Number 2322: Wolverton’s early apocalypse

Page 4 of this early Spacehawk, by Basil Wolverton, reminds me of Wolverton’s later apocalyptic drawings for his church. In the 1950s the Worldwide Church of God, under the leadership of radio preacher Herbert W. Armstrong, commissioned Basil Wolverton, who was then an elder in Armstrong’s church, to do his unsettling series of scenes from the end of the world...or at least Armstrong and Wolverton’s vision of same. Even though it was over a decade after drawing Spacehawk that Wolverton did the drawings, it looks as if apocalyptic visions were in his mind while drawing the early episode.

My father, Big Pappy, subscribed to Armstrong‘s The Plain Truth magazine, where these illustrations first appeared. Those drawings, and Basil Wolverton’s illustrations of biblical scenes, were probably the first work by Wolverton I ever saw.

Spacehawk is a demigod, flying in his spaceship, seeing and defeating evil. It appears that Wolverton may have been channeling some of his religious philosophy under the guise of science fiction. That is not unusual in itself, and Spacehawk may have some of those elements, but it is not preachy.

From Target Comics #8 (1940):

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