Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 194: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 179

March 1961

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Journey Into Mystery #66

Cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

"The Return of the Hulk!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★1/2

(r: Monsters on the Prowl #14)

"The Black Ray" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

(r: Fear #6)

"The Thing Behind the Wall!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★

(r: Fear #7)

As we saw at the conclusion of the pulse-pounding monster saga, "Yaddayaddayadda Living Hulk!," the Hulk had been shot into space in a satellite, cursed to live out his days in a soup can. But, oh sweet irony, a simple asteroid bumps into the capsule and sends it hurtling back to Earth. Before you can say, "Holy sequel!," the small town of Pineville witnesses "The Return of the Hulk!"

Using his evil hypno-beam powers, the Hulk puts every soul in town into a deep hypnotic trance and then forces the villagers to build a giant star-reflector, all the better to hypnotize the rest of the planet and rule a race of zombies. Luckily, our hero from the previous adventure has been keeping tabs on the giant furry critter and notices that the satellite has not revolved around the sun in three days. He starts looking for clues...

When the news hits that Pineville has erected a fence of barbed wire around its city limits to keep the world out, the amateur scientist knows something's up and heads to the affected area, where he spies the Hulk bathing in the rays of his star-reflector. Using his quick wits and a pocket mirror, our hero quashes the plans of the behemoth and reflects the monster's hypnotic powers back at him. As the Hulk dwindles into nothingness, the triumphant scientist realizes he can tell no one what has transpired here today. Not even us!

Low-budget sequel with nary an original panel to be found among its thirteen pages. I really have no idea what was going on in that mirror-laden climax. It seems like pretty poor planning on the scientist's part to pop the Hulk into a capsule and then leave it to revolve around the sun that close to Earth. Something was bound to happen. 

In the hilarious "The Black Ray!," evil genius scientist Hiram Dudd is sentenced to twenty years in prison for "crimes against society" but finds a silver lining once he gets to the big cage. His warden, the stupidest man on the planet, thinks it's a good idea to let Professor Hiram (the one who's been sentenced for "crimes against society") tinker around in the "prison lab" (why would a prison have a lab?). Bad idea. Dudd whips up a time machine and disappears into the past. Of course, since he's a bad guy, he gets his just desserts. Comic book gold arrives in the form of a few panels where the guards question whether it was prudent to arm a criminal with dangerous machinery. Live and learn, I always say. A few panels (see below) have a very Carmine Infantino-esque sheen to them. Otherwise, this one is a complete Dudd.

A miserable issue of Journey Into Mystery comes to a close with "The Thing Behind the Wall!" Emil Fitch owes six hundred bucks in gambling debts and decides he really must steal the dough from his workplace, the local bank. He hides one night at closing and slips into the vault just before it's sealed but then discovers, to his horror, that the vault doesn't open from the inside! Luckily for him, Morak, a monster from the "dark dimension," promises to save him if Emil will accompany it back to his place for some experiments. Emil refuses and is arrested by the cops when the vault is opened. Morak appears to Emil in his cell and explains that all he has to do is walk through the bars and into the dark dimension and freedom will be his. What should he do? I know what I'm going to do.-Peter

Strange Tales #82

Cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

"The Thing Called... It!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★★1/2

(r: Monsters on the Prowl #15)

"The World Beyond" (a: Steve Ditko) ★1/2

(r: Where Monsters Dwell #17 & #37)

"Fangs of the Monster" (a: Don Heck) ★★

(r: Where Monsters Dwell #37)

Brilliant but troubled European scientist Heinrich Munch believes the scientific community ignores his obvious brilliance and continually strokes the ego if his hated rival, Fedor Slovkov. If Emil is to be catapulted to the top of the Brilliance Chart, then Fedor Slovkov must die!

Slovkov decides the best way to eliminate his competition is to create a plastic giant that he can control; his first order will be to kill Fedor Slovkov! Professor Munch assembles all the right ingredients, pops them in the microwave, and lets the mixture settle. A massive creature arises from the slab, fully dressed in a nice three-piece suit (but missing his hat and tie, unfortunately). But Heinrich Munch has missed out on some important ingredient since, once the monster awakens, it wobbles a bit and falls lifeless to the floor! Frustrated, the mad scientist tosses the huge (extremely heavy) behemoth out the dining room window and into the swamp far below. Damn that Fedor Slovkov and his good luck!

