Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 173: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 158

November-December 1958

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Journey Into Mystery #49

Cover by Joe Maneely

"City of Giants" (a: John Forte) ★

"The Doctor Wears a Mask" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★1/2

"The World-Destroyers!" (a: Matt Fox) ★★

"The Little Green Man" (a: Sol Brodsky) ★★

"Morgan's Mad Machine!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★1/2

"The Room with Two Billion Cards" (a: Sid Check) ★★

After a 15-month lay-off, Journey Into Mystery returns to a depleted line-up. The question is: will it bring quality or just keep its head above water like the two remaining titles?

While working on a formula for "some sort of perfume," evil, greedy chemist Eric Wolton accidentally whips up a green vapor that makes him giant. The gears start working in that twisted (but pretty smart) brain and Eric hits on the idea of vaporizing the rest of Bromburg and transforming them into giants. Once that feat is accomplished, the mad perfumer runs around under the feet of his neighbors and robs all the jewelry stores and banks of Bromburg. The giant city council holds a meeting to solve the problem of the "City of Giants." Another loony home-taught chemist resorts to nefarious deeds in order to line his pockets. When will these eggheads learn that crime does not pay in the post-code era?

Two "eminent sociologists" visit the rural town of Compton, hoping to find an answer to the burning question: why does this burg have the lowest crime rate of any city in America? To help the men in their research, the town historian relates the sad, twisted story of Doctor Wallace, a GP who arrives in town one day and immediately sets off a furor. You see, "The Doctor Wears a Mask." Yes, the man is never seen without his odd facial disguise, but hey, as far as medicine goes, no one can beat him. In fact, the town is downright astonished by the fact that the doc practically shows up at emergencies before the excitement starts.

After several severe accidents and building fires occur, the town rabble rousers use their McCarthy-era arithmetic and demand the doctor's head on a stick. After all, there has to be some reason he's always first on the scene. When they confront the physician, they demand he remove his mask and, when he does, they get the surprise of their lives. The doc is an alien sent from (in his own words) "out there" to help humankind. But this medicine man has had enough. Humans are stupid, stupid, stupid, and he's hitting the vapor trail. Having learned a lesson, the town votes out its mayor and other corrupt officials and... well, you know the rest. A town without crime. Another of the Stan Lee-esque message stories about loving your neighbor and not giving in to paranoia, delivered at a time when Stan was also okaying anti stinkin' Commie comics. 

In "The World-Destroyers!," three aliens arrive on Earth to detonate a bomb that will lay waste to mankind but make a simple blunder that proves costly. There's no reason given for the invaders' mission (perhaps our warring ways make the rest of the universe nervous?), but the simple plot is obviously second fiddle to the great art by Matt Fox. Stockbroker Marcus Gabel finds "The Little Green Man" in a curio shop while vacationing with his wife in Hong Kong and, fascinated by the little mandarin, he quickly snaps it up and takes it back to the States with him. Immediately, Marcus sees a change in how he views the business world and his decisions reap a fortune, but success comes with a  high price. His wife hates the change in him (she notes how he's starting look just like the jade statue) and his friends begin to shun him. Is the statue using some kind of supernatural force to transform Gabel from a mild-mannered stockbroker into Gordon Gecko? We've seen this plot (and umpteen variations) before, but the pace is quick and Brodsky's simple but efficient art is a plus.

Two con men stumble onto the sure thing: a goofy old inventor who's come up with a gizmo that turns rocks into gold. They think they're swindling the geezer but they end up tutored in the long run. "Morgan's Mad Machine!" elicited at least two chuckles from this grizzled old funny book vet and the climactic reveal is handled cleverly. It might be my imagination, but Ed Winiarski's pencils actually seem to be getting better. Last up this time is "The Room with Two Billion Cards," in which a washed-up actor discovers that all the world is, indeed, a stage. This one is slow-paced but almost won me over with its dark final panel.-Peter

Strange Tales #66

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Ghost Came C.O.D." (a: Reed Crandall) ★1/2

"The Replacement!" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★

"The Voice of Fido!" (a: Werner Roth) ★

"It Waits Under the Sea!" (a: Al Eadah) ★★1/2

"The Eerie Experiment!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"He Wore a Black Beard" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★1/2

Antique store proprietor/con man Eban Goad has the perfect money-making scheme: he scans the obits for freshly interred corpses and sends faux invoices to the estates. Most of his victims don't hesitate to send him a check to avoid late fees, but Eban sends one notice too many and the dead man shows up at the antique shop to contest his bill. Oh, don't worry, CCA, this guy's not a zombie, but a Martian in disguise! "The Ghost Came C.O.D." sees the great Reed Crandall wasting his skills on a flimsy script.

On the run from the law and wearing a very "loud, checked jacket," killer Jack Hartley ducks into the bedroom of a dying man and steals his coat, thus assuring him of a clean getaway. Rummaging through the pockets of the coat, the criminal is astonished to find a plane ticket and heads quickly to the airport. After a brief skirmish with the pilot, the hood muscles his way on board but notices that there's no one else on the plane. The jet takes off and the cops later find Hartley's broken body in a field. Turns out Hartley took the dying man's place on a plane to Heaven, but St. Peter doesn't allow the living through the pearly gates. Or something like that. So dumb it's almost amusing, "The Replacement!" leaves so many questions unanswered and then, to compound the problem, tries to explain its plot hook in a lame, four-panel exposition that really does bring out the giggles.

In the all too predictable "The Voice of Fido!," Hank Walton wants to follow in his old man's footsteps as a new generation of ventriloquist but, instead of a wooden dummy, Hank wants to use his dog. No problem, Pop says, and sure enough Hank is an immediate hit. Then Fido starts spouting ad-libs. Sure, Pop is in the audience, but the old man admits it ain't him, so who's responsible for the new jokes? They both look at Fido and shrug. 

He's a genius and a really smart guy, but the Super-Secret Adventurers Club laughs and scoffs at Felix Bradin's notion that his little mini sub can cruise around the world under water for six months. Only one man believes in him, ultra-rich Harry Spahn! Harry promises to finance the entire trip, provided Felix takes Harry with him. Short on dough and figuring he could use the company, Felix quickly agrees but, as the days approach and Harry takes on a boss man's attitude, Felix regrets his decision.

On launch day, Felix gets up really early and jumps in the vessel, motoring away before Harry has his Omelette de la mère Poulard. Giggling, Felix can't wait until the world finds out he's conquered the undersea world. Then his curiosity gets the best of him and he explores a really weird cavern. Miles in, the cave door closes and Felix is trapped, hoping he can survive in this unknown realm on six months' worth of granola bars, Playboy magazines, and no porta-potty. As we leave a clearly disheartened Felix Bradin, we discover the steel plate cavern door is the ocean entrance to Marineland and (don't worry, CCA) the attraction will open in thirty days. Felix will be saved. "It Waits Under the Sea!" is goofy fun; we're expecting Harry Spahn to reappear, seeking revenge for the slight, but that never happens. Instead, we're given that last panel twist, one that's actually worth the wait.

