Today we journey into the far future!
Cave-Dwellers:
The hunt for Atom Blake's father takes him from Earth to Mercury, to Mercury but millions of years in the future, where he encounters these little fellows. Driven out of their surface city by invaders, the Cave-Dwellers are understandably hostile to outsiders, but Atom manages to win them over eventually, free his father (the hunt, though long in distance and time, was short in terms of steps) and retake the city.
What I really appreciate about these guys his how much they resemble a version of the sensory homunculus. (Wow Comics 003, 1941)
Peoples of the Year 2 000 000 000:
Not to be outdone by some kid, in Detective Comics v1 023, Slam Bradley and Shorty Morgan travel two billion years into the future after meeting scientist Professor Kenton, fresh off of completing his time machine and not interested in any sort of half measures like trying to go to next week.
Please note the "city rises and falls outside the window to mark the passage of time" bit, later used to much effect in Futurama.
Slam and Shorty are almost immediately separated from Kenton and captured by a big bird that flies them into a fantastic futuristic metropolis nearby. There. they are confronted and captured by three beings: a human, a bird-man and a plant-man, and this is our first inkling that this isn't the lame kind of future where everything is just a reskin of the present, not only because Earth is populated by three distinct intelligent species but completely alien technology, such as the weaponized recorders used to paralyze our heroes..
More alien weirdness follows, as it is revealed that these three fellows have been condemned to death for gambling on a holy day (the anniversary of their leader's tonsillectomy, which is silly, yes, but culturally very interesting. They have a god-emperor of some kind!). They also do not speak English but communicate via a thought transmission device.
Despite their seeming reverence for their leader, these three fellows want to take advantage of the time machine to get out of town and avoid their fate. They eventually try to steal the device outright and are killed in a firefight with Slam, Shorty and Kenton but before that the plant-man gets to show off this cool and very thematic flower weapon.
He's not really an alien, but as long as I'm talking about this adventure I would like to mention Iron-Fingers, a giant cyborg pitted against Slam Bradley in gladiatorial combat as a form of execution after Slam refuses to grant the petulant god-king access to the time machine. Specifically, Slam is sentenced to be "plucked to pieces" by Iron-Fingers, which is an image that really sticks with you. (Detective Comics v1 023, 1939)
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