The Marvel/Atlas
Horror Comics
Horror Comics
Part 117
August 1956 Part IV
by Peter Enfantino
and Jack Seabrook
Cover by Carl Burgos
"The Uninvited!" (a: Gray Morrow) ★★
"The Sinister One" (a: Joe Certa) ★1/2
"The Traveling Companion" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★
"The Green Man" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★
"She Never Returned!" (a: John Tartaglione) ★★
"The Day the Earth Froze" (a: Mike Sekowsky) ★★
From his "abandoned house on the edge of town," brilliant sociopath Albert Manning uses his inter-dimensional change-O machine (which seems to be handed down from title to title) to jump back and forth from our world to one that is loaded with gold and rubies. Smelling riches beyond his wildest desires, Manning sets out to bring the booty back with him but, while he's in Dimension X, his house is torn down and he can't get back. Oh, and the locals want to string him up for all his pilfering!
"The Uninvited!" stars yet another one of those eggheads who builds a machine that could make him a zillionaire, but he sets his sights lower. The highlight is the early work by Gray Morrow. You can just tell there's something special about to break out. Luckily, we have sixteen more Morrow stories to salivate over in the next couple of years.
Small time fighter Rod Mason is approached by Barko, a manager who believes he can transform Rod into the champion of the world, but it's going to take time. Barko trains Mason, holding him in an almost hypnotic grip, and allows the fighter nothing else in life. Mason finally gets that crack at the #1 belt, but by that time he's so burned out (and newfound love in the form of sexy Alice doesn't hurt) that he takes a dive. The end. What's a straight boxing yarn doing in the pages of Uncanny Tales? Who knows? Perhaps in an early draft of "The Sinister One," Barko was a Martian. As it is, the hypnosis angle is not emphasized at all.
While scouring the world for juicy uranium mines, Thomas Drake befriends John Simms, a man with the same hobby and vocation. But what's really odd is that whenever Simms and Drake positively identify a rich mine, the uranium goes flat, leaving it void of all of its nutritional value. Without its radiation, the world's governments cannot build nuclear bombs. So it's no surprise when Simms reveals that he's a friend of humanity from outer space, here to put an end to war. With Simms's hopeful message still ringing in their ears, the higher-ups decide to end nuclear testing. "The Traveling Companion" certainly has a hopeful message, but it's delivered in the usual clunky Atlas style, decked out in the usual drab Winiarski pencils.
The octopus proves to be a greater match than either had guessed and Ray is trapped; Lou leaves him there, happy as a pig in a sty that he'll now be the only man on Earth who possesses a black pearl earring.
Guilt gets the better of Lou in the end and he wishes upon the pearl that he'd give anything to have his best pal back. The pearl disappears and Ray shows up at his door, without any knowledge of the peril his best friend put him in. "The Green Man" of the title is, of course, jealousy, and let this story be a lesson to all you who favor gems over chums. In the pre-code version, Ray would have shown up at Lou's door missing a few body parts and eager for vengeance. Our loss.
"She Never Returned!" is a cute three-pager about a couple who meet and fall in love while swimming at a beach. Laura has a secret she's afraid to share with Josef (she's a mermaid!), but Josef has a whale of a secret himself. Nice, sharp graphics courtesy of John Tartaglione.
Professors Royo and Gola discover an amazing amount of life living in a dust particle when viewed through a microscope. Meanwhile, Earth begins slipping back into the ice age, the sun disappearing for hours on end. With apocalypse staring them right in the face, the scientists take advice from a nice old lady who suggests that they heat up the Earth with "atomic furnaces." The suggestion wins the Golden Wonka ticket and Earth is saved. But what we earthlings don't know is that we are all on that particle of dust belonging to alien Professors Royo and Gola. There's nothing original or surprising about the script for "The Day the Earth Froze," but there are a few funny bits that allow it to be entertaining. One of them would have to be the gigantic magnet built to draw the Earth towards the Sun. Neat trick, that. This was Mike Sekowsky's last job for the Atlas SF/horror titles.-Peter
Cover by Bill Everett
"Where's Everything Going?" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★
"The Secret of Cabin 13!" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★
"The Imperfect Crime!" (a: Bob McCarthy) ★
"Dilemma!" (a: Ted Galindo) ★★1/2
"Herbert!" (a: Tony Mortellaro) ★
"The Man from Nowhere!" (a: John Romita) ★1/2
Professor Alfred Marlow has a theory he wants to test... he's convinced that "gravity was developed to compensate for something else that had once linked the Earth and the moon!" Marlow becomes obsessed with finding the physical link that once joined the two big rocks and he's sure it's somewhere on Earth. Sure enough, with the help of a special viewer, the egghead finds the structure hidden in the Grand Canyon and hauls it into space.
Four escaped cons discover "The Secret of Cabin 13!" What's the secret? Well, it seems like they can't leave. Every time they hit the road, it leads them right back to the same lodge. Turns out, they're back in prison because, as the warden explains, "no man can escape from himself!" Yeesh. Dull script and lifeless artwork. In "The Imperfect Crime," yet another goofy, quasi-brilliant sorta-scientist invents a gizmo that stops time and every person on the planet in their tracks and his immediate thought is that he needs to rob a bank in order to fatten his savings. Not sure why. It fascinates me that these Atlas scientists always work on fancy machines that serve a singular purpose (freeze oceans, transform wheat into gold, give Yoko a singing voice) without any kind of motive. They're just doing it either for monetary gain or for the advancement of mankind. I was more interested in whether everyone's heart kept beating.
