Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 179: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 164

June 1959

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Tales #69

Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule

"The Man in the Iron Box!" (a: Carl Burgos) ★

"Rocket Ship X-200" (a: Don Heck) ★1/2

(r: Fear #5)

"Journey Into Nowhere!" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★

(r: Fear #3)

"The World That Was Lost!" 

(a: Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule) ★1/2 

(r: Tower of Shadows #9) 

"The Threat from the 5th Dimension!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★

(r: Tower of Shadows #9) 

Brilliant but selfish scientist Phineas Stokes perfects a suspended animation coffin that will keep him alive and in a deep sleep for one million years. Phineas ain't digging the current affairs in the world and wants to wake up when war is over. Presumably, one million years will do the trick. Government officials come to Stokes's door and beg him to help them with defensive weapons, but Phineas sends them away, telling them he couldn't care less about America. 

The day arrives and Phineas Stokes takes his place in the Suspendo-Anima™ chamber to take his big sleep way below his home in a secret cavern. Meanwhile, far above his new bed, government leaders seem to get their acts together and join for world peace. War ends and, as the centuries roll away, earthlings spread their wings and depart for other planets in the galaxy. Earth becomes barren. "The Man in the Iron Box!" awakens (freshly shaved and his hair exactly the same length as when he laid his head down on his fluffy pillow) and roams the empty landscape until he's approached by a handful of commie-lookin' goons who explain that they're from a distant planet that loves war. Phineas is cuffed and taken prisoner, soon to be one of their "warriors."

Ironic, huh? We're reminded in the final panel (probably by Stan) that this is the fate of anyone who doesn't come to the aid of their government (presumably this means the Soviet government as well, but that's not stated), so if a Fed knocks on your door and asks you to build a better H-bomb, you should do it. I would have liked to know how this iron box stayed powered for one million years. Couldn't be solar and I would imagine the electric company shut Phineas's power off after three months of non-payment.

Charlie Brewster still hangs onto his old-fashioned "Rocket-Ship X-200," which can only do the Kessel Run in 25 parsecs, unlike the new speedboats the young whippersnappers fly, which zip through space so fast they would miss an incoming armada of warships from another planet. Whoops, I got ahead of myself, but then there's not much here to blab away about. Charlie saves Earth and the other space jockeys decide there's room for old-timers in the space lanes. I never saw that ending coming... well, okay, I did. Nice Heck work, though.

Two brilliant but naive scientists perfect a time machine, but not just any time machine. You see, in the Atlas present day, everyone is building a time machine (and we've certainly read each and every one of their stories, haven't we?), but this gizmo will be different in that it will be the first time machine that can travel into the future. So, Walt and Tom hop into their multi-million-dollar machine and hit the way forward for one thousand years. When they step out, they're disheartened to see a tribe of cavemen wandering around with clubs.

 "Damn, it's the Republican National Convention of 2024"  "We seem to have made a miscalculation in our time/space continuum figures and arrived one million years in the past!," utters Walt, and the two zoom back to present day. One of the cavemen spots the two visitors and hoofs it back to the tribe to explain to them (and us) that the first wave of time travelers has arrived and they have to be ready when the next bunch lands so they can explain to them that it's not really the past but the future cuz damn us all to hell we did it we finally did it and after the 8th world war the planet will be ruled by... men in loincloths. Love that final panel that explains everything to the eight-year-olds that didn't get it. We've yet to see a really good time machine story here in the Atlas zines, so I'm thinking Bill and Al used them all up years before. Once you finish "Journey Into Nowhere!" you'll discover that at least the title is perfect.

Eccentric millionaire Linus Vermeer hires Captain Jordan and his crew to take him out to a part of the sea he's sure holds the lost city of Atlantis. The crew all think the bald, wheelchair-bound Linus is batty, especially when he orders the captain to drop anchor and says, "This is it!" However, the look on their faces turns from amused to astonished when Linus whips away his lap blanket and jumps into the sea, his huge flipper wagging in excitement. Holy cow, this guy's a mermaid! The climax, of course, is supremely predictable, there's no other way to end this thing, but I do find it cool that Linus is the spitting image of a certain wheelchair-riding mutant leader who'll pop up about four years in the future.

The finale, "The Threat from the Fifth Dimension!," does not chronicle the popular music group of the late 1960s but rather the horrifying story of a man who is attacked by demons in his sleep. Are these really creatures hoping to enter our world through our hapless hero's sleeping body or the hallucinations of a diseased brain? Either way, this is one sloppy read. The script meanders and Ditko's art looks like a mess of colorforms and empty backgrounds. Not what we've come to expect from the mystic dazzler. And that puts a bow on what could be the worst ever issue of Strange Tales.-Peter

Strange Worlds #4

Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule

"Journey to Jupiter!" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★★

"A Magician Walks Among Us!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★

"The Man Without a Past!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

"I Was the Changing Man!" 

(a: Al Williamson & Roy Krenkel) ★★

"Manhunt on Mars!" (a: John Buscema) ★★1/2

Far in the future, Earth has set up trade with every other planet... except Jupiter. We've done everything we could to convince the biggest planet that we only want peace and brotherly love. We've hurled rockets, H-bombs, VHS tapes of the Star Wars Christmas Special, everything we could at their force field, but nothing will allow us to "Journey to Jupiter!" and present our case to them that we are simply a peaceful race with only good will in mind.

Only ace astronaut Glenn Scott figures out a way to persuade the Jupiterians to let down their guard; he floats a giant black box just outside Jupiter's force field and the gullible dopes can't help themselves. They examine the box and find it completely empty. For some reason, this equates with peace in their minds and they turn off their defenses. Glenn lands and negotiates a fair-trade deal and the worlds co-exist in peace from then on.

There's so much stupid but entertaining nonsense here to unpack. Why would Earth decide that the best way to show we want to be friends is by destroying Jupiter's force field? One of my biggest chuckles came when Glenn returns from a business trip on Mercury. I wanted to see what kind of suit he'd wear to avoid going up up up in a puff of smoke. The Jupiterians turn out to be a friendly but gullible bunch, don't they? What if Glenn had planted a 40-trillion megaton Z-bomb in that box? I really wanted to see the climax we would have gotten in the pre-code days where Jupiter's leaders are putting pen to paper while Earth's armada arrives to invade and strip mine the planet of its minerals. Now that would have been a cool twist. 

In "A Magician Walks Among Us!," brilliant but goofy Professor Dolen builds a time machine and travels back to the days of King Arthur, convinced that Merlin the Magician was, in fact, a scientist who had traveled back in time. Dolen's machine blows up once he arrives in Camelot and he's stuck in the past. His search for Merlin is fruitless; no one recognizes the name. It's not long after that the prof realizes to his (but no one else's) shock that.... Holy Cow!... he's Merlin! Predictable but fun fantasy with Ditko back on his game. 

A man working on a rocket assembly line suddenly questions who he is and how he came down with amnesia. The bosses tell him to get back to work, but the man's anguish is too much and he breaks out of the building. After a full-scale manhunt, our hero is found and sent back to the android factory for reprogramming. The problem with "The Man Without a Past!" and most of these Atlas SF/F tales is that the writer (Carl Wessler?) sticks to a formula that's been done umpteen times already, so the reader can guess from the third or fourth panel where the veer in the road will take us. It doesn't help that the Reinman art is so awful that the characters all look alike; this from an artist whose pre-code art was in the top tier.

Brilliant but self-serving Duncan Sloan has invented a gizmo that allows him to "dematerialize" and enter the brain of another human being. Rather than use this machine for the betterment of mankind and maybe win the war against those stinkin' commies, Sloan decides to invade the body of Emerich Fabius, the richest man on the planet, in order to hang out on the bestest beaches of France and attract the hot chicks. 

When Fabius's tin mines are seized by the government and he goes bankrupt, Sloan decides it's a good time to exit, stage left... and lands in the brain of Hollywood idol Vincent Stalwart, he of vast riches and hot chicks galore. Unfortunately, with Stalwart's sex appeal come jealous jilted lovers and one of them puts a bullet in the screen star. Sloan once again has to make a quick exit without being sexually fulfilled and nary a trip to the bank.

After a third attempt at transferal goes belly up (this time with a South American dictator--what could go wrong there?), Sloan decides he's good enough being in the body of a seventy-something brilliant scientist and dumps his machine in the waste basket, never to be used again. "I Was the Changing Man!" has a few good laughs (for once, these are intentional) and some dazzling graphics from Al and Roy but has me once again asking the question, "Why do these eggheads turn to criminal acts rather than marketing their inventions for profitable gain?"

In 1993 Russia, political prisoner Anton Volocheck escapes a visit to the firing squad and hops aboard a rocket ship to Mars. Once on the red planet, he discovers its people are just as bloodthirsty as his communist compadres back home. He escapes death a second time and flies back to Earth to tell his government officials what he's found. He then escapes yet again and finds his way to America, where he finds an audience with our president. He informs the chief that he has told the Russkies that Mars is a friendly planet and will welcome the Reds with open arms. A clever twist is hard to find by 1959, let me tell you, so the dark and twisted reveal at the climax of "Manhunt on Mars!" had me smiling from ear to ear. This was the last Atlas art Buscema did before he quit comics and took up commercial art at a New York advertising firm. He would not return to Marvel until 1966. Who knows what Buscema could have done for Marvel superheroes from '61-'66 had he stuck around.-Peter

World of Fantasy #18

Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule

"The Creatures Who Captured Earth!" (a: Don Heck) ★1/2

"The Clock Strikes Never!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★1/2

"To Build a Robot!" (a: Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule)

(r: Tomb of Darkness #11) ★1/2

"The Man Who Talks to the Stars!" (a: John Forte) ★★

"Xom! The Menace from Outer Space!" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★1/2

One day in 1980, the sky is filled with flying saucers! Aliens land and announce that they're from the planet Cygnus and they're here to show Earthlings how to have everything they want without having to work. Soon, people across the planet are living blissfully, but an astronomer named John Warren is having none of it. He concludes that the aliens plan to conquer our planet after we become lazy. At first, no one believes Warren, but he sneaks aboard a flying saucer and finds a book that lays out the aliens' plan, just as he suspected. He convinces everyone to fight the invaders and the aliens are quickly defeated. They leave and Warren tells us to remain ever vigilant.

The twist ending to "The Creatures who Captured Earth!" is that there is no twist. This boring tale is utterly straightforward. I was hoping it would turn out to be a pre-Twilight Zone adaptation of "To Serve Man," but no such luck. Heck's art is nothing to get excited about.

Frank Hanes steals the time machine he's invented and travels to the year 2059, only to find futuristic police waiting for him. He sets the wayback machine for the past and escapes, recalling how he felt unappreciated at his job at World Electronics, even when he invented a time machine for them. Unfortunately, Frank gets caught in a loop and finds himself a younger man, applying for his job and starting all over again.

Ditko's art is fun, but "The Clock Strikes Never!" makes about as much sense as any other Atlas time travel tale. By the end, the hooded personification of Fate is narrating, speaking directly to the reader and informing us that Frank's future will be based on the choices he makes. I have to hand it to Ditko for taking a mundane idea and making it visually exciting. The young Frank looks an awful lot like Peter Parker.

An inventor named Dexter Scott visits Luther Worthington, a titan of the automobile industry, and proposes a stunning plan--for a million-dollar investment, he'll build a thinking robot! Tut tut, says Luther, it can't be done, and he shows Dexter the door. Alone in his office, Luther admits that he has always discouraged experimentation because he, a thinking robot, doesn't want competition!

Yawn. More clunky art from Kirby and Rule, more simpleminded stories. "To Build a Robot!" barely qualifies as having a plot.

A reported named Hank Johnson gets a hot tip and rushes to the park to meet "The Man who Talks to the Stars!" The man in question is sitting on a park bench, calmly feeding the squirrels and the pigeons. He whips out his communication device and places a call to the star named Ursa Volans, but Hank isn't buying. The man explains all about the distant star and takes out his tourist map, which leads him to the realization that he's on the wrong planet. Oops! He's off in a puff of smoke, disappearing into the sky. Now Hank is a believer!

I got a kick out of the end of this one, when the man laments that "I landed on a restricted primitive planet by mistake! I'd better leave before I'm penalized and lose my passport!" I also am predisposed to liking a story with a newspaper reporter who calls another character "Mac." John Forte's style can seem wooden at times, but here it's just wry enough to work.

Philip Lindsay is a cosmic archaeologist in the year 2744, exploring a remote star system when he happens on an uncharted planet. He and his crew land their ship and are met by aliens who ask for help defeating "Xom! The Menace from Outer Space!" Xom is a great big, hairy creature who moves very slowly and is surrounded by a circular wall. Phil zaps Xom with this ray gun and that ray gun, but nothing has any effect. Phil then spies a plaque on the wall around Xom and confronts the aliens with the truth--Xom is a sweet teddy bear and they're the bad guys. They admit that they wanted the ivory from his giant teeth and, found out, they head off.

Once again, the aliens have one big eye. Xom doesn't do anything other than look big and menacing. I would have expected Kirby to draw a story with a creature like this, but perhaps the lack of a scene of Xom rampaging through the city streets meant it was assigned to Joe Sinnott.-Jack

Next Week...
Some Dazzling
Al Williamson!