Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 151: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Horror

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 136

February 1957 Part II

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Mystery Tales #50

Cover by Bill Everett

"The House of Evil!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★

"The Little Black Box" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Drawings of Doom!" (a: Ted Galindo) ★

"The Man With Two Lives!" (a: ? & Vince Colletta) ★

"When the World Vanished!" (a: Gray Morrow) ★

"The Pyramid's Secret" (a: John Forte) ★★

Con man Len Conry talks a waitress into robbing old man Ellis, a hermit who lives on a hill and is rumored to be hiding sixty grand in his mansion. Though she's hesitant, Jean goes through with the plan and they hold the old man at gunpoint but the final outcome is not to Len's liking. "The House of Evil!" has some nice Torres work but its script (and predictable twist) are strictly low-grade.

Atlas's most popular prop stars in "The Little Black Box," about an inventor who whips up a "thought suggester" that bends others' wills to the man who holds the gizmo. As one does, our hero Jeffrey sells the box to a car salesman for five million bucks (!) and then watches as the shyster uses his newfound power to influence passersby to purchase the latest expensive jalopy. The sales go through the roof but the plant can't keep up with the demand and the population riots. Hilarity ensues. This is one really silly yarn. Even more fatuous is "Drawings of Doom!," which tells the tale of armed robber "Weasel" Watson, who flees the scene of the crime in a stolen vehicle and comes across a remote gas station ripe for the picking. He heads inside but is dumbfounded by what he sees: an artist at an easel taking suggestions from a crowd of hillbillies. What's so amazing about that, you say? The drawings come to life! So Weasel orders the man to draw him a gun, then a new face, then a sack of cash, and then... his orders begin to rile the designer and that's it for Weasel! 

Stilted dialogue and a dried up old prune of a plot sink "The Man with Two Lives!," the saga of a man who faces life in an insane asylum for a crime his evil side committed. His business partner, who was just as guilty of the embezzlement, is as happy as a pig in the mud about the circumstances until the evil twin pays him a visit.

While out fishing, Jack Colley feels the earth move under his feet and suddenly everything around him has changed. His friends are gone, there's no traffic on the highway and, when he gets home, his wife has disappeared. Instead of thanking his luck, Jack panics. Then his wife reappears, cleaning out a flower pot. Just like that, Jack realizes what's going on: every once in a while, the world needs to be cleaned and the entire human population is transported to another world while the dusting commences. Once everything is spick and span, earthlings are returned to their regular sofas. The final panel of "When the World Vanished!," where Jack has his outlandish epiphany, is good for a couple of giggles but otherwise this three-pager is forgettable.

Last up this time out is "The Pyramid's Secret," wherein an archaeological expedition finds the doorway to an ancient pharaoh's tomb. There they discover the boat he was set to use to discover the new world (why it's way down deep in a pyramid is anyone's guess). What the boys don't know is that one of their crew thinks he's the pharaoh himself (and his name is King!), reincarnated in a strapping strong new body. Compared to most of the junk in this issue, this one's not all that bad, but compare its average John Forte art to that fetching cover. No comparison.-Peter

Mystic #56

Cover by John Severin

"While the City Slumbers!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★

"Locked in the Silent Room" (a: Mac L. Pakula) ★

"The Thing Behind the Wall!" (a: Mort Drucker) ★★

"The Man Who Went Too Far" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★★

"The Fish Man!" (a: Bob Powell) ★

"The Revenge of Kah Ming!" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★★

Ted is tired of hearing his pop tell his fantastic tale over and over but, for old Dan, it's cathartic to get it out of his system now and then. And he probably likes the attention. Decades before, Dan had come across a group of people on a remote, dusty road who identified themselves as "the molemen." These pale, angry souls revealed to Dan that they intended to take over the world and he was just the guy to help them. They informed him that they would commence their attack on Dan's birthday, April 18th, and if he didn't aid them it would be bad news.

Not wanting to give the world away to a bunch of pasty-faced rat men, Dan raced around to his father, his priest, the authorities, his senator, his garbageman, anyone who would listen, but they all mocked him and told him to grow up. When April 18th rolls around, Dan climbs to the top of the bell tower and begins ringing just when the molemen saunter into town. But fate has a way of stepping in and scotching the best of plans. A giant wall of fire rises up behind our hero and the mole people scurry off, tails between their legs. A day that will live in history: April 18th, 1906, the day of the San Francisco earthquake! Fanciful yarn with some good Reinman art is notable for its mention of "molemen," a prop Stan and Jack might have remembered five years later.

On the run from the cops, a thief ducks into his brother's house for assistance. You see, brother Paul has been working on a "suspended animation pill" and this dolt will try anything to get away from the fuzz. He strongarms Professor Paul into handing over the pill and then enters the "time-capsule" while hearing his brother tell him he'll get what he deserves on the other end. Centuries pass and no one seems to notice that capsule sitting in the lab corner even as new buildings rise around it. The criminal awakens and hears voices outside the capsule informing him that this is a germ-free world and he's carrying really bad microbes; he'll remain inside until they can figure out what to do with him. There are so many logic problems with "Locked in the Silent Room": how did Professor Paul know what would be waiting for his brother hundreds of years in the future? How does the egghead even know this pill will work? How does this "time-capsule" thingie remain undisturbed for hundreds of years? Why are there so many brilliant Atlas scientists who resemble train conductors?  Why am I wasting so much time on this one? 

Big-game hunter Al Powell stumbles onto the ninth wonder of the world while roaming through the African jungles: a friendly giant! The mammoth man explains that once he was a brilliant medic who couldn't stand to be so short so he stopped taking patients and sat at home all day watching reruns of The Jack Benny Show.  During commercials, the doc would work on one of those Atlas serums that increases the growth glands, but he discovered he was shy just one essential herb, one found only in the darkest corners of the African jungle.

The formula did indeed increase his growth but didn't stop at the advertised 6' 5" and our hapless physician was soon looking down at the treetops. After this lengthy exposition, Al Powell informs his new friend he intends to take him back to the States and make millions off him. The giant is having none of that and, in a weird, hazy segment of panels, becomes drowsy and finds himself back at the natives' village. The chief explains that the giant provides medical assistance to the natives (despite the absence of a really big stethoscope). It's then that Al Powell finds startling clarity and swears no one will ever bother his giant buddy again. Yeah, the script for "The Thing Behind the Wall!" is as captivating as a Monday night Dolphins-Panthers game but there's the Mort Drucker art to pull you through. I'd love to know what these Atlas artists, the ones who truly put their all into each panel, felt when they received their story outlines for the month.

Young psychiatrist/brilliant inventor Peter Fulton has been working on a "solar battery" headband for nutjobs at the asylum. Fulton has discovered that "if blocked mental passages could be cleared, it would eliminate certain forms of insanity" and an experiment with a violent looney tune justifies his belief. But what would happen if the battery were attached to a "normal" brain? Faster than you can say "I'm doing it for mankind," Peter pops a battery into his forehead and discovers he can read the thoughts of those around him. On the brink of morphing into "The Man Who Went Too Far," a power-mad dictator who can rule the world, Peter is stripped of his powers by the woman he loves, a gorgeous nurse with huge arms named Anne. The world is safe once more. Here's another one that's worth reading just for the hilarity; Robert Q. Sale's art is all over the map, ranging from perfectly adequate to almost satirical (nurse Anne has a 3-inch waist, a 38-inch bust, and a giraffe neck), and the plot is fun and dopey at the same time. Embrace the inane, I always say.

"The Fish Man!" is a truly dreadful three-pager about a fish store owner who begins looking like his stock; hilariously, a couple of thieves decide that a fish store is the perfect place for a holdup and break in but are scared away by the owner's appearance. I'm sure that, when paroled, these criminals moved to Gotham and stuck up bowling ball manufacturers. This one smells like mackerel left in the kitchen garbage and forgotten for a week. 

Master criminal Baron Georgi Mirov has to stop to get his eyeglass prescription filled before taking on the big job he and his henchmen have planned. Very soon, Mirov discovers that the glasses give him a window into the future; he sees the entire heist go down and it's a rousing success. One of his goons accidentally breaks Mirov's glasses and he heads back to the Oriental lens crafter who made them. He asks (rather roughly) how the man devised such a special set of peepers and he's told that the lenses were made from the glass of a crystal ball. Mirov nabs the orbuculum and exits stage right, giggling merrily all the way to his hideout. The next night, the planned robbery takes place but Mirov is in for a surprise. Rather than search for words, I've chosen to reprint the last set of panels of "The Revenge of Kah Ming!" with its uproarious twist and long exposition. You gotta love a four-page fantasy where the villain delays a big heist to visit his optician. I gotta say this issue forced quite a few chuckles from this bored old funny book reader. That's worth something.-Peter

Mystical Tales #5

Cover by Carl Burgos (?)

"The Taboo!" (a: Al Williamson) ★★

"Meeting at Midnight!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Those Whom Time Forgot!" (a: Syd Shores) ★1/2

"The Stone Figure?" (a: John Tartaglione) ★

"Warning of Doom!" (a: Dick Ayers) ★1/2

"All of a Sudden, He's Gone!" (a: Manny Stallman) ★1/2

In the South American jungle, Rex Ross is looking for gold and diamonds when he happens upon the annual procession of the Bororo Indians to the palace of "The Taboo!" Each year the Indians take their most valuable possessions and deposit them in a hidden palace. Rex paints himself red, dons a loincloth, and joins the procession, certain that the palace will yield enough wealth to make him rich. He finds himself trapped inside the sealed palace for a year and, when the Indians return for their annual visit, he sneaks out with a bagful of treasure, only to discover that the prized possessions are coconuts and beads.

Al Williamson's art is the only thing worthy of attention in this story, which features the unfortunate sight of Rex painting his body "with a paste made of the red earth and water" to fit right in with the natives. I was expecting some sort of creature to frighten him during the year he spends in total darkness inside the palace, but no--he survives, grows a beard, manages to find enough food and water to keep going, and learns that one man's treasure is another man's trash.

After Jerry Adams has a tooth cavity filled by mistake with radioactive material, he can hear what other people are thinking. In a cafeteria, he hears a man thinking about a safe robbery that netted $20,000, so Jerry blackmails the man for $5000 and the man says he can't pay till tomorrow. On a bus, Jerry hears a man thinking about a forged check and blackmails him for $5000, but this man also can't pay till tomorrow. Jerry's newfound power leads him to blackmail another man for $1000, but (yet again) the man can't pay till tomorrow. A fourth victim has a pocketful of diamonds and can't come up with cash till--you guessed it--tomorrow. Finally, after a "Meeting at Midnight!," Jerry follows a man who he thinks plans to shoot someone. Unexpectedly, Jerry follows him right into the police station and learns that some of the men he tried to blackmail were actually cops thinking about their cases! Jerry is arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years' hard labor.

That's the best summary I can come up with for this muddled mess, where Robert Sales's unappealing art and tendency to draw people who look similar to each other makes it difficult to parse out exactly what happened. I went over it a couple of times and I'm still not sure who's who.

Four hundred years ago, an earthquake caused the city of Kalsburg to sink into a chasm 1000 feet below the Earth's surface. In the centuries that followed, the town's residents forgot about the surface world, believing it to be only a legend. Hugo Beder thinks the world exists far above and sets out to climb up and prove he's right. Reaching the surface, Hugo finds himself in a contemporary city, and when he's hungry he buys a meal with gold from his pack. Crooks take Hugo for a plane ride to show him the sights and, up in the air, they try to steal his gold. He rebels and the plane crash lands; when police threaten to impound his gold, Hugo makes his way back to the town where "Those Whom Time Forgot!" are better off thinking the dangerous surface world is just a legend.

Syd Shores makes the odd choice to draw Hugo to look like Prince Valiant, and it's somewhat humorous to see the contact between him and the modern-day crooks and cops. Still, the story, like so many others by Carl Wessler, is so complicated and convoluted that it doesn't fit well in its four-page slot and ends up seeming hurried and unsatisfying.

Morse doesn't believe his young daughter Julie when she claims to dance with a stone lion in the garden in the moonlight. He finally convinces her that it was all in her imagination. They walk away and we see a tear being shed by the lion. "The Stone Figure?" is poorly drawn by John Tartaglione and never gets up a head of steam before it's all over.

Dan and Ruth Mason are on a train heading into New York City to see a show. Dan sees a creepy man get on at one stop and sees the same man get on at two more stops! When the same man gets on at a fourth stop, Dan decides it's a "Warning of Doom!" and begs the conductor to stop the train. Dan pulls the emergency brake and the train screeches to a halt, barely avoiding a disastrous collision with a heavy truck. Dan talks to reporters and he and Ruth miss the show, which features a four-man act called the Dancing Simpson Quads, who look exactly like the four men who boarded the train!

This story reads like a Ripley's Believe it or Not! anecdote eight up to the final panel, which comes out of nowhere. Who are the Dancing Simpson Quads? What is a dancing quad exactly? Quadruplets? Did Dan see four brothers who looked exactly alike get on the train at four different stations and this had nothing to do with the near-miss? I guess it's irony of a sort.

In 1650, an inventor named Roger Macklin dreams of horseless carriages but is far ahead of his time. His boss, chemist Edward Latham, gives him a formula that will send him 300 years into the future. He also gives Roger an antidote. Roger drinks the potion, and "All of a Sudden, He's Gone!" and no one in 1650 remembers him. In 1950, he designs and builds a fantastic new car and, by 1955, he's rich and famous. Soon, unscrupulous investors take over the company and Roger grows broke and desperate. He accidentally drinks the antidote and is sent back to 1650, where he picks right back up with his old life. In 1956, no evidence remains that he ever existed.

It's not a great story, but the saga of Roger Macklin is hardly the weakest one in this disappointing issue. Manny Stallman's art is adequate and he draws the crooked syndicate man who takes over Roger's car company to look like the Penguin, with a particularly long nose.-Jack

Spellbound #32

Cover by Carl Burgos

"When the Finger Points" (a: Bob Powell) ★★1/2

"Almost Human!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★1/2

"The Prisoner!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★

"Something in the Bottle" (a: John Tartaglione) ★1/2

"Where the Sorcerer Stalks" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

"The Last Seconds of Ken Stewart" (a: Mac Pakula) ★

Young Billy Harris comes home upset and his father, Joe, convinces the boy to explain why. It seems Billy was walking around, pretending to be a sheriff, and when he pointed his finger at a man with a facial scar and said "Bang!," the man disappeared! The same thing happened twice more with two more scarred men. Joe insists that Billy try it on him and, fortunately, Dad does not disappear. Joe tells Billy it was all in his imagination, but why do they hear a news report on the radio about three scarred terrorists who inexplicably vanished?

Bob Powell makes "When the Finger Points" a fun read and I did not know what was going to happen, which counts for something. The final twist has been done to death, but it doesn't ruin four nicely-drawn pages.

An anthropologist named Anton Drew discovers bones in South Africa that suggest an "Almost Human!" race existed alongside the early ancestors of man. After presenting his findings, he returns to South Africa to look for evidence of what happened to this ancient race. Little does he know that they survived, unchanged, and recently drilled to the surface, where they plan to destroy mankind before it can destroy them. Too bad Drew sets off a blast that starts a chain reaction in the underground atomic piles the creatures use to power their advanced city; the ensuing cataclysm ensures that they'll again be buried for centuries!

Two decent stories in a row! This one is actually interesting, not to mention the detailed, attractive art by Angelo Torres, who seems to have taken his Atlas assignments more seriously than some other artists I won't mention.

Matt Caine returns home to the town he hates with just a dollar in his pocket. He confronts a scientist named Morton who has learned how to make Manna, a miraculous food that tastes like whatever the person eating it desires. Matt bites into a piece and it takes like steak, just as he hoped, so he takes the piece and leaves. An hour later, the Manna in Matt's hand is rotten and when he enters a diner and orders coffee and doughnuts, they taste horrible. Matt returns to Morton's shack and discovers he's now "The Prisoner!" of his own greed and gluttony, since once someone eats Manna, no other food tastes good and Manna can only be made and eaten in the rundown village.

The uncredited author is doing something interesting here, calling the food Manna after the miraculous food that appeared to Moses and the Israelites in the desert and christening the greedy man at the center of the story Caine, which is awfully close to the Bible's first murderer who can't escape his crime. The Winiarski art is average, but the story has a little more substance to it than much of the Atlas dreck.

Michael Scanlon is unhappy because pretty Peg prefers a polite, tidy, gainfully employed milquetoast named Harold over the rude, scruffy, penniless Michael. Walking through an alley, Michael finds a bottle and pulls the cork to release a genie, who says he can only grant one wish a year. Michael wishes that Peg would be swept off her feet for him and his wish immediately comes true. However, Peg tells Michael he has a year to change his ways. Scanlon gets a job and cleans up his act, working hard in the daytime and relaxing in his sloppy digs at night. The year passes and Michael rushes home to find that Peg has tidied up his place, including throwing out the dirty old bottle. So much for the second annual wish for wealth!

Another lighthearted and fairly well told story! "Something in the Bottle" suffers from the art by John Tartaglione, but I liked the last panel, which shows the bottle lying in the junkyard with the genie unable to escape.

In Medieval England, the people of Oxbury believe that a house near town is the place "Where the Sorcerer Stalks," since they hear strange sounds coming from inside and believe the wizard can make wood talk and glass come to life. The people burst in to discover that the so-called sorcerer claims to be an inventor who has discovered electricity, TV, and radio. The villagers set fire to the hut and the sorcerer and his son lament that the townsfolk are not yet ready for such inventions. John Forte's strips all look alike to me--a mix of wooden poses and slightly goofy expressions on his characters' faces. This one isn't worth a second glance.

Mr. Crane accuses his employee, Ken Stewart, of stealing $30K from the office safe. Ken denies it, but when Crane calls the cops, Ken runs down eighteen flights of stairs and emerges outside. Dodging cops, Ken runs into another tall building and takes the elevator to the eighteenth floor. The cops follow, so Ken climbs out a window onto the ledge. He loses his footing and, as he falls, he seems to fade from sight! He finds himself back in the office as a phantom, one day before, and sees that Crane simply misplaced the $30K. In "The Last Seconds of Ken Stewart," before he goes splat on the pavement, Ken types out a note explaining where the money is. He reappears in mid-fall, is saved by a net, and Crane rushes up to apologize, having found his note.

For an issue that started out promisingly, this one ends with a splat on the pavement. Wessler's script is terrible (again) and Pakula's art is not even at the level of something a child would bring home for Mom to hang on the fridge.-Jack

Next Week...
Can the Talents of 
Angelo Torres Save Us
From Boredom?