Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 91: Atlas/ Marvel Horror

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 76

December 1954 Part II

+ The Best Stories of 1954

by Peter Enfantino

Mystery Tales 24

Cover by 

“The Lady in Glass!” (a: Paul Reinman) ★1/2

“Case Closed!” (a: John Forte) ★★

“Down on the Farm!” (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

“The Stone Heads!” ★★1/2

“Cast of Characters!” (a: Jay Scott Pike) ★★1/2

Harry the panhandler (who feigns blindness to elicit sympathetic donations) puts a penny in the machine to get his fortune told by “The Lady in Glass!” but no card is forthcoming. Through a series of very strange events, he learns (from the machine itself) that every fortune given will actually come true. To test this proclamation, Harry follows a man who has gotten a card that reads “Your bets and investments will pay off!” First stop, the horse races, where Harry bets all his dough on the same nag as the man he’s tailing. The horse pays off six grand. Harry next puts twenty grand down on an obscure uranium stock that later nets him millions. But, of course, bad luck always evens out the good when we’re dealing with a dishonest person. I could have predicted this was going to be a dog, but I did have a good laugh when Harry the panhandler brought out twenty grand in green (rather than rolls of nickels) to lay down for his Wall Street debut. 

Nikal Illivitch of the Soviet Secret Police makes it his life goal to track down any traitor, no matter how slight the sin, and bring that person to justice. While walking from his office one day, he observes a man dressed in an old Czarist uniform. Knowing that the wardrobe of ancient Russia is illegal, he tells the man to halt. Alarmed, the traitorous dog runs out into traffic and is killed. Illivitch investigates the dead man and discovers he has come through some kind of time portal from the 19th Century. The more Illivitch digs, the farther back he goes. And then poor Nikal discovers himself back in czarist Russia. “Case Closed!” is this month’s “red scare” tale and a more needlessly confusing one has never been told. There’s no reasoning behind the time switcher other than the fact that Nikal Illivitch is a mean sumbitch. 

Old man Dorn catches Kenny Throgs trying to break into his house and blackmails the young thief. If Throgs will work for free, the old farmer won’t say a word to the sheriff. But Dorn’s penny-pinching ways begin to wear Throgs down. When the farmer’s horse dies, he puts Kenny at the front of the plow and that breaks what little sanity Kenny had left. The revenge twist in “Down on the Farm!” is one of the silliest and most contrived ever cooked up for funny books.

A writer researching a book on Easter Island discovers that “The Stone Heads!” have stone bodies beneath the earth. The giants are aliens waiting for the arrival of their armada to conquer Earth. “Then the ships came!” That’s the last line of “The Stone Heads!,” an imaginative little four-pager that obviously stuck in Stan’s brain since he rewrote it five years later as “I Was Trapped by the Things on Easter Island!” Appearing in Tales to Astonish #5, the story featured art by Jack Kirby. 

The narrator of “Cast of Characters!” is a horror writer for the comics and he’s going to tell us how to concoct the perfect horror story. Take one vampire, a deformed butler, an angry mob, and a delightful climactic twist and, so he says, you’ve got a winner. And so you do! A fun wink at the faithful reader (Stan Lee has a cameo as the funny book editor), “Cast of Characters!” nails every cliche right on the money.

Strange Tales 33

Cover by 

“A Giant There Was!” (a: Pete Tumlinson) ★★★1/2

“The Schemers” (a: Paul Reinman) ★★★

“Step Lively, Please” (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★

“The Spy!” (a: C.A. Winter) ★★★

“What is It?” (a: Al Eadeh) ★★★★

Kevin is obsessed with a mountain top in the Himalayas, a tor that appears to have a thinking giant perched atop. Local legends claim that the giant just suddenly appeared one day after a failed expedition attempt. Knowing he can’t live without discovering the secret, Kevin talks a group of his friends into accompanying him up the mountain and they make the grueling trek to the top. One by one, Kevin’s comrades give up and wish their friend the best. Finally, alone at the top, Kevin discovers that his clothes are shrinking… or he’s getting bigger. His friends, worried, soon follow but when they reach the apex, they spy a hideous, hairy giant and flee. Kevin, now too large to make the journey back down, sits on a rock and ponders his situation. In the village below, the locals marvel at the second giant.