In this issue's reminder that the Russkies are dirty rotten stinkin' rats, two 1977 teens run "The Eerie Experiment!" and use a special Ham radio to contact the Feds twenty years in the past to warn of a secret Commie meeting. The day is saved, but don't try to keep up with the complicated Carl Wessler (I know, I know, when have I ever used those three words together in a sentence) script. 

Okay, keep up, because I won't be repeating myself. Wally Rogers is insanely jealous of his friend and co-worker, Ralph Blaine, for stealing the company limelight with a secret project Ralph is working on that will change the course of history. Wally hatches an elaborate plot to frame his buddy for embezzlement but can't figure out a way to establish an alibi for himself in the process. Luckily, at that moment, a stranger appears in Wally's room and explains that he's from the future, out for a joy ride in his time travel machine. 

The lightbulb goes on over Wally's head and he talks the visitor into helping him with his criminal deed. But the forces of good always trump those of evil and Wally gets what's coming to him in the end. "He Wore a Black Beard" has a very complicated plot (that's two examples just in this issue of Carl Wessler taxing his brain) and the super surprising twist (sarcasm) is built upon the smile out loud assumptions that Wally wouldn't know Ralph was working on a time machine and, even funnier, wouldn't recognize his old pal with a mustache and beard. Still, that final panel of Wally running the whole scenario through his head is classic.-Peter

Strange Worlds #1

Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule

"I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers!" ★★1/2

(a: Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule)

(r: Where Monsters Dwell #32)

"I Captured the Abominable Snowman!" ★★1/2

(a: Steve Ditko)

(r: Strange Tales Annual #2 & Journey Into Mystery #13)

"I Am Robot!" (a: Uncredited) ★★

(r: Strange Tales Annual #2)

"I Am the Last Man on Earth!" (a: Don Heck) ★★

Why does everyone laugh when a man tells them that "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers!"? He recalls being fascinated by the subject as he grew up, yet his investigation revealed nothing certain. One day, in a remote forest, he witnessed a flying saucer land! A voice entered his thoughts and explained that it came from another solar system and its civilization was far beyond our own. Overpopulation led to space exploration, which led to an unintended landing on Earth. The alien will leave tonight, as soon as it regains its strength, and asks the man to tell no one about it until it's gone. In exchange, the man asks to see what the alien looks like, and the alien responds that it is the spaceship! Of course, after it's gone, no one believes the man's story.

This certainly feels like a milestone at Atlas Comics. The story is seven pages long and features Kirby pencils and many of the things we'll come to expect from him: inventive page designs, splash and half-splash pages, and detailed depictions of machinery. The story is not particularly novel and the big twist, that the spaceship is the alien, is handled well but followed by a pointless page of the man telling everyone what he saw in vain. Still, the story gives me hope that Atlas might try something new.

Hoping to be able to announce to the world that "I Captured the Abominable Snowman!," a greedy man steals equipment and plans from a scientific expedition and sets off alone. He finds a Lama monastery and forces an aged lama to take him to meet the Yeti. The creature approaches the lama, who transforms it into a human. The greedy explorer then learns that he must take the place of the Yeti until the next selfish man comes along.

Ditko's art is the highlight of this story, which follows a familiar pattern. The aged lama foreshadows Ditko's depiction of the Ancient One and the artist creates suspense on page four with a trio of panels that show the explorer in increasingly close shots as he awaits the Yeti's arrival.

Thorne, a scientist in the year 2468, creates a robot sensitive enough to handle a delicate object, yet strong enough to punch through a wall. This new robot can also speak and think! Thorne agrees to let the robot spend six months in his home taking care of his infant son, and if all goes well, thousands of the robots will be produced. Thorne's wife is fearful of the mechanical man, but the inventor reassures her. One day, the parents leave their son alone with the robot to test it. While they're gone, space aliens land and grab the little boy. The robot fights them off and they leave, but he is damaged in the battle. He pitches off a cliff and is found in wreckage at the bottom after Thorne returns. Everyone thinks the robot went berserk and plunged to its doom, and Thorne agrees that no more units will be produced. No one knows that it saved the child and the human race.

"I Am Robot" does not benefit from art by Kirby or Ditko; in fact, the GCD is unable to identify the artist, and I can't, either. The story is narrated by the robot but is not particularly engaging.

In the year 2035, a spaceship from Earth lands on the planet Xernes and  spacemen discover that humans could live almost 500 years before reaching old age. On Earth, people are so excited that they spend the next decade in a mass exodus to the new planet, destroying all their property before they leave. In the end, the last man and woman (named Adam and Eve) agree to start rebuilding Earth civilization.

Don Heck's art is impressive on "I Am the Last Man on Earth!" but the story is drawn out and pointless. It seems that Adam and Eve (groan) think the rest of civilization should not have given up the happy, peaceful life they had built on this planet. It didn't make much sense to me. This first issue of Strange Worlds is interesting in that it is more geared toward science fiction than the Atlas fantasy titles and it features three of the artists who would soon make Marvel a successful comic company. It'll be interesting to watch the title develop.-Jack

World of Fantasy #15

Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule

"The Secret of Stephen Durham" (a: Kurt Schaffenberger) ★★

(r: Journey Into Mystery #17)

"He Stole 50 Years" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★

"Mystery of the Mountain" (a: Christopher Rule) ★

(r: Where Monsters Dwell #38)

"Strange Doings in Cell 4-B!" (a: Joe Certa) ★1/2

(r: Vault of Evil #19)

"The Uncanny Keys" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

(r: Vault of Evil #16) 

"The Sinister Supermen" (a: Sam Kweskin) ★

Clark Wendall wonders, what is "The Secret of Stephen Durham"? They are close pals and research scientists, whose fathers had great adventures together, but lately, Stephen has been jumpier than ever. Clark peruses his father's diary and reads of an escape from an Aztec death trap and a close call with a giant octopus. During a lecture about how an object traveling at the speed of light will not be subject to aging, Steve jumps up and suggests that he and Clark head to Mexico.

They visit the same places where their fathers barely avoided death, and Clark wonders how Steve seems to know about these events without having read his father's diary. Back at home, Clark follows Steve and witnesses him entering a chamber where he travels at the speed of light. Clark suddenly realizes that Steve is really his father, who has kept himself young.

