in search of a way onto the space station... Because of course he's going to find conveniently grouped complete plans for the space station on board, right?

The highway looks unsafe to me.

He discovers that there's an automatic payment system in place, which eases his travel considerably.

Notice that, as he mentioned, everybody has a number but no name.

FYI, the left poster says "(URA)NUS/ORMATUN/URY HILS" (huh?) while the right says "SEE MARS/MARSPOR(T HO)TEL." You're welcome.

He boards the passenger rocket. It's a fairly cool one.

He is forced to evade some guards and such, and comes upon the plans, all in the "proper" office.

Note the completely wonky description of what things do, and further that apparently, a formula that would presumably be reasonably common knowledge is put in with the "classified" papers.

However, he gets caught before escaping. Somehow, they think he's going to steal their papers (ahahahahaha-they still have paper) and don't notice his miniaturized watch, which they presumably would have had a better version of.

He decides to try to bluff his way out, and the future people being idiots...

...he succeeds.

Sadly, he actually points out the aforementioned possible use for the time machine without seeming to realize it.

They take him to the ship, he gets them to let him in it and close it up, and he goes home, albeit with a passenger. He and the doctor send the passenger back to the future, but then the doctor dies of sudden heart failure.

And so...

...Yeah, who could have imagined that?

This story rattles back between just stupid and stupid funny like it's stuck on the tail of a venomous snake.

-Signing off.