Wow, that is great!! Look at the way that jaguar just leaps right of the cover!! Why--

Oh, the cover wasn't in 3-D??

OK, here's the 3-D version:

Hmmm. OK.

I like the 2-D version better.

Never mind, then.

Cover by Howard Nostrand.

You know who went really big for the 3-D craze of the early 1950s?

Harvey Comics!

Yeah, the cover wasn't in 3-D...you had to have it decipherable to those who hadn't taken the glasses out of the comic yet, plus you needed color on the newsstand.

But the interiors? 3-D!!

OK, it probably looks better with the glasses.

But look--3-D!!

A guy fighting an octopus--in 3-D!!

Dinosaurs--in 3-D!!

And Harvey did all kinds of books in 3-D. Look--Kiddie books!

Funny animal books!!

Because nothing says "this story needs 3 dimensions" than funny animals!!

Westerns!

Super-heroes!!

Captain 3-D was a Simon/Kirby joint...

You wouldn't think you'd need to make a Kirby story 3-D, because his stuff already leapt off the page...but here you go:

Now, you've no doubt noted that each cover had this:

Allow me to call bullshit. Since these were 36 page comics in 1953, and Harvey was charging 25¢, there certainly was "extra cost" compared to "regular" comics.

Still, Harvey got some eye doctors to sign off on a statement  claiming that reading 3-D comics was good for children's eyes!

And 3-D, in all media, was the vanguard of the future!!

Well, not so much. Whether because of poor sales or high costs, none of the Harvey 3-D titles lasted more than 2 issues.

Now when do we get 4-D comics?

As you no doubt recall, 3-D comics were kind of a thing back in the 1950s:

That ad was from St. Johns' Nightmare #3 (1953).

Well, some companies didn't have the resources to compete by doing true 3-D comics. The solution? Fake it!!

For 8 issues in 1954, American Comics Group unleashed "TrueVision" upon readers of Adventures Into The Unknown. And what was this "3D Effect"??

Well, no glasses was kinda nice. But how, exactly, was this 3-D?

Well, that's really not much of an explanation. Let's look, shall we?

Step 1: Lots and lots of things leaking over panel borders:


I don't know what this means, but all of the panels had those rounded corners, and were basically the same size & shape & layout on all pages. Were they trying to emulate the look of television, or perhaps a movie screen?

Step 2: Use different coloring styles for the foreground and background, to try and create some illusion of depth:


Step 3: Lot of "motion" in the panels, especially towards the "camera"...

Step 4: Make your artists compose panels with lots of (more accurate than usual) perspective, again giving a more realistic illusion of depth than your average comic art:


And that's how you make fake 3-D!!

And even those scenes like this are pretty ginchy--


--let's face it, Tiger, it's hardly convincing as 3-D.

Apparently the public agreed, as ACG dropped the scheme, which they wouldn't have done had sales shown a clamor for "TrueVision." Or maybe the artists just rebelled...

Still, the ad mentioned that ACG also used the gimmick in "selected features" in some of their other comics, including romance comics!!

Now there are some interesting possibilities...

Dear DC and Grant Morrison,

Thanks so much for the pounding headache. Especially since the "4-D" effects a) were pretty darn unimpressive, b) added absolutely nothing to the story, and c) even if you argue they were impressive and did add to the story, they sure as heck didn't add $1.51 worth.

So please don't do that again.

Save the glasses, save the headache.

Love,

snell

P.S. Again with the Ultra-Man?