Comic Books, L.B. Cole, and Origins *Theory*

[Berries]

I was playing Origins solo as Dempsey. I hit the box a few times and after awhile I got the ray gun. As I picked it up out of the box, Dempsey said the following quote: "This looks familiar. I think I saw it in a comic book somewhere". This stood out to me like a sore thumb. I did my research and found a comic book author and cover artist by the name of L.B. Cole who created his interesting comics in the 1940s-50s. He's known for using such bright and vivid colors in his covers, but that's not what I'm interested in. I was reading the wiki for him and found this: "As an avid science fiction fan, Cole was known for slipping in sci-fi elements even when they weren't appropriate, such as rocket ships and ray guns appearing on the covers of Captain Flight Comics and Contact Comics. I'll post some of his most interesting covers later, but for now let's talk about the comics themselves. He was known for putting in random rocket ships and ray guns, even though they weren't appropriate to the storyline of the comic.

Another thing I wanted to point out is that the Captain Flight and Contact Comics are both based off of contemporary aviation. Aviation. Why is that so important? Well if you look in the sky on Origins, what do you see? That's right: tons of planes flying around. Now, let's see some of his covers. There's a lot of them that I found interesting, including one at the one which ties into the zombies storyline, so just bear with me.

This next one is very interesting.

Here's some covers from the Captain Flight and Contact Comics.

Here is a comic where our hero, Blue Bolt, is holding a "ray gun".

And then we have this last one. This is the most interesting to me, because it easily ties into the storyline of Zombies.

What I'm about to go in-depth about does contain spoilers, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! So here we have what seems to be a detective (the one in the trench coat) holding people, or characters, of what could be the storyline behind that edition of that comic. But, he's holding the characters like they're his toys, like puppets. Now, why could this tie into the storyline? Take a good look at our detective, and just imagine if he was replaced with Samantha or Eddie, and he or she is holding characters to the zombies storyline. And at the top instead of 'Suspense', it says 'Origins'. See, this makes sense because in our ending cutscene to the Origins easter egg, Sam and Eddie (both as little kids) are playing with toy versions of the zombies characters, zombies, and even a rocket like the one on the map 'Ascension'.

I thought this was very interesting since this isn't the first time we've experience comic books in zombies. Remember when the single-player team hid several images around Mob of the Dead which would create this final image?

Hope you guys enjoyed my little easter egg-type theory that much of Origins was based off of L.B. Cole's work. This is my first in-depth theory I've posted here and I hope you enjoyed the read. If you want to read up on L.B. Cole, here's the wiki for him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._B._Cole. Thanks again.

-SaggyBerries

[Merijnvrooij]

Wow, you did some nice research there.

[DeathBringerZen]

I admire the research, but Origins was set in 1917, and your comic books/the author were coming around during the 1940s/1950s? Sorry, but that just doesn't convince me of your theory being that good. It lacks in that logic.

 

I was just about to point out that very same thing.

 

Still, the loading screens on zombies confirm the maps and possibly ideas in-game have comic book elements to them, but I would not single them out to be ideas that came directly from L.B. Cole. There was literally hundereds of comic book creators back in the 20's, 30's, 40's etc that all had heavy sci-fi undertones to them.

 

There was also a lot of comics being produced in the early 40's that features nazi's, and I can only imaging that some of them features similar aspects that feature in our beloved game. I think the Dev's definitely used some of the comics as inspiration but I doubt they went for one single author, and if they did, I doubt it was L.B. Cole's works. The Raygun for example is not exclusive to his comics. It has features in thousands of other comics and is probably considered an expected feature in any sci-fi comic franchise.

[Guest]

Now beckons the question, who made the comic book. Before someone says Arlington, no, he is more of an illustrator so who else?