In the 1940s and 50s George Roussos produced a series of giveaway comics for General Electric's Educational Relations Department. In an interview done with Williams Cain he discussed these, saying: "I drew small pamphlets about 16 pages each, for GE. These pamphlets were distributed throughout the country and in South America, Europe and India. I received an extension from the local draft board in order to complete this publication. When the work was over, the Bomb ended my going into the Army. I was to report on Monday morning for duty, but the Bomb ended the draft. This is a good thing for the Army...they might have lost the War! I continued this type of freelance work for twenty years. The publications were designed to encourage and educate pupils on all the opportunities available at GE."

In an issue of Comics Interview from 1983 Roussos elaborates, "I did industrial comics for General Electric. That was one of the biggest things I've ever worked on. I was one of the first people to do ads in the comic books. The man who used to solicit ads for National [DC Comics], got together with the man from General Electric public relations, and decided to do a special comic. I did four pages of samples to show them how it would look. Comics were selling so good it was obvious that children would rather read them than their school books so someone had the idea to do comic books about electricity. The story was about a superhero, who let you know facts about electricity along the way. I did about 16 books in all. According to the Daily News, which did a Sunday feature on it, there were some 68 million books distributed worldwide."

There seem to be a wide number of different versions of these comics, including somewhat redrawn ones and completely redrawn ones. Some simply have a different cover. The reason for this seems to be simply to modernize the material, to keep up with advances in technology. Roussos may have used the help of Mort Meskin on a few of the books in the series. Other artists also may have contributed.

If you have any information on this series or any books not listed below please drop us a line here.

Adventures in Electricity:
No. 1 -- The Generation of Electricity (1946) (GEC 174)
No. 2 -- Uses of Electricity (1946) (APG-17)
No. 3 -- Distribution of Electricity (1946) (APG-17-1)
No. 4 -- X-Rays in Medicine, Industry and Science (1947) (APG-17-3)
No. 5 -- Electricity in Railroading (1948) (APG 17-4)
No. 6 -- The Story of Light (1949) (APG 17-7)
Adventures in Electronics (1955) (17-8A)
Adventures in Electronics (1955) (17-8B) ( Same interiors but different covers)
Adventures in Jet Power - Super-Speed Jet Aircraft (1950) (no info)
Adventures in Jet Power (1955) (APG-17-2B) (Completely redrawn version of same comic.)
Adventures in Jet Power (1961) (APG-17-2-D) (Completely different comic.)
Adventures Inside the Atom - the Story of Nuclear Energy (1948) (APG 17-5)
Adventure Into the Future (1952) (APG 17-10)
Adventure Into the Past (1949) (APG 17-6)
Engineering in Your Future (1957) (APG 17-10A) (somewhat redrawn and re-colored version of A.I.T.F.)
Inside the Atom (1955) (Completely different version of Adventurs Inside the Atom.) (APG 17-5B)
Man-Made Electricty (1953) (PRD-7) (A redrawn version of Adventures in Electricity#1.)
Our Place in Space (1959) (PRD-7-2)
Science in Your Future (1956) (PRD-7-1)

For the time being we are only presenting images of the covers. Click on the images to view an enlarged version.