“A Giant There Was” is a fabulous little fantasy tale with a sense of wonder and innocence that manages to deliver on its strong build-up. Kevin is that rarity in Atlas protagonists — simply a good man with a yen for discovery. There are no mistreated wives, no treasure chests, no bank robberies in his past, nary a vicious bone in his body. So when his fate befalls him, the reader can look at it two ways: poor Kevin is a victim of his own obsession or lucky Kevin was able to glimpse “behind the curtain” and discover the origin of a great mystery. And become part of that great mystery.

Paul dresses up corpses and makes them presentable at his Uncle Edgar's funeral parlor but the old man doesn't respect his nephew, working him ragged and constantly calling him “stupid.” Is it any wonder Paul's had it with the old man? Add in a nagging wife who's tired of scrounging and saving, along with a will naming Paul as Edgar's beneficiary, and you have a recipe for murder. Paul and his wife, Della, concoct the "perfect scheme”: Della has recorded herself screaming out for help on a phonograph record and plans to use it to scare the old man to death. She'll play dead for Uncle Edgar and when it comes time to bury her, Paul will switch coffins, with the phonograph in the casket to be buried and Della in the other one, ostensibly safe and sound. The plan goes off without a hitch at first but, as the two men are shoveling dirt onto the casket, a mournful wail for help rings out from the ground. Edgar grabs his chest and pitches forward. Paul calls the authorities and then heads back to the parlor to lift the lid and let Della know they're rich only to find... oops... he forgot to switch the coffins. He's staring at a phonograph! Yep, you can see that ending coming a mile away but that final panel, with Paul's look of astonishment, is a keeper. Paul Reinman's art is nothing fancy but, by golly, it gets the job done and evokes a noir-ish feel.

“Step Lively, Please” is a silly bit of nonsense about Hans Dorfman, a tightrope walker challenged to survive a walk across the courtyard outside his window, five stories above the ground. His adversary, Kurt, swears Hans will not survive the walk. The all-too-obvious twist is revealed when one of the gaping villagers gasps, remembering that the line “that Hans is walking goes across the courtyard… to Kurt’s window!” The last panel sees Kurt cutting through the rope. Some nice Winiarski graphics here. 

In “The Spy!” those damned Russkies are at it again! This time they steal America’s brand-new super-duper top-secret explosive thingamajig right out from under our noses. The no-good Commies ship it back to Moscow for a meeting of the top brass, just waiting to see what it is they’ve stolen. A gopher interrupts the men in the middle of their unpacking to let them know the Pentagon is having an important news briefing. As the army announces they’ll be setting off their new gizmo, “the world’s most powerful remote-controlled explosive device,” the Russians hightail it for the exits. 3… 2… 1!  Most of these dumb Russkie tales (usually written by The Man) come off as simply dumb but “The Spy!” is a genuine delight, despite its preposterous climax where the United States Army appears to be so stupid they have no idea their new toy was kidnapped days before! But, hang on a moment, could our uncredited writer actually be hinting that the US knew the Soviets had our bomb and this will effectively kill the Cold War? Ponder that!

Physicist Lonzo Peer (a dead ringer for J Jonah Jameson) harbors mucho animosity towards his fellow research scientist, Jamison, as the colleague has "discovered and isolated Element 100 first!" Throwing caution to the wind, Peer vows to discover and isolate Element 101, bettering his nemesis by... um, 1. Unfortunately, Element 101 turns out to be a nasty little bastard, first cracking and breaking out of its hometown beaker and then refusing to slow down for wood, metal, or any other container. 101 seems to be rapidly reproducing itself as well. Panicking, Lonzo invites several esteemed scientists over to his lab to try to solve his dilemma and the men decide that freezing the goop is the only way to destroy it. They fly 101 up to The North Pole, dig a huge pit and bury the massive drum containing the corrosive plague. Slapping each other on the back for such a brilliant job, the men head back to civilization, not knowing that approximately 43 million miles away (as the crow flies), on Mars, Element 101 is alive and well and thriving in the cold! 