This has to be a Wessler script, since it has some interesting events along the way but is overly complicated and ends with a revelation that isn't very interesting or surprising. At least Kurt Schaffenberger turns in a professional job on the art.

A newspaper publisher named Slade prints lies and uses blackmail to silence complaints. He forces a scientist named Carlin to show him the Electronic Cavalcader, which brings to life events of the next fifty years. Slade spends the night watching all of the amazing things that will happen in the decades to come, unaware that, in the end, he will have aged fifty years and all his notes will be too yellowed and faded to read.

I was pleasantly surprised by "He Stole 50 Years." in which we learn that there will be a revolution in the Soviet Union in 1967 and that the Eastern Bloc will be free by 1969, atomic power plants and atom-driven planes will follow, and deadly diseases will be cured. Interplanetary travel will occur in 2000, and a woman will be president by then. It's a shame that none of this came to pass, at least not in the positive, lasting way portrayed here. I especially liked the last panel, which shows a suddenly aged Slade.

Two state troopers are puzzled by "The Mystery of the Mountain," which consists of silent explosions at Mount Rushmore in the middle of the night. A professor from D.C. is called in and posits that the explosions are coming from a parallel dimension, whose inhabitants are honoring one of their great men. Sure enough, the bust of an unknown spaceman appears next to that of George Washington. A pointless story with listless art, this one is unsettling in light of the current president's desire to see his own face join the others.

A brawny prisoner named Porter discovers that his elderly cellmate, Pop, can make things appear just by wishing. Porter decides that the "Strange Doings in Cell 4-B!" can be used to his advantage, and he forces Pop to wish for three guns and a car. The jail break is going well until the guns and car suddenly disappear and Porter and his pals are captured. To their dismay, they learn that Pop died of old age and, when he passed away, the things he wished for disappeared.

Joe Certa's art is solid if a bit on the cartoony side--Pop reminds me of Uncle Marvel from the Captain Marvel comics.

Shelton's uncle sends him out to get a copy made of the key to his safe. Shelton visits a locksmith where he sees the proprietor in a room filled with treasure! The man explains that it's due to "The Uncanny Keys," which are magical and which he received from a gypsy. Shelton grabs the key ring and finds that each key reveals a different room when put into the keyhole of any door. After finding himself in rooms filled with silver and gold, followed by a South Sea island, Shelton turns one key too many and finds himself in a prison cell with no keys. He realizes that the last key was a jail key!

Of all the Atlas artists, Richard Doxsee may be the most disappointing, since he's gone from terrific to terrible in a short span of time. The worst thing about this story is that the panels that are supposed to show the rooms filled with treasure barely show anything.

A sailing ship and its crew are mysteriously drawn toward an island by "The Sinister Supermen," criminals who were hiding out there in a cave when an H-bomb test accelerated their evolution to the point where they were all brain and little protoplasm. Having proved their unlimited power to themselves, they let the sailors leave and only the force of nature prevents the ship from being drawn into a whirlpool. The island and its inhabitants sink out of sight.

It's always hard to identify the worst story of a post, but this has to be it. The art is so weak that, in the panels where the supermen first appear, I first thought a kid had taken a marker and scribbled random lines on the page. After a few moments of study, I realized that those lines were actually supposed to be the outline of an arm and hand with a pointing finger.-Jack

Next Week...
The Era of Ditko and Kirby
Officially Begins...
But Will They Bring 
Quality With Them?

Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 172: Marvel/Atlas Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 157

August-October 1958

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Tales #64 (August)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Domino" 

(a: Al Williamson) ★★★

"What is Monium?" (a: John Forte) ★★★

"So This Is Mars!" (a: Bob Powell) ★1/2

"The Silent City!" (a: Jim Mooney) ★

"What on Earth?" (a: Bob McCarthy) ★★★★

"The Last Warning!" (a: Vic Carrabotta) ★★

Dr. Domino has a formula that can make years melt away so, naturally, every woman in the country wants it. Experts swear he's a fraud but admit all research on the good Doc proves he's really eighty years old. He's looking pretty good! But Dr. Domino needs time to whip up the potion; time and money. He sells the beverage to the highest bidder, but only he knows the whole thing is a fraud; the mixture is nothing more than water and a bit of Cuervo; the women who have become young in front of his audiences were actresses paid by Domino to put on a show.

Domino will be a rich man after the latest show and, while gloating one night in his lab, he is visited by a sorceress who claims she has the power to do anything but turn back the hands of time. She looks to Domino for the answer, but when he admits he's a phony, the woman exacts a heavy toll on the charlatan. "The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Domino" is more fun than we've had around this place in a long, long time. It's got the feel of a Marvel villain origin story (Domino notes that his appearance is all down to "an accident when working in a laboratory at the age of twenty-one!") with the bonus of dynamite Williamson art. 

"What is Monium?" is a clever little gem about a prospector who stumbles across the rare titular mineral and becomes a magician to make a living. The act is Zorani tossing an object through one hoop and that object materializes through a second hoop somewhere in the same arena. Not a bad way to make a living. A crook discovers the truth behind The Great Zorani's act and steals the Monium hoops to use in jewelry store heists until Zorani uses the ol' noggin to reacquire his props. A charming 1940s-style fantasy with a lot of imagination and some decent Forte art (something we don't see often enough). Rather unlike the usual Atlas character who has stumbled across a gold mine, Zarani seems happy enough pulling off his parlor tricks rather than breaking into Fort Knox. 

Bob Powell's art is the only reason to turn the page on "So This Is Mars!," a witless three-pager about a movie producer and his actor who are working on a film about life on Mars and find themselves teleported to the red planet for no obvious reason. Well, there is a reason, it turns out, but not a good one. In "The Silent City!," Rudwigsburg's clock tower manager Gustave Tarnal discovers a way to stop time and rob his neighbors blind, but clever Gustave, in the end, is not so clever.

Brilliant genius scientist Albert Feldgurt has a wild theory that the other planets in the solar system are barren because they are awaiting a "seeding" and the pods that will reinvigorate those worlds are us humans. Poor Al gets the same kind of reception for his theories that John and Yoko got for Two Virgins; the egghead is cast out of his scientist treehouse and forced to roam the streets penniless. But good things come to those who wait and, years later, Al is hailed as a messiah who reintroduced love to the world. People begin disappearing and their souls travel the galaxy to...

Well, we don't know exactly where those souls end up, since the final panel for "What on Earth?" leaves it all very hazy, which is the ending I'd choose. This could be the first "hippie" comic strip; Dr. Feldgurt's transformation from renowned scientist to bum on the street to Christ reborn is a trippy hoot, unlike much else you'll see in this era. I might be full of blueberry muffins, but I think "What on Earth?" is thought-provoking and spiritual, the kind of story that would fit well with the equally deep stories found in EC's science fiction comics. Easily one of the two or three best post-code tales I've read. This was Bob McCarty/McCarthy's 26th and final appearance in an Atlas genre zine.

