Joe Orlando partnered early with Wallace Wood on a variety of science fiction comics, including several for EC Comics. But he quickly made a name for himself and struck out on his own, carving out a long and distinguished career in American comics. Orlando became a mainstay at EC, especially on science fiction, and The Planetoid and Other Stories collects his first two dozen. All of them, scripted by editor/writer Al Feldstein, serve up classic O. Henry-style shock endings, including a mind-bending time-travel twister in which a man visits the past and (unknowingly) romances his own mother (think about it), a gender-switching look at a future where women are the breadwinners and men are the homemakers, another future where marriages are limited by law to three-year contracts, a good old-fashioned ''planets collide'' shocker, an animal rights parable, plus lots of rollicking space opera, aliens, and, of course, interplanetary monsters (some of them human). This volume also includes a complete reproduction of EC''s special issue devoted to its own 32-page ''illustrated, factual flying saucer report,'' with art by Orlando, Wallace Wood, George Evans, and Reed Crandall. Plus, a heartfelt foreword by former DC publisher Paul Levitz, who began his career in comics when Orlando hired him as an assistant, an introduction by Thommy Burns, and featured essays and commentary by EC experts.
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