Number 606


No longer science fiction


Big news in 1952 was that George Jorgensen left America for Sweden and after sex reassignment surgery came back as Christine Jorgensen. This was hot stuff for the States, where alarmed Americans viewed the procedure skeptically, if not as a sure sign of impending apocalypse.

The popular media jumped right on the story and partial results can be seen in these two science fiction comic book stories. We have "Transformation" from Charlton's Space Adventures #7, 1953, and "There'll Be Some Changes Made," from Weird Science #14, 1952. "Transformation" is drawn by a young Dick Giordano, who can't match the skill of Wallace Wood, who drew "Changes." Despite the relative merits of the artwork the stories are silly. Even with sex change surgery being a reality, in order to create comic book stories they had to be science fiction. Maybe the public still didn't see it as real.

Scans for the Weird Science story are taken from the Gemstone reprint of the 1990s.