Journey Into Strange Tales! Atlas/ Marvel Horror! Issue 31

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 16

March 1952 Part I

 Amazing Detective #11

"The Black Shadow" (a: Fred Kida) ★★★
"The Weird Woman!" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★★
"Murder in the Morgue!" (a: George Klein) ★
"A Voice from the Grave" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★
"It's Time to Go, Higgins!" (a: Bill Walton) ★1/2

The 12th title to be added to our discussion, Amazing Detective took its time to get to our station. AD has one of the goofiest origins I've ever heard. See if you can follow this: Atlas published two issues of Suspense and decides to split it into two different titles, one devoted to crime (which was probably the most popular funny book genre at the time) and one concentrating on horror (which was just taking off in early 1950). But Atlas opted to continue the numbering for both titles, which is why there's no such animals as Amazing Detective Cases #1 or #2 and AD began life with #3. The stories in AD from #3 through #10 continued to be pulled from "the files of crime investigators," but perhaps crime wasn't paying for Atlas as the book was switched over to the horror genre with #11. All this change certainly doesn't seem to have been worth the hassle since the title will only last another four issues before shutting its case file in September.

Cemetery worker Mike Murry loves to talk to his shadow and it's made him the laughing stock of the town, especially to that millionaire's brat, Joe Thorn, who tortures Mike and Shadow on a daily basis. So, Mike's talking to his shadow, Willie (yes, Mike has named his shadow) on day, the to Mike's surprise, Willie talks back! Willie explains the rules of being a shadow, one of which is the shadow never talks. Having broken that cardinal rule, Willie hopes that Mike won't separate himself from his shadow. When Mike admits he didn't know you could lose your shadow, Willie explains that all you have to do is sprinkle salt on a shadow and say the word Ka-Ba-Bo! However, once the shadow is separated, the host feels everything his shadow does so Mike should probably be very careful.

"The Weird Woman"

The light bulb goes on over the tortured little man's head; here's how to get back at that Thorn in Mike's side! So Mike steals Joe Thorn's shadow and tortures it until a bed-ridden Thorn agrees to pay a hefty sum to his tormentor. The stunt works so well that Mike steals six more shadows and, very soon, he's rolling in the dough. The displaced shadows, however, take their ire out on Mike's doppelgänger and, the next morning, the police find Mike hanging from the ceiling in an apparent suicide. We've had numerous horror tales centering on shadows already (with umpteen more to follow) but "The Black Shadow" gives the old warhorse an imaginative curve. Mike is a good guy at first but something goes bad in that brain and he suddenly becomes a sadist, even to his buddy, Willie. There's a very effective panel of the loony stabbing a shadow (that's tied up!) with what appears to be an icepick. Truly, we are entering a Golden Age of outre suspense stories.

George Timmins falls in love with the exotic beauty of "The Weird Woman," Gloria, and pressures her to marry him but Gloria decides that George is not the man for her. George knows that Gloria is slightly "off" (she can walk through walls, for one), but he's willing to ignore such small drawbacks if he can possess her heart and soul. When she breaks off their love affair, George goes nuts and attempts to strangle her but the police arrive and haul him off to the pokey. There, a lawyer approaches him about Gloria and after a chat session walks through George's cell wall, thanking our hapless hero for helping him find the right girl. This is one of the strips that entertain just as long as you don't stop the page-turning to think about what you've just read ("Hang on, if Gloria can disappear when she wants, why does she allow George to throttle her?") and Joe Sinnott is the next best thing to Russ Heath, who's sadly missing from this post's titles.

Mobster Ace Hench has murdered rival, Harry Otis; of that, the Sheriff is convinced. He can't get the evidence so he hires hammy actor Jim Clyde to stand in as the dead man's ghost to scare a confession out of Ace. The ghost materializes and Ace spills his guts and is hauled off to jail just as the Sheriff receives a note from Jim Clyde, apologizing for not making it to the crime scene as he'd gotten another gig. Wow, "A Voice from the Grave" ends with a twist used so many times in the 1950s DC "horror" comics that the company should have issued a title called Fake Ghost Stories, but I'm hoping Atlas didn't overuse this reveal as well. I'm also hoping that the type of old-fashioned sketchy, bare-bones art used in "A Voice..." is slowly, but surely, being phased out. Either one of the short-shorts this issue are worth more than a line or two. A crazed night watchman at the local morgue accidentally runs down a man and then sees him rise on the slab in "Murder in the Morgue." And, finally, in "It's Time to Go, Higgins!," a small-time hood guns down a cop and then sees an eerie green face floating in air, following him everywhere, until he confesses to the police and goes to the gallows. There's the green face on the executioner. Artist Bill Walton's style is not my cup of tea (too many bug-eyed characters) but there are almost Colan-esque moments here and there thanks to some nourish "lighting."

