What is reality? Do any of us share the same exact experiences, or are we all wandering lost in our own microcosm, our worldview only occasionally matching up with that of others? Do any of us really have any idea what anyone else is really thinking? For instance, at some point somebody thought that the stupid comic we're about to look at was something that entertained, or at least made coherent sense. And maybe it does, to somebody. That's what worries me.


Little Peter Breck was abandoned by flying saucer people whose flying saucer emitted the characteristic "whaaaa whaaaa" sound as noted in the famous Adamski abductee cases. Now I know what you're thinking, you're thinking this latest Superman reboot is starting off great!


When George proposed to Nan, he promised her the finest honeymoon any woman had ever experienced. Then he took her for a walk in a cow pasture. Don't let this happen to you, ladies. Stay out of Charlton Comics.


Now whenever I see an abandoned baby in the Australian countryside, I immediately think about the dangers of dingoes, and I can't help but think these flying saucer people were absolutely the worst flying saucer parents ever. Shame on them for their negligence!

Of course, when I see this just-married couple with a baby - I mean a couple that was married days ago, and yet has a healthy infant, well, I just think about how this comic was published in the 1960s when people wheren't supposed to have sex outside of marriage and yet this couple clearly was gettin' it on at least nine months before their no doubt hastily arranged wedding. But they had to tell everyone some story about flying saucers, because of outdated hypocritical Victorian social mores. Luckily Nan's dad bought it, or somebody would be picking buckshot out of their backside!


And then one day a strange thing happened. A seven year old child was mean to another seven year old child. ALERT THE MEDIA


Suddenly the adorable towhead's sinister flying saucer people nature came to the fore, and powerful beams shot from his eyeballs, and then there was lightning. He can't just zap the tree himself, though.


I hate you Peter Breck! I hate your orange hair and your blue shirt and how your mom is covering up your terrible space person powers!


And in the very next panel, which is the next day or ten years later, we don't know, Dad Next Door is complaining about Peter wandering through his flowers, and it's right around this time that we begin to wonder where are all the Australian signifiers - the kangaroos, the Crocodile Dundees, the Ayers Rocks, the cans of Foster's - and if there aren't going to be any Australian signifiers, then why bother setting this story in Australia at all? Why not New Zealand or Saskatchewan or Cape Town? And then we realize that this is merely part of how this comic reflects the reality of someone whose worldview is not quite congruent with our own.


OH YOU DONE MESSED UP NOW MR. JOHNSON! And finally the evil space people force projects directly onto the victim. In comics this usually means Superman can spot the criminal's stolen loot or Lois' shopping list, but here it means something else entirely.


Consider if you will a small community held hostage to a small boy, six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. And, if by some strange chance, you should run across him, you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk, because if you do meet Anthony, I mean Peter Breck, you can be sure of one thing: you have entered a comic book story written by people who were definitely watching The Twilight Zone and taking copious notes all the while.


That's right Dad, threaten the little flying saucer boy with the back-breaking eyes. Give him a little does of stern dad parenting. Let me know how that works out from the spinal injury ward, will ya?


The unstoppable force of 1960s Dad meets the immovable object of Flying Saucer Boy! Just look at the sweat break out on Dad's brow as his manly discipline vanishes instantly. It's Peter Time from now on!


And hey! We just wrote ourselves into a corner, so THE END! Or maybe this is how that Twilight Zone story ended, so THE END! Or we were told to fill six pages and we filled six pages, so THE END! Regardless of the reason, the fact is that the writer felt this was adequate, and the editor said "fine" and the publisher, I'm going to be honest here, the publisher probably never saw it, and it got printed on Charlton's cereal box press and went out into the world and at least fifteen or twenty kids read this and were just confused. Why would anyone just end a story like this? What were they thinking? What sort of mental process led to this? And from there we can speculate that human experience is endlessly multi-faceted and that the infinite variety of singular personalities is what makes life interesting. Or we can just say this was a hacked-out piece of junk. Or both!

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