Typically, when a story begins with a jealous scientist, you usually get murder by microscope or some such nonsense. Here, the enraged scientist is introduced and then, rather than plot murder, delves right into the discovery of Element 101 and its ramifications. The story not only posits life, but also earth-like cities on Mars. “What Is It?” also has fabulously creepy art, great dialogue and captions, and a wonderfully downbeat ending. “Beware of the green slime... the ever-spreading Element 101!”  Yep, the story's another lift from the classic Lights Out radio episode, "Oxychloride X" (first aired in 1938), but the uncredited writer takes that idea and runs with it in another direction. One of my favorite Atlas sf stories from this era and part of one of the strongest single issues of Strange Tales ever published.

Uncanny Tales 27

“How Dry I Am” (a: Ross Andru) ★1/2

“House!” (a: Mort Lawrence) ★★★1/2

“The Whispering Wind!” (a: John Forte) ★1/2

“The Little Man” (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★1/2

“History” (a: Mort Meskin & George Roussos) ★★

Ancient Indian Gods are to blame for the water turning solid in a small mountain town in “How Dry I Am,” which suffers from cliched characters and some cringe-worthy dialogue (“I’m the sheriff first and a geologist second!”). At least Ross Andru is at the top of his game (bug-eyed scientists and all).

A young couple buy an old “House!” and set to fixing it up, tearing down the grays and putting up a happy and friendly gloss. But the house doesn’t want a new face and strikes back at the couple violently. In the end, they decide to get out while they can. A simple, but genuinely disquieting funny book story, “House!” offers up no reasoning for the dwelling’s resentment to the well-meaning couple and our unease mounts as the pages turn. Mort Lawrence’s shadowy graphics have a Ghastly Graham Ingels look to them, perfect for a story about a killer house.

Reading Scientific American doubtless would be preferable to the dry and lifeless “The Whispering Wind!,” about flight engineer Ray Rynd, who discovers the wind is actually composed of fast-moving aliens. Ray is set to go to the government with his proof, but the weather creatures get wind (see what I did there?) of what the egghead has planned and send a hurricane to his house. 

There’s not much to “The Little Man” that we haven’t already seen before. The story of Mong, a “hero of the Red Army of Soviet China” who learns that all good commies are killing machines and shows his comrades that he’s taken his training very seriously, “The Little Man” comes off as nothing more than red scare propaganda, tantamount to reading a Russian funny book strip about how Americans eat their own children, but I can’t deny that the story has a brutal and powerful climax. Winiarski’s art rises above the sub-par script, especially in the chilling final panels where Mong murders his fellow communists in cold blood.

If his ancestor, King Alexis I was not assassinated one hundred years before, Alex Alexis would be king. Since monarchy is on Alex’s bucket list, the only possible solution is, of course, to climb into the time machine he has created and travel back in “History” to 19th-Century England to negate the killing. Alex gets a gun, takes the trip, and prepares to gun down the assassin. Alas, it’s all in his head and he ends up committing suicide beside the useless hunk of nuts and bolts he imagines is his time machine. 

THE BEST STORIES OF 1954

1 “Earth” (Journey Into Unknown Worlds #24)

2 “What Is It?” (Strange Tales #33)

3 “We Saw It Happen” (Strange Tales #29)

4 “Witchcraft” (Strange Tales #29)

5 “Voice From the Grave” (Marvel Tales #121)

6 “Proof Positive” (Uncanny Tales #20)

7 “Don’t Count Your Chickens!” (Uncanny Tales #26)

8 “Jessica!” (Astonishing #35)

9 “Satan Can Wait” (Journey Into Mystery #15)

10 “The Dead” (Adventures Into Weird Worlds #26)

11 “The Living and the Dead” (Mystic #26)

12 “The Cannibals” (Marvel Tales #121)

13 “The Slums” (Strange Tales #28)

14 “When Worlds Meet” (Adventures Into Weird Worlds #30)

15 “The Bum” (Strange Tales #31)

16 “A Giant There Was” (Strange Tales #33)

17 “The Machine Age” (Uncanny Tales #18)

18 “Who Walks With a Zombie?” (Mystic #27)

19 “The Day of the Vampire” (Spellbound #23)

20 “The Tiny Coffin” (Mystery Tales #22)

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