 Mystery Tales #1

"The Dark Tunnel" (a: Gene Colan) ★★
"The Little Black Box!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★1/2
"The End of the World" (a: Paul Reinman) ★
"Horror on Channel 15" (a: Pete Tumlinson) ★★1/2
"The Stroke of 12" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★

Yet another 1952 addition to the horror/SF line, Mystery Tales will see a healthy 54 issue run until the giant axe fell (as it would on most of the line) in Summer 1957.

Billy takes over the exterminator business when his father disappears but there's a big problem: Billy hates to kill insects. He feels sorry for the little buggers. Then one day he's called out to the old Kirby place and Mrs. Kirby directs him to the basement, where she says the cockroaches are coming from. Billy finds tons of roaches and sprays them with his specially prepared mixture (that annoys the critters rather than kills them) when he stumbles upon a huge opening in Mrs. Kirby's basement wall. Exploring "The Dark Tunnel," Billy comes across human bones, including those of his father, and then the full horror is unleashed when a giant cockroach flits out of the hole, grabs Billy in its mandibles, and drags him back into the hole. There, Billy discovers a race of giant, mind-reading roaches who debate between each other what to do with this human. Finally, they decide that since Billy was kind to their race, he can live but he must remain with them forever. After a year, poor Billy starts transforming into a giant cockroach! Gene Colan does his best to get us through the silliness but there are way to many unanswered questions (yes, even in a story about giant cockroaches, I demand lucidity); ferinstance, how is it that old Mrs. Kirby doesn't notice the exterminators never exit her cellar?

"The Dark Tunnel"

The Seven Sisters of Evil have bequeathed "The Little Black Box" to Luke Bramby for his excellent work in the field of deception, lying, and cheating. Thereafter, every time Luke lies, that lie come true so, naturally, he lies about money, a big house, killing his boss, etc. But al the goodies are still not enough for this loser, as he decides he really must discover what makes this little box tick. Bad decision. Classic Maneely horror illos and a really nasty end for Luke Bramby push this just above the "average" line. Why is it when these Bozos get their money, they dress in smoking jackets like Hefner?

Maneely's "Little Black Box!"

Larkin becomes the first small town in America to get its own television station and the boys behind Channel 15 aim to keep the ratings through the roof by putting on the scariest show on TV.  Program manager/producer/writer Bruce Baxter scours the country for ideas for his brainchild but not even haunted houses or graveyards produce results. Bruce decides he must use his imagination and sketches a monster so horrible that... well. let's just say this thing would give the Real Housewives of New Jersey a run for their money. A creature is constructed from Bruce's sketches but a catastrophe almost pulls the plug on the program when the monstrous prop falls across electrical wiring and soaks up enough juice to light up a small bowling alley.

The big show finally airs but the raves and huge audience numbers are pushed aside by the news that the two stars of the program have died from heart attacks on screen! Bruce smells a really big hairy rat and goes to the cops with the goofy theory that the monster was to blame. The police send him out onto the street with a kick in the pants but, shortly after, Bruce gets the news that the monster has escaped and murdered dozens in his path. In fact, as the giant behemoth wends his way through town, mauling and behaving, poor Bruce is found as dead as his hit show.

Starring Steven Tyler!

"Horror on Channel 15" is another of those Atlas stories where nothing really seems connected from Point A to B, as if Stan were throwing darts at a board. No explanation is made for where the monster is between the time he kills his two co-stars and when he goes on his rampage. Cafeteria maybe? "Horror on Channel 15" is almost spot-on with its prediction that local horror shows would rule the airwaves; a few years later, with Vampira and Zacherley leading the pack, no station was without its own horror host. Tumlinson's art, which could be viewed as a bit amateurish and cartoony attached to a more serious script, is perfect for the tone of this semi-humorous romp.

Like most of the three-and four-pagers, "The End of the World" and "The Stroke of 12" have little in the way of story to tell (the former is about a proclamation of doom from a fortune teller, the latter concerns a murderer who hides his loot at the cemetery and is then pulled into a grave by a pair of dead hands) but at least "The Stroke of 12" features some very nice, atmospheric work from Paul Reinman, who has become a bit of a revelation to me. I knew (through my tenure at Marvel University) that Reinman was an occasional inker with Marvel until his retirement form the field in the mid-70s, but I had no idea how powerful his visuals were in the pre-code era.

Maneely

 Adventures Into Weird Worlds #3

"A Shriek in the Night!" (a: Werner Roth) ★★
"The Thing That Waited!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★
"Nothing Can Stop Me" (a: Bill Walton) ★
"The Quiet Men" ★★
"The Empty City" (a: Bob Fujitani) ★

Whitey Kozak's good night's sleep at the Three-Fingers Flop House is disturbed by a cadaverous face and a hand that beckons him to riches beyond his wildest dreams. All he has to do is climb down into a man-hole and retrieve a small package for the ghostly figure. Turns out the come-on is a scam and Whitey falls down the hole into an underground city populated by giant creatures hell-bent on dissecting humans and finding what makes them tick, all so they can attack and conquer the surface world