Unbeknownst to our mad genius, the plastic man in the swamp stirs and rises, returning to the castle of morose Heinrich Munch. The startled egghead throws his finger in the air and screams, "Of course, the one missing ingredient to make the perfect killing machine is raw human waste! How foolish of me! Now Fedor Slovkov must die!" Alas, "The Thing Called... It!" doesn't see it that way. This creature wants peace among men, love is all you need, all that nonsense. The very sentiments that drive Fedor Slovkov to wake each day and invent an erasable chalkboard or automobile air conditioning. Heinrich Munch quickly realizes that this Thing Called... It! could be a detriment to his plans; loose lips sink ships and all that rot. So he heads down to the local town and stirs up the villagers, inciting them with a speech about baby-killing swamp monsters. In no time, the townsfolk grab their rifles and head up the hill to destroy the Thing Called... It!

But Heinrich Munch's plans go awry and he takes a header into the swamp. The Thing Called... It! delivers a stirring monologue to the torch-carrying mob about man delving into matters not of his making or something like that and then looks to the sky and wishes he had a human body. A bolt of lightning strikes it and the Thing Called... It! is transformed into Heinrich Munch. Munch-Thing swears to God that he'll live a decent, honorable life and heads to the local bakery to send a congratulations cake to Fedor Slovkov.

A gleefully satisfying 13 pages of idiocy. Stan and Jack (that is, if Stan actually did anything but cash a check on this one) have to be winking at each other and admitting that 90% of the work they're committing to paper is rubbish, so why not have a good time? A great changeup in that an evil scientist purposely sets out to create an evil monster to do his bidding rather than the typical "professor wants to decrease harvesting time so he mutates spiders into wasps" nonsense we usually get. Here's a "thing" that only wants to pick daisies and fly kites. I love that Heinrich Munch concludes most of his sentences with the words "Fedor Slovkov" to remind us how obsessed he is. And mention must be made of how the initial Easy Bake Oven version of the Thing sure looks like the early version of Ben Grimm. That Jack Kirby never forgot a "thing." Thanks to the tongue planted firmly in cheek, this strip is the most fun I've had in months. 

"The World Beyond" is Stan's latest "homage" to The Incredible Shrinking Man. A brilliant but terribly dressed scientist is shunned by his colleagues when he invents a pill that can shrink anything to the size of the atom. But how far does the subject shrink and where does he go? As the final panels explain, right to a cliche. 

Last up is the decent "Fangs of the Monster." Millionaire Darius Storme's pastime is to hunt down and kill the ugliest creatures known to man. When he gets wind of a butt-ugly sea monster just off the coast of Ecuador, he hires a ship to chase and kill the creature. But the joke's on Storme when the thing abducts him and has a little man-to-thing conversation with the sadistic adventurer and then lets him go, vowing that Storme will spend the rest of his days in a very private hell. Since no one but Storme saw the monster, he's ridiculed and shunned as a lunatic and spends the rest of his days traveling from port to port, trying to convince someone, somewhere that the beast really exists. Not a bad little cautionary tale, very reminiscent of the time I saw Steven Tyler at an airport and no one would believe me. Storme's driving passion to "see those brainless creatures writhing" is a bit far-fetched but I can obviously excuse quite a bit while reading these funny books.-Peter

Tales of Suspense #15

Cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

"Goom! The Thing from Planet X!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★★

(r: Giant-Size Man-Thing #1)

"I Am the Living Ghost!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★1/2

(r: Giant-Size Dracula #4)

"Moomboo!" (a: Don Heck) ★

An Astronomer named Mark ignores the ridicule of his colleagues and spends his summer vacation with his wife, Helen, at an observatory, where he sends radio waves into outer space in an attempt to prove the existence of unknown planets. He discovers a gigantic planet but is not expecting "Goom! The Thing from Planet X!" to use the radio waves to travel to Earth. Goom lands near the observatory and reveals himself to be a big, bad monster who plans to conquer our world.

Forcing Mark to travel to the city to present a false message of peace on Goom's behalf, the monster gleefully welcomes scientists and statesmen from all nations. He demonstrates his awesome powers until Mark has the bright idea to contact the gigantic planet by means of more radio waves. Voila! More spaceships arrive and Goom's fellow citizens announce that they are a peaceful race and Goom is a sick renegade. The aliens grab Goom and zip home, allowing Mark to end with a speech about how man will one day visit the stars.

