Twin Earths was an American science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 that ran in Sunday

Sunday strip

A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...

 and daily

Daily strip

A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....

 newspapers from 1952 until the early 1960s, written by Oskar Lebeck

Oskar Lebeck

Oskar Lebeck was a stage designer and an illustrator, writer and editor who is best known for his role in the establishment of the very successful line of Dell comic books during the Golden Age....

 and drawn by Alden McWilliams. The daily strip began on 16 June 1952, the Sunday on 1 March 1953. The Sunday was drawn in a half page format, but it was available in smaller formats with dropped panels.

Characters and story

The story told of another Earth, in the same orbit as our planet but on the opposite side of the sun, whose scientifically advanced civilization visits us in flying saucers. Comics historian Stephen Donnelly noted:

The main characters of the daily strip, which began June 16, 1952, were Vana, a Terran spy living on Earth to keep tabs on our technology so the Terrans could be sure we and our war-like ways didn't pose a menace to them; and Garry Verth, an FBI agent to whom Vana revealed herself in the opening sequence. The first few months of story continuity involved a few exciting moments with Commie spies (out to get their hands on Terra's technology, of course), but mostly consisted of travelog-like views of Terran life — for example, the fact that in their liberated society, women, who constituted 92% of the population, ran things. The Sunday version began March 1 of the following year. Instead of tying in directly with the daily, or delivering a second track of story involving the same characters, this series explored a completely separate aspect of the "twin earths" scenario. It started with a young Texan named Punch sneaking aboard a Terran saucer just before it took off for home. After about three months, he was joined by Prince Torro, one of the relatively few Terran males, and the two boys continued as stars for the duration of the Sunday Twin Earths.

While semi-retired, Lebeck teamed with McWilliams (who had illustrated some of Lebeck's past books and had done work for him at Dell Comics

Dell Comics

Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...

) to launch Twin Earths. It made use of the duplicate earth concept and tapped into the growing interest during the period in flying saucer

Flying saucer

A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...

s. In 1957, Lebeck retired and McWilliams assumed scripting duties for the strip.

The Twin Earths Sunday strip ended December 28, 1958, while the daily strip continued until May 25, 1963.

Reprints

Most of the strips have been reprinted in magazine format. In 1987, Dragon Lady Press

Dragon Lady Press

Toronto-based Dragon Lady Press was the publishing wing of the Dragon Lady Comics store. Its publications were distributed through the direct market throughout the United States and Canada. This company was known for its reprints of classic newspaper comic strips in various forms...

published one issue of Science Fiction Classics featuring Twin Earths. Beginning in 1991, R. Susor Publications reprinted most of the daily and Sunday strips in three magazines, Twin Earths (eight issues), Twin Earths Sunday Pages (five issues), and Twin Earths Special Edition (one issue)