Last up, Ham radio operator Don Reide gets a frantic SOS call from a young man trapped in a mining collapse. Coincidentally, Don had been trapped in the very same mine decades before and knows all the ways out. Don successfully helps the kid through the mines before realizing he's talking to the younger version of himself. Don ain't too bright if it took him that long to figure out what was going on, because I knew long before "The Last Warning!"-Peter

World of Fantasy #13 (August)

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Unsolid Man" (a: Joe Orlando) ★

(r: Giant-Size Werewolf #5)

"What Happened on the Mountain!" (a: Richard Bassford) ★★

"The Man in the Cyclotron" (a: uncredited) ★★

"The Chance I Took!" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★★★

"The Mysterious Inheritance" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"When Marty Moves" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

(r: Weird Wonder Tales #7)

Arnold Benson is a stinkin' Commie; there just ain't no two ways about it. But worse, he's speaking out his filthy thoughts and making the kids in town think beyond their "I Like Ike" buttons. This sort of thing can't be tolerated in a free society like 1958 America, so the cops chase Arnold out of town and into a military research facility.

It's there that Arnie finds the experimental "rocket sled" that supposedly can travel at speeds faster than... well, gosh, really fast! As he hops into the sled, the Commie hunters let off a round and damage the sled. Suddenly, Arnold is propelled forward and his entire life changes in the blink of an eye. Hard to imagine Gaines and Feldstein ever writing this kind of propaganda for EC, but Stan always seemed to be one of those guys who waved the flag if it meant more profits for the company. "The Unsolid Man" reads like something whipped up for a Joe McCarthy tribute.

George and Ed know Twin Mountain is packed full of delicious uranium and all they have to do is convince the old man who owns the real estate to sell to them. The old man agrees, with one proviso: George and Ed must remain bosom buddies the entire time they own the peaks and, if one of the men becomes greedy and evil, his share will disappear. Well, the contract gets signed, but halfway up the mountain, Ed gets guilt pangs and wants to cut the old man in on the fortune. George snickers and his thought balloon tells the real story: he aims to kill Ed and keep the uranium for himself. Bad mistake. There's nothing remotely original in the plot of "What Happened on the Mountain!," but I dig Richard Bassford's retro art. This looks like it might have been written and shoved into the vault in 1949. Highly unlikely, since Bassford was still just a pup in his early 20s when this hit the stands in 1958. "What Happened..." was the artist's one and only sale to the Atlas sf/f titles.

Joe Ryzik works at the university of a small European (read that as Commie) country, servicing the school's Cyclotron. One day, a mishap leads to Joe entering the Cyclotron and being bombarded by a whole lot of radiation. This changes Joe dramatically, making his brain ten times the size it was pre-accident and enabling him to create weapons that would not be created until 2056! But his wife, Rena, doesn't like the change in her hubby and asks Joe to change back to his old self again. Joe complies and enters the Cyclotron a second time, where he is again bombarded by a whole lot of bad stuff. But I assure you, there's a happy ending. Joe gets his regular forehead back and all those nasty ray guns and nuclear whizbangs head back to the future. "The Man in the Cyclotron" is more cautionary anti-Russkie material from Carl Wessler and contains some interesting scientific factoids I'd not have known otherwise.

Fleming is the president and CEO of the "biggest cereal manufacturer in the world," but he just can't get happy thanks to the daily headlines about juvenile delinquency, bank robbery, and the rising price of milk. Can the man not find peace in all his success? So, he's out walking in the woods when he's approached by a group of strangely dressed men who introduce themselves as ambassadors from the United Galaxy. Their mission is to change the American way of "combativeness, intolerance, and suspicion" to that of a calm, trusting people. If this could be accomplished, then Earth would be allowed to enter the United Galaxy Union. Would Fleming help the aliens reach their goal?

Believing it the right thing to do, Fleming agrees to let the visitors dump a special chemical into the Fleming line of breakfast foods, a potion that will guarantee a more peaceful, gentle race. The chemical does the trick and humanity is reduced to blubbering, cheerful idiots. As the flying saucers show up, Earth smiles as one but Fleming, who never ingested any of the chemical himself, wonders if this is a great new age or if the aliens used him to pave the way for an invasion. And "The Chance I Took" leaves us hanging there, never answering Fleming's fearful, cynical question, to the delight of this old comics fan. Too many of the 1958 Atlas tales close out with a ray of sunshine and hope for a better day, so it's nice to read a tale that makes you pause.

Jack Holten attends the reading of his uncle's will, only to be shocked by the news that Uncle Jim left him nothing. Bewildered by "The Mysterious Inheritance," Jack does what any Atlas Universe citizen might do: he travels the world, researching his ancestors. What he finds will rock his world and help him realize that Uncle Jim left him the greatest inheritance of all. Zzzzz. Last and possibly least is the dreadful "When Marty Moves" about an old maid who accidentally gives life to a plastic doll and finds happiness for the first time in her life. Then her next door neighbor finds out about the doll and takes him for a little ride to a local bank for an unauthorized withdrawal. Maudlin script and dull graphics.-Peter

Strange Tales #65 (October)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"Afraid to Open the Door!" (a: Dan Loprino) ★★1/2

"The House That Cried!" (a: Christopher Rule) ★

"The Ragged Man" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★★

"The Terrible Tree!" (a: John Forte) ★★★

"The Perfectly Frightened Man" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"When the Curtain Falls!" (a: Bernard Baily) ★1/2

A crook named Morse bursts into a strange room, looking for enough money to guarantee that he can avoid the cops and a stint in prison. In the room sits a bearded old man, who welcomes the crook and identifies himself as John Hayes. To the crook's surprise, Hayes explains that he's a scientist who invented a room that serves as an entranceway to a frightening world that is inhabited by scary creatures.

Hayes points out that there are two doors in the room--one leads to the normal world and the other to the scary world. The problem is, he doesn't know which is which and he is "Afraid to Open the Door!" because picking the wrong one would be disastrous. Hayes has been trapped in the room for a decade, afraid to make the wrong choice, and now shares his predicament with the crook. I enjoyed this story! The highlight for me is the panel I've reproduced here, where the scientist peers into the other world and sees one of the scary creatures. There's only one problem: if the scientist was able to open the door, see the other world, and run back to safety, why can't he do it again?