By this point, these stories are pretty formulaic. A giant monster arrives and threatens everyone before some simple trick is used to defeat it. About the only thing worth noting is the variety of monsters Kirby and Ayers come up with. Goom is a big orange guy with two tusks that stick up from his lower jaw. Goom's method of displaying his power is silly--first, he takes a man and puts him in a glass box and reverses time so he becomes a baby. Then he causes a city to levitate into space. These are just excuses to give Kirby something visually interesting to draw.

An intruder arrives at Blackhorn Castle intending to prove that the building is not haunted. To his surprise, ghostly events convince the man otherwise and he runs out the door. Little does he know that the creature that seemed to proclaim, "I Am the Living Ghost!" is not a ghost at all, but rather one of several living objects made of metal or stone, such as a walking suit of armor.

Ditko draws some cool panels but the story is a letdown. The castle is haunted, just not by a ghost.

A witch doctor keeps a primitive tribe in line by encouraging its belief in a worthless carving called "Moomboo!" When a much larger idol appears, the witch doctor tries to show that it has no power, but instead it passes each test he comes up with and the people begin to worship it instead. The witch doctor tries to destroy the new idol and it disappears, which causes the tribesmen to drive the witch doctor into exile. Little do any of them know that the big, new idol was really an alien from another dimension. It tried to contact the people of Earth but gave up, since we're savages.

The first two stories were bad, but this one is even worse. I had to read it a couple of times to make heads or tails of it. Yet another visitor from an advanced planet leaves Earth disappointed. I know how he feels. This issue makes me want to return to my home planet for a few millennia.-Jack

Tales to Astonish #17

Cover by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko & Dick Ayers

"Vandoom, the Man Who Made a Creature!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★★★

(r: Where Creatures Roam #4)

"Beware! Of the Ghastly Glass!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★1/2

(r: Where Creatures Roam #4)

"I Dared to Enter the Haunted Room!" (a: Don Heck) ★1/2

(r: Tower of Shadows #9)

At a wax museum in Transylvania, the old standby monsters don't excite the public anymore, so the owner decides to create a new monster that will revive ticket sales. "Vandoom, the Man Who Made a Creature!" gets busy with his wax and fur and creates a huge figure that scares the heck out of the villagers. The night he completes the thing, it is struck by lightning and comes to life! The creature bursts out of the museum and heads for the countryside.

The villagers blame Vandoom and chase the monster. Suddenly, a spaceship lands and Martians emerge, announcing in their thoughts that they plan to take over Earth! Vandoom theorizes that his giant monster can stop the Martians and, when their gamma gun has no effect on it, they hightail it back to Mars. Despite the positive result of the Martians feeling "The Mark of Vandoom," or at least his living wax figure, the poor creature keels over from exhaustion. The villagers laud the sculptor, who happily builds a replacement.

I gave a rare three-star rating to this story for a few reasons. First, it features drawings of Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy on page two, even though they're just wax figures in Vandoom's museum. Second, the giant creature barely does any harm at all and is not a visitor from another planet. Finally, the climax finds the poor thing seeming like King Kong in that he never meant any harm and collapses. It all worked for me, in spite of Kirby's penchant for drawing men wearing various hats to differentiate them from each other and the obligatory panel showing the Earth from outer space near the end.

A greedy old man travels from antique shop to curio shop around the world, looking for a rare piece of crystal that resembles a drawing he shows to each shopkeeper. He finally finds the wishing glass at a shop in the Orient and ignores the shopkeeper's warning to "Beware! Of the Ghastly Glass!" The old man makes four wishes: to be twenty years old, to live a long and healthy life, to be free from arrest, and to be the richest man in the world. In the blink of an eye, all his wishes are granted, but he finds himself on another planet because he failed to specify which world!

The Ditko five-pagers in the back of these comics are getting less and less interesting from a story standpoint while the art continues to dazzle. Part of the problem is the need for a full-page splash, which means only four pages remain to tell the tale.

Smith builds an atomic bomb and plans to threaten to blow up the whole world unless he's made ruler. He visits a small town and rents a house, unconcerned by the real estate agent's warning of a haunted room that he must never enter. Smith decides that the room is the perfect place to hide his bomb and can say that "I Dared to Enter the Haunted Room!" There's just one problem: entering the room makes him a ghost and now no one can see or hear his plan to take over the world.

This story is a shade better than the one before it. Heck is best when he's not drawing monsters or aliens, so the depictions of Smith are right up his alley. The denouement is silly.-Jack

On Thursday...
An Old Favorite
Carves Up the 100

And Next Week...
The Coming of...
Monsteroso!