Yep, the gimmick has been used almost as many times as the commie dictator who's actually a Martian, but I have to give "Dilemma!" a little more credit than the rest of the dream world fantasies, since at the finish we don't even know if this is a dream! No explanation is given for the sudden leap centuries back other than "Marks really wants to be a gladiator!" and in the past he stays. There's a not-so-clever twist in the final panel that's also seen plenty of mileage, but the fact that Marks has a crisis of faith in the middle of a fight to the death is special. Also special is the work of Ted Galindo, whose work falls into that Williamson/Krenkel category if you squint every couple of panels. Galindo would only contribute 14 times to the Atlas post-codes.
Scorned by beautiful Gilda and informed that she only loves Frank, Arthur decides it's a good time to test the Inter-Dimensional Portal Intruder he's just finished, so he invites Frank over and sends him... somewhere else. You don't really need to know how "The Man from Nowhere!" journeys from there as all the fun ends when you get to the panel where you find out this dope is so smart he's built a dimensional transporter. It's all downhill from there.-Peter
Cover by Carl Burgos
"The Man Who Couldn't Be Touched!" (a: Bob Forgione & Jack Abel) ★★1/2
(r: Weird Wonder Tales #14)
"The Captive Brain!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★1/2
"Fight for Life!" (a: Manny Stallman) ★1/2
(r: Giant-Size Chillers #2)
"The Spy" (a: Bill Walton) ★1/2
(r: Monsters on the Prowl #29)
"When the Sun Fell Down!" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★★
"The Green Man!" (a: Al Williamson & Roy Krenkel (?))
(r: Where Monsters Dwell #38) ★★1/2
A brilliant mathematician named Abel Harris figures out that atomic war is coming soon and invents a force field that will protect anyone inside it, but his fellow scientists call him selfish and refuse to participate. The war comes and Harris retreats inside his dome; after twenty years alone, he wonders what it looks like outside. To his surprise, when the force field dissolves, he sees that a beautiful, futuristic city has been built! He leaves the dome and learns that a new serum was discovered three months after war broke out. It lets people live for 1000 years and the war was ended because life became too precious to waste. Harris begs for a dose of the serum but is told that it doesn't work on anyone over thirty!
Despite the climax that comes out of left field and seems about a decade early ("Don't trust anyone over thirty" wasn't uttered till 1964), "The Man Who Couldn't Be Touched!" is an intriguing story with above-average art by Forgione and Abel. Page two is especially nice, with a panel where Harris walks in front of the giant word "ALONE" and, a few panels later, a skeleton with sword and shield represents "WAR"; I've reproduced it here.
After Ralph Whipple bumps his head in the shower, he can suddenly see into the future. He wants to use his new talent for good but his boss, Arnold Brill, wants to make a killing in the stock market. After Ralph gives Brill a bad tip, the boss socks Ralph in the jaw and his power is gone.
Ed Winiarski's art on "The Captive Brain!" looks like what we'd see in a strip in the back of a comic in the 1940s and Wessler's script is by the numbers, as usual. If I never read another story where someone hits their head and gets a power that goes away when they hit their head again, I'll be satisfied.
Joey and Ed may be brothers, but Ed captains the Sarah Sue, the ship they jointly own, and he lords it over his brother. A storm comes up and everyone must abandon ship as passengers and crew "Fight for Life!" The passengers in the lifeboat look on with disgust as Ed appears to selfishly take the sole life preserver from his brother, but when the storm clears and all are safe it turns out that Ed knocked Joey down, put the life preserver on him, and threw him over the side to save him. Fortunately, both survived, and Joey owes his life to his brother.
As I read this story, I expected it to go in a direction like "The Cold Equations" or Lord Jim; I never expected a happy ending where the brothers reconcile! The odd climax is pure, post-code Atlas, but it was such a surprise that I liked it. I did not like Manny Stallman's hideous art, however.
Carg is an alien sent to Earth to scout the planet as a possible new home for his race of blue creatures. He assumes human form and learns how to act like an Earthman--get into an argument and then relax with a cigarette. Back on the asteroid where his race lives in exile, Carg prepares to deliver the news of how easy it will be to take over Earth. He relaxes, lights a cigarette, and the methane gas in the atmosphere erupts in an explosion.
Three pages seem long for "The Spy," a dreadful story with dreadful art by Bill Walton.
The Great Milo is a hypnotist who amazes crowds with his ability to create mass illusions, such as making his audience think they're all upside down. Unfortunately, Milo is also a crook, and he's arrested, tried, and sentenced to Devil's Island. In the penal colony, his fellow prisoners request that Milo use his talent to hoodwink the guards so that the prisoners can escape. Milo hypnotizes the guards into thinking that the sun is falling on them and the prisoners hop on a raft and escape to sea.
But wait! The moment "When the Sun Fell Down!" doesn't turn out to be such a boon when the prisoners are taken up into a spaceship run by aliens wearing silly pink outfits. Milo quickly hypnotizes them and makes them deposit the humans back on Devil's Island. Little did the convicts know that the aliens had planned to take them to their wonderful planet, where everyone is free and happy!
Who is "The Green Man!" who replaced Lewis, the first man to successfully pilot a rocket ship to the moon and back? The man with blond hair and green skin insists that he is Lewis and answers every question asked of him, but how can the green skin be explained, especially since he insists that there is no life on the moon? Major Anders is determined to solve the mystery, so he blasts off for the moon. He arrives, finds no life, and heads back, only to look in a mirror and see that his skin has turned green! He hides when he gets back to Earth, but all is well: Lewis's skin is back to normal and he explains that the green color disappears after 24 hours.
The script is nonsense and, if we gave separate stars for script and art, this tale would rate a one. However, the art is four stars all the way, with Al Williamson producing four gorgeous pages that could fit in an EC SF comic...if the story made any sense.-Jack
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