Comic books were as popular with kids and teens in the 1950s as Instagram, Snapchat and social media are today. Although many parents couldn’t stand them, the team inside GE’s communications department saw a powerful tool for engaging teenagers and getting them hooked on science during America’s “Sputnik moment.”
“In the public relations field, although were all aware of the adult fear that comic books were producing a crop of juvenile delinquents, we couldn’t escape the conclusion that the medium had attractive possibilities for mass communications,“ said a 1953 story published in General Electric Review, an in-house GE newspaper.
Back then, the GE hired artists like George “Inky” Roussos, who also worked on Batman, to draw its Adventures in Science comics series. The company is now taking their stories for yet another spin.
It partnered with the storytelling app Wattpad and asked its resident writers to create short fiction based on characters and ideas featured in six comics whose title range from titles like Adventures into the Future to Inside the Atom. “The genre of science fiction creates a vast sense of wonder and magic,” says Sam Olstein, director of global digital innovation at GE. “It makes the impossible possible through innovation and scientific advancement. GE embodies many of those characteristics in our DNA, the magic and wonder of our impact on the world.”
The Wattpad series are live now. “Wattpad layers mobile and social elements on top of traditional storytelling to offer an entertainment experience,” says Aron Levitz, Wattpad’s head of business development. “That is what we do best. With its leadership in pushing the limits of technology, GE can give amazing insights to how tech is evolving and changing our world for the better.”
GE Reports will publish all of the six original comics in full, one per week for the rest of the year, starting with Our Place in Space. You can also find them on issuu.