A hobo named Smitty happens on a shack and asks Elvira Lanson, who lives there, for a meal. She's happy for the company, but when he's finished eating, Smitty pulls a gun and demands she hand over all her money. He begins to hear a strange sound and she explains that it's coming from "The House That Cried!" Elvira tells Smitty that she and her husband were dispossessed when he got sick and couldn't make the payments. After that, everyone who moved in discovered that it was impossible to fix up the house, since it would return to its decrepit condition overnight. Smitty listens patiently, but when Elvira tells him that her husband's ghost emerged from a mirror and chased off a gambler, that's just too much. The hobo changes his mind when she walks through a closet door and he realizes she's a ghost! He runs out of the house in terror. I just can't get excited about Christopher Rule's art and this story is a three-page shaggy dog tale that doesn't go anywhere.

Otis Larr is rich, obese, and cruel; he laughs when his ex-partner, John Norwood, requests money to pay for an operation for his wife. Larr relaxes on his yacht, instructing his brother Hubert to swab the deck. Suddenly, Larr's Geiger counter begins to click like crazy and the businessman decides to buy up the rights to a nearby island and the water around it. On the island, he meets "The Ragged Man" who owns it and agrees to pay $1,000,000 for the rights. Larr goes on to buy up rights for all the land nearby, since his Geiger counter keeps going off. Finally, a surveyor breaks the news that there is no uranium anywhere in the area. Hubert reveals that the Geiger counter was set off by a nuclear powered submarine prowling the waters underneath the yacht!

A pretty good twist helps this story end on a satisfying note, as the main character is highly reminiscent of a certain current U.S. president. Doxsee isn't given much to work with but still gives it the old college try.

Every night, Ross Evans sneaks out and cuts a bit more across the vast expanse of a giant redwood named Goliath. Why? One day, it topples over and crushes his house, allowing him to collect a bundle on his home insurance policy. But "The Terrible Tree!" gets its revenge, as Ross soon finds out. A wooden elevator he's in crashes to the bottom of the shaft, the wooden ladder of a fire truck attacks him, 

a wooden picture frame on the wall above him falls off and nearly hits him. Realizing all of the objects must have been fashioned from wood taken from Goliath, Ross buys a motorboat and tries to escape on the water, only to discover that the vessel is also fashioned from redwood.

I don't know what's come over me, but I enjoyed this story, perhaps because of the absurdity of it all. The idea of cutting down a redwood so it will fall on your house and you can collect insurance is goofy enough, but the series of events that subsequently befall Ross made me smile. You'd think the dope would check to see if the boat were made of wood before he bought it! John Forte seems to have been having fun, and the last panel provides no escape for Ross. I like that there was no happy ending!

Bob was thrilled when the gang at the office bought him a special birthday present: an ancient book on wizardry from 1596 that they ordered by mail from England. A paper in the book shows that Bob is descended from a witch who could doom people with her words and he has inherited her power. Bob tried it out and it worked; he told one co-worker to go to blazes, and the man was surrounded with flames; he told the rest to get lost, and they disappeared! Now Bob is "The Perfectly Frightened Man" as he relates his day at work to his wife, Helen. She insists it's all a practical joke and that the book says it was printed in the U.S.A. in 1596, which is impossible. Bob responds, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," and guess what he turns into!

Robert Sale's art always turns me off, and this weird tale is no exception. I do like the idea of the gang at the office writing to a bookseller in England for a centuries-old book on witchcraft to give Bob as a birthday gift, and I like his sassy wife, but the end, where he's a monkey, is silly. Why does the book say it was printed in the U.S.?

Chief stagehand Otto Groat watches from backstage as Dick, the leading man in a play, romances lovely Carlotta Delys before plunging a dagger into his own heart. When Otto observes the pair's romance becoming real offstage, he substitutes a real dagger for the fake one and Dick nearly kills himself during a performance. Backstage, Otto is trapped in a room when a teapot boils over and extinguishes the flame of a gas jet. Too bad the only thing he has to force open the door is the rubber dagger that should have been onstage!

There's nothing strange about "When the Curtain Falls!," a story that would fit better in a romance comic. I'm a fan of Baily's art but his heart wasn't in this one.-Jack

World of Fantasy #14 (October)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Three Dead Flies!" (a: Jim Infantino) ★★

"The Strange Escape" (a: Don Perlin) ★1/2

"Lost in the City That Doesn't Exist!" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★1/2

"The Mole Mystery!" (a: Jim Mooney) ★1/2

"Deadlock!" (a: Joe Orlando) ★★

"The Yogi's Secret" (a: Dick Giordano) ★★1/2

Chet Harron forces a scientist named John Eager to sign over the rights to his miraculous serum to Chet, ignoring John's pleas that he needs the serum to save his sick son. Years pass, and Harron builds a big, successful drug company. One day, the old man tells his scientists to create a youth serum to make him young again. John Eager turns up, looking not a day over thirty and telling Harron that he has invented the exact youth serum Harron craves.

Eager gives Harron a jar containing three flies whose lives have been prolonged by the serum, and Harron signs over the rights to his company to Eager. After he signs, Harron sees "The Three Dead Flies!" and angrily smashes the vial of serum. Eager explains that the flies just needed another dose and Harron has destroyed the only sample of the youth serum. Later, Eager visits the grave of his father, revealing that he is really the son of the man Harron swindled.

Am I nuts? Are the Atlas stories starting to improve? This was is pretty good. Jim Infantino will never be among my favorite artists, but the tale of Harron and Eager held my interest and had a decent, if predictable, twist ending.

Ivan Krull started a war against the United Countries of the World and lost, so he was sentenced to life in prison. He kept inciting riots in jail, so he was sent to the sub-basement to serve out his time in isolation. After years of solitude, he hears a sound of rushing water and digs down to attempt "The Strange Escape" on an underground river. Emerging into the light, Ivan discovers that he is alone on Earth, since everyone else emigrated to a new planet!

Krull's story is straightforward and over quickly, in a mere three pages. We've seen the bit about everyone leaving Earth before and Perlin's art is as expected, with one panel that looks so much like the work of Jack Davis that it could be a swipe.

Two tycoons named Carl Mason and Earl Borden are flying to Rio de Janeiro, planning a coup that will allow them to take over most of the world's industry. A storm causes the plane to crash in the jungle, where the duo encounter bald giants who take them to a futuristic city made of plastic. The locals reveal that they are mutants who control everything by brain power, so when Mason and Borden hold them at gunpoint and demand that they come back to civilization with them, the mutants wipe every memory of the encounter from the men's brains. The duo find themselves back in the plane, no longer desiring world domination.

A dull story is not enlivened by Howard O'Donnell's art. When I see big, bald heads on mutants, I always think of Curt Swan's big, bald heads from various issues of Superman comics, and O'Donnell's baldies can't compare.

