Flex Mentallo

Thanks Theagenes -- I havent read it but The Last Man is about a plague, like Earth Abides . The first apocalyptic story would arguably be the Epic of Gilgamesh, which first mentions the Flood -probably a reference to the flooding of the vast asian littoral that is now the Black Sea!

Occasionally the men's sweat mags of the 50's and 60's threw up a stand out illustration.This is Mort Kunstler, taken from a 1956 issue of Male magazine. Would have made a great cover!

Great cover! Quuite surprised it is that early! Oops, I made a typo...it's from 1935, not 1934. Even so - the style could easily be from several decades later! On Walter M Miller... Pat, are we going to talk great science fiction? ACFL was one of the seminal reading experiences of my youth. It's arguably the greatest post-apocalyptic novel, along with Earth Abides and City but Pat will know whether or not it was the first. (These are not my copies)

Great cover! Quuite surprised it is that early!

..and the rest...

Here are a few more of my faves from long ago - you will have to excuse the quality - I lost the original scans in a 'puter crash and all I have left are A4 photocopies. Try scanning those and this is what you get - photoshopped to within an inch of their lives - but at least they serve to illustrate the message!

Going "english" again. Rick Random was a sci fi character who appeared in about a dozen issues of Super Detective Library, a british digest-sized comic book of the 1950's. Art is by Bill Lacey

Real War again!

Going "english" on us BZ? Here's one, just for laughs!

...while these are perhaps more typical of the interiors...

Some are more entertainig than others. Here is Real War from 1958 - not science fiction so much as science "faction". The cold war looms! [/img] Of course this is what the boys were really buying...

I love these two "mass hysteria" covers by Earle Bergey!

A few nice sci fi covers: