Believe it or not…this is a turkey dinner!

All Star Comics #14 (1942)

Written by Gardner Fox
Artwork by Joe Gallagher

Chef’s Note:  There are many questions to address here. The first is Carter “almost forgetting” that he’s in possession of one of the most miraculous scientific inventions of all time because… why?

Because he was so captivated by the scintillating political insights his team mates were offering? Or maybe because he was storing it down the front of his pants?

Didn’t Kent just state the need for clear heads?

When Carter finally does recall the unbelievable wonder pill he’s holding (in his pants), he raises it aloft and declares it a turkey dinner. Johnny then helpfully verifies this using a handy household microscope (like you do).

Still, Johnny might need more training in the use of such technology as he exclaims the food pill to be “complete to the last french fried potato!“?

There are no french fries here? Who has french fries with a turkey dinner anyway?

Indeed, there is not much in the way of a traditional turkey dinner at all: no gravy, no squash, no green beans, no cranberry sauce. Instead, there’s a tomato (maybe?), an enormous puckered baked potato (perhaps?), and some indeterminate greens?

Later, it becomes even more confusing as the magical food pills Carter offers to the French resistance fighters apparently just produce a roast chicken, not a full turkey dinner.

Still, the fact that it produces a chicken still steaming hot from the oven is pretty impressive given the general laws of thermodynamics.

All of this, though, begs the real question: if Carter is able to “make enough capsules to feed millions” why hasn’t he done so already? It’s not like hunger and starvation wasn’t already common then, given the previous World War.

In fact, I think it could be argued that if all of Europe had been well-fed after World War I then maybe World War II wouldn’t have happened?

What the heck, Carter?

Chef’s Note:  It is ironic to note the JSA, with Wonder Woman relegated to stay-at-home secretary and “honorary member”, promoting food pills:

But if you look back to these “good old days”, the roots of the meal-in-a-pill stem not from the fertile minds of science fiction writers, but from the politics of the day. This tiny, white vision of the future had its roots in late 19th Century feminism.

In the lead up to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the American Press Association asked writers from a number of fields to promote the event by writing essays on what they thought the world of 1993 might look like. Their work was published in small town newspapers across the country. American suffragette Mary Elizabeth Lease predicted that by 1993, humans would only eat synthetic food, liberating women from the drudgery of the kitchen. People would “take, in condensed form from the rich loam of the earth, the life force or germs now found in the heart of the corn, in the kernel of wheat, and in the luscious juices of the fruits. A small phial of this life from the fertile bosom of Mother Earth will furnish men with substance for days. And thus the problems of cooks and cooking will be solved.”