Cook and Moore use a giant drill-car to drill down 1000 miles below the Earth's surface. They find a city of gold, but their greed makes them lie to the professor, who invented the drill-car, and say they found nothing. The professor dies of a broken heart and Cook and Moore buy the drill-car for a cheap price and head back down to the golden city. After loading the car full of gold, they discover that every metal in the area turns to gold. Unfortunately, that means their drill-car is now gold and thus too soft to drill back to the surface. They resolve to wait till the effects wear off, having learned a lesson about greed.

That drill-car looks awfully familiar doesn't it? I wonder if Stan and Jack had "The Mole Mystery!" handy when they created the Mole Man story a few years later in Fantastic Four. The ending is sappy. Also, if they drilled down, wouldn't they have left a big hole that they could return to the surface through?

Fred Palmer invents a machine that can control men's thoughts. He sells it to the rich and powerful Hubert Winslow, who uses the machine to force others to sell their assets to him at a steep discount. Fred falls in love with Winslow's pretty daughter, Joyce, and soon realizes what Hubert is doing, but when the inventor confronts the wealthy man, Winslow uses the machine to control Fred's thoughts so that the inventor lies to Joyce and claims he was trying to extort her father. Joyce visits her Pop and knocks the machine off his desk, smashing it and ending his ability to control men's minds. In the end everyone apologizes, shakes hands, and promises to be better.

Joe Orlando's panels are solid and the story does veer into the realm of fantasy, in that it involves a thought control machine, but the title "Deadlock!" is an odd choice. The introductory caption suggests that Joyce breaks a deadlock between Winslow and Palmer, but that's stretching a point.

An Englishman named Clyde Lipton is kind to a yogi named Yama Nuri who turns up at his door, offering to work for food. Clyde invites the man in, feeds him, and they enjoy playing chess together. The yogi accepts Clyde's offer to stay as long as he likes and promises to teach Clyde how to project an image of himself that is indistinguishable from the real person. One evening, Nuri accompanies Clyde to work at the patent office and they are playing chess when Communist agents steal a valise of secret plans. The agents kidnap Clyde and Yama and fly them to a country behind the iron curtain, but multiple images of Lipton and Nuri exit the airplane and scatter, leaving the agents confused as to where the plans went. Back at home, Clyde knows nothing of the adventure his image shared with the yogi's image.

I enjoyed "The Yogi's Secret." Dick Giordano is one of my favorite inkers of all time and, while his pencils aren't as impressive as his inks, he does a nice job with this story. I like that Clyde has white hair, smokes a pipe, loves chess, and works as a security guard.-Jack

Next Week...
Could Strange Worlds #1 Be the 
Dawn of Atlas Phase III?

Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 171: Marvel/Atlas Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 156

April-June 1958

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Tales #62 (April)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Girl Who Walked Thru Stone!" (a: Ruben Moreira) ★

"The Man Nobody Knew!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★

"The Invaders!" (a: Werner Roth) ★★1/2

"Filled With Hate" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★

"It Happened That Night" (a: Herb Familton) ★

"Alone in the Night!" (a: George Roussos) ★★

Rollery is just another mine-digging grunt when he stumbles upon Lialda, "The Girl Who Walked Thru Stone!" One day, deep in the mines, the fetching beauty materializes from a thick slab of stone and begs Rollery to halt the digging of the mine. The excavation, the beauty claims, is destroying her home world of Shala. The inhabitants are readying a journey to what will become Shala II, deep beneath Australia, but they need a few months to (ostensibly) dig their way further underground (nearly missing the core, I hope); could Rollery throw up a bit of confusion in order to stop the dig? Lialda promises she'll come back for him.

Deeply in love with the magical princess, Rollery blows up the mine and is arrested for his crime. Sitting in a jail for three long years, Rollery has pretty much given up on the Stone Goddess when a "mole" bursts through his cell floor and Lialda pops out with two tickets to paradise. The couple head down into the abyss, with Rollery clearly not wondering how the hell he's going to breathe underground. Pure, mindless junk with adequate art that doesn't force the 8-year-old reader to think about details (like how Lialda knew exactly where Rollery's cell was located), a/k/a Atlas post-code.

The circulation for the Wickston Star-Times increases one thousand fold when its obit editor, Tom Thurty, begins running news items before they happen. Naturally, mobsters want a piece of Thurty and, in the end, they get their just desserts. The reveal for "The Man Nobody Knew!" is from out of the blue (seems Thurty was a ghost the entire time!), but I've learnt that I'll even read through a Carl Wessler script like this if it's adorned with Joe Maneely's pencils.

"The Invaders!" from an undersea kingdom arrive on the surface world to map out their attack but find that the country dwellers are tougher than they seem. A three-page Jack Oleck script with a decent reveal and some fine Werner Roth graphics. More great art is on hand in "Filled with Hate," the story of a caretaker in a Budapest zoo who suspects one of the new attractions is an alien force biding its time to conquer the world. The script is unfocused and ends on an all too predictable note but, oh, those Frazetta/Williamson-esque panels by Orlando!

In "It Happened That Night," George Bowers insults a fakir while the man is performing in the street and suffers the magic man's wrath. George is given a pair of seemingly harmless glasses but he can see into the future... including his own fate. On page one, I saw into the future. Last up is "Alone in the Night!," wherein con man Fred Standish is wandering the docks looking for easy prey. He finds it in Nora Nichols, who owns a nice yacht moored at the pier. He tells her how gorgeous she is and he's not at all interested in her millions. She buys it... or does she? The reveal (that Nora is also a thief who was cursed to travel in this yacht until she could lure someone in to take her place) is a variant we've seen several times before, be it the adventurer and the temple of gold or the genie in the bottle, but the final panels of George screaming from the bowels of the seabound yacht are fairly chilling.-Peter

World of Fantasy #11 (April)

Cover by Bill Everett (?) & Joe Maneely

"Prisoner of the Fantastic Fog" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★

(r: Weird Wonder Tales #7)

"Nightmare at Midnight" (a: Jim Mooney) ★

(r: Weird Wonder Tales #7)

"The Sinister Stone" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★1/2

(r: Vault of Evil #11)

"He Never Reached the Ground!" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★

(r: Crypt of Shadows #19)

"He's Coming to Get Me!" (a: Ted Galindo) ★

(r: Giant-Size Werewolf #5)

"The Mad Scientist!" (a: Ross Andru & Jack Abel) ★1/2

(r: Frankenstein #11)

Big Sam Morgan is the most powerful rackets man in the state, but his big-brain (sucker) brother, Jerry, keeps toiling away in his lab instead of working for Sammy. Jerry's working on a vapor that will shrink anything it comes in contact with. While Sammy is arguing with his little brother, the phone rings and one of the mobster's henchmen gives him the news that the Feds are closing in.

