A monologuing scientist is about to send a volunteer "astronaut" on the first time travel expedition ever!
But they they have a far more
important mission than merely breaking the time barrier...
"
Awesome destruction-potential"? What invention is that?
"
Thousands upon thousands of lives"??
What invention?!?
Who must be stopped?
What invention must be prevented?!?!
What inventor?!?!
Tell us!!!
However...
That doesn't sound so good...
D'oh!
WHAT THE HELL IS THE GODDAMNED INVENTION?!?!?!?!?!
Wait...
seriously?
A very good question...
So...because there are an (admittedly too large) number of auto accidents, we should
prevent the wheel from being invented?
Not gunpowder, not atomic energy, not chemical warfare agents...but
the wheel??
O....K....
(Please, nobody mention to the creators that 100% of their comic books are distributed by wheeled vehicles...
shhh)
And by the way:
...the name of this comic book is a teensy bit
redundant. Unless they know of examples of
untense suspense...
From Tense Suspense #1 (1958)
I remember an old EC science-fiction story along similar lines: It took place in one of those "regressed to prehistoric times" post-apocalyptic futures, where a young man had just been put to death for the crime of creating a machine. The tribal elder explains to the man's friend why the execution was necessary, recounting the history of how machines brought disaster to humanity. After listening to the story, the man's friend agrees that machines are inherently evil and the execution was justified. He then goes to witness the destruction of the dreaded machine...THE WHEEL! In this story, the overreaction to the most basic machine made a little more sense, given that humanity had fallen into a primitive mindset (rather than a society with time-travel technology suddenly deciding "Hey, let's wipe out ALL technology from the course of history! What could possibly go wrong?").
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