In a panic, Sam races out the door and nearly into the arms of a beat cop. As if fortune were smiling down upon him, Sam is suddenly surrounded by a thick mist. When the mist clears, he's about two inches tall and an alley cat is eyeing him as a toy. Sam swears he'll go straight if the powers that be will only return him to normal size. Just like that, Sam is his old self again and turning himself in to the beat cop. Meanwhile, his brother sighs and admits his formula will probably never work.

The (uncredited) writer of "Prisoner of the Fantastic Fog" was obviously influenced by the recently-released The Incredible Shrinking Man, which also uses sinister mist and a big cat. The difference (well, there are a lot of differences, quality-wise) is that the CCA demands a semi-happy ending, so Sam Morgan lives to see another day (albeit as a jailbird), whereas the film's Scott Carey keeps shrinking into nothingness. A fun bit of trivia is provided by the GCD: brilliant but fashion-blind junior scientist Jerry Morgan would later resurface as a member of "the Headmen" in Defenders #21 (March 1975).

A dream searches the city's bedrooms, looking for just the right person to inhabit. "Nightmare at Midnight" is a waste of four pages in both script and art, with the final panel reveal being the clumsiest twist we've seen... well, at least this month, anyway. In the three-page "The Sinister Stone," an adventurer steals a priceless ruby from a statue belonging to a primitive Incan tribe and suffers the vengeance of its owner, the Rain God. Faced with either drowning or returning to the tribe for punishment, the man picks the only way to go in the Post-Code Atlas Universe and hopes the Incans will be "merciful." Well, of course they'll be merciful; nobody dies in these things anymore so danger is a long-gone element.

Wait, did I say "Nightmare at Midnight" contained the clumsiest twist of the month? Well, let me just correct myself here and state outright that "He Never Reached the Ground!" is even more inane. Window washer Wally Ober loses his footing and takes a tumble thirty-five floors to the street... or rather, he would have hit the ground if his grandfather had not discovered the land of the magical Lamas and therefore earned a sort of security force to save his descendants, should they be in peril. Luckily, Wally disappears about two feet from the ground and reappears in the land of the Lamas, where he vows to stay for the rest of his days. Seemingly stitched together from various parts of discarded scripts, "He Never..." is, literally, three pages of panels depicting Wally falling past the windows of each floor and a final page of exposition. Wally never reaches the ground but Atlas is nearing the bottom of the barrel.

It gets no better with "He's Coming to Get Me!," where a very nervous Peter Wilcox awaits the arrival of his brother, who he cheated out of a very large fortune. But when Ralph finally shows up, it's to take Peter to a spaceship where they'll fly to another planet rich with minerals. Peter has been so out of it, cowering in the shadows of his home for so long he didn't know that space travel had become as common as riding a bus. This was Ted Galindo's 14th and final Atlas appearance and I have to say I won't miss his ugly, scratchy doodlings.

A man bearing a comatose young boy appears in the laboratory of really smart genius scientist, Dr. Mark Ferris. The stranger tells the Doc that the boy has contracted a strange disease and must be put into Ferris's experimental cryo-chamber. The boy must be frozen for a while until a cure can be found for the disease and Mark's research may have already drummed up the foundation for that cure... at least that's what I think all the scientific mumbo-jumbo boils down to. To make a really long story short (SPOILER ALERT!! but if you can't guess the holy smokes surprise from the first page, you're pretty thick), the visitor is Mark from the near future, where they've perfected time travel, and the kid is Mark's future son. The trip back to his younger self triggered Future-Mark's memory and now he can cure his son. Or something like that. How should I know? This is the kind of thing Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein would do just about every other month in Weird Science and Fantasy and the worst variation those boys cooked up is much better than this microwaved pap. At least the art's decent.-Peter

Strange Tales #63 (June)

Cover by Bill Everett

"He Never Came Out!" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★

"Uncork It... If You Dare!" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★★

"The Drowning Man!" (a: Christopher Rule) ★

"Flight Number Thirteen!" (a: Ruben Moreira) ★1/2

"The Melting Pot" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

"Too Good to Be True!" (a: Don Perlin) ★

A shady local character named Joe Morse admires the statutes in Cartel's wax museum but doesn't believe Cartel's story about creating them from real criminals by means of the head of Medusa. Joe's pal Atkins wants nothing to do with Joe's plan to rob the wax museum and, after Morse headed in to do the deed, "He Never Came Out!" Cartel changes the number on the sign outside from 36 to "37 Lifelike Figures" and Atkins has an idea of where Joe ended up.

Alfonso Greene's art is about on par with this poorly written opener. First of all, if Cartel uses the head of Medusa to turn baddies to stone, why are they in a wax museum? Does he cover the stone statutes with wax? And how hard up must Joe be to want to rob a place that charges 25 cents to get in?

It's 1962 and Harold Simpson is a sad sack whose wife complains that he should ask the boss for a raise. He inherits a bottle of a strange substance that his Uncle Abner picked up in India and Harold reads that, if he uncorks the vessel, it will release a gas that can reverse a man's personality. Planning to make himself into an assertive, successful fellow, Harold walks by the United Nations building and hears world leaders threatening each other. He uncorks the bottle and the diplomats become madmen, physically attacking their fellows. Harold chooses the better part of valor and runs into the building, where he smashes the bottle on the floor. The diplomats revert to their original personalities, stop arguing, and avert war. No one knows that Harold saved the world!

I know it's corny, but I kind of liked "Uncork It...If You Dare!" I don't know why Carl Wessler (the GCD thinks he wrote it) set it five years in the future, but it's an accurate picture of the way things would be. I expected Harold to become a jerk and learn his lesson, but I never guessed he'd use the gas on the men at the U.N. The end, where they work out their differences, is predictable, but at least the parts leading up to it were unexpected.

After giving a man a free lunch at the Beachtime Diner, the man gives Joe Fulsom a coin that appears to come from Atlantis. Joe follows the man to the beach and sees him walk into the water. Diving in to save what he thinks is "The Drowning Man!," Joe witnesses guards from the lost city banishing murderers to live above the water. Joe blacks out and awakens in a hospital room in Atlantis, where he is happy to hear that the telepathic inhabitants determined that he is a good man and may stay in the perfect world.

That's an awful lot to pack into three poorly drawn pages. Christopher Rule's art looks like something we'd see in the back of a 1940s comic and doesn't do the writer any favors.

The pilots of "Flight Number Thirteen!" from Bulgaria take off with a plane full of passengers but are shocked and dismayed to see that all of the passengers are sitting in their seats, completely still, with sad looks on their faces. Franz and Ivan, the pilots, don't really care--they're only concerned with letting the passengers off in a forest and getting away with the cash from last night's bank robbery. The plane suddenly goes out of control, diving to avoid a storm and landing on its own power. When it lands, the passengers exit, suddenly cheerful to no longer be stranded in a parallel world. The pilots think they can hide out here and enjoy their wealth, but they will soon go into a trance and feel only sadness, as the passengers did. It's too bad Ruben Moreira's artwork is wasted on such junk. This story is utterly pointless.

A prisoner named Sam Barlow invents "The Melting Pot," a gizmo that melts all the steel in the area when it's turned on. He uses it to escape from the slammer and, once he's safely ensconced in a hideout, Sam uses the pot to steal a ton of gold bars. Satisfied with his haul, he bends the machine's oscillating lever out of shape so that it will no longer affect steel. Unfortunately, now it melts gold, and soon Sam is swimming in liquid gold, begging the cops to rescue him. I don't know how John Forte managed to do it, but the art on this one isn't half bad, even though the story is ridiculous. I read the Wikipedia page on Atlas Comics (though we're now into the Independent Comics period and Atlas is no more) and learned about the supposed discovery of scads of bad comic pages in a closet. This led to most of the artists being let go. I have to wonder if the comics we're reading now feature some of that found bad work.

The last story in this issue is called "Too Good to Be True!" The best thing about it is that it's only four pages long. A kid named Danny is jealous of the other boys, whose aunts and uncles give them swell gifts, so he invents an Uncle George. To his surprise, Uncle George appears and begins to shower the lad with gifts. His friends grow jealous and start to suggest that Uncle George is made up. Eventually, Danny begins to wonder if his uncle is a thief and brings a cop to his trailer. Uncle George then fades away, telling Danny that he was the product of his faith. Now that Danny can accept reality he has taken the first step toward manhood. When I saw that Don Perlin drew this one, I suspected we were in for trouble and I was right. His art is not much different than it would be years later on Werewolf By Night. That's not a compliment.-Jack

World of Fantasy #12 (June)

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Face in the Glass!" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

(r: Frankenstein #10)

"The Next World" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

(r: Giant-Size Chillers #2)

"Bedlam in Barnesville" (a: Jim Mooney) ★1/2

"Hallucination" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★★

"The Enemy!"(a: Manny Stallman) ★

"Hiding Place!" (a: Al Eadah) ★

Running from the cops after robbing a jewelry store, Boris Hann hides out at the cottage of Johan, the mirror maker. When Johnan sounds the alarm, Boris tackles him, leading the roly poly man to promise Boris a magic mirror that will change his appearance to that of anyone he wishes when he looks at "The Face in the Glass!" Suddenly young and handsome, Boris (being an Atlas villain) vows to use his newfound tool to help him commit more robberies. He blows open the safe in a mansion, grabs the jewels, and is spotted by the caretaker. Boris heads back to town and his magic mirror, knocking an old man to the ground in his haste. He reaches his room, looks in the mirror, and makes a wish. The cops burst in and find Boris, lying dead on the floor and gazing into the mirror. He wished to change his face into that of the old man he knocked down, unaware that the old man suffered a fatal heart attack--and the same thing happened to Boris.

Some Atlas stories elicit yawns. Some elicit eye rolls. Some elicit groans. This one elicited a "huh?" When Johan gives Hans the magic mirror, he says it will change his appearance. There is nothing about suffering the fate of the person whose appearance he takes on. I guess that's the trick and we're supposed to think Johan held back that bit of information on purpose? The ending doesn't really work and Forte's half-page first panel is awful.

Out in the desert, a mirage looks like a city and a scientist named Benson has invented a machine to pull living things out of the mirage and into our world. He demonstrates by pulling a bird into the desert and now wants to take it one step further by summoning a man. His colleagues try to stop him, but that night he goes forward with his experiment and finds himself in "The Next World," where everyone thinks the desert is just a mirage. Richard Doxsee should be commended for taking this disaster of a script and giving it visual life. I had to go back and forth and read it a few times to make any sense of it.

When a string of home robberies create "Bedlam in Barnesville," the neighbors blame eccentric old coot Hank Brody. Nick Gabel leads a posse of torch-bearing citizens to Hank's house and the old man runs off. In the days that follow, entire houses begin to vanish! The stolen goods are found in the space that used to be occupied by Nick's house and it turns out that Hank had been feeding termites, which made short work of all the houses. Jim Mooney can always be counted on for solid, if uninspired, artwork, but this is yet another story that makes absolutely no sense. At the start, the townsfolk think Brody is nuts because he appears to be spreading birdseed and then shoos the birds away with a rolled up newspaper. At the end, it turns out that he was feeding termites and keeping the birds away. But why? And what termites could devour house after house overnight? Don't fantasy stories require some internal logic?

Cooper insists that something is getting into his mind, but Dr. Morse insists it's just a "Hallucination." Eventually, Cooper insists that his mind is being searched by aliens who are investigating the possibility of invasion. The doctors thinks he's nuts, but one night an alien force exits Cooper's mind and heads back to outer space to report that humans are completely irrational and Earth is worthless to invade. The doctors agree that Cooper thinks he's the only one who can save humanity--no wonder he's been in the State Hospital for the Insane for years!

Now that's an ending I did not see coming. What a relief! This story is in the vein of others we've read, such as the one where aliens take over a dog and think it's a representative of the highest form of life on Earth (which it actually may be). Still, any glimmer of originality or entertainment is welcome at this point.

A bolt of lightning zaps a dinosaur egg that had been lying in a cave for a very long time. A T-Rex hatches and grows to its full size. It encounters "The Enemy," another great big dino that defeats it in battle, and it limps back to the cave from whence it came. On a movie set, two workmen wonder where the other dino came from that just battled their robot dino.

This one definitely elicited a groan and Manny Stallman's dinosaurs are nothing special.

Richard has invented a machine that he calls an electronic receiver. It can look into the past, see what someone was doing, and retrieve things thought lost from their "Hiding Place!" His no good gambler cousin Herb sees dollar signs and uses the machine to find out where a fortune was hidden a decade before. Herb rounds up some other gamblers and they all head to the Brazilian jungle to get the loot, but Richard discovers that the machine has been used. He finds Herb with the aid of the machine, retrieves the map, and destroys it and the receiver, leaving Herb in the jungle with three angry crooks. If the rest of this issue (save "Hallucination") weren't so bad, this story would be the worst, but it benefits from the bad company. Art and writing are well below average.-Jack

Next Week...
Blink and You'll Miss the 
Atlas Career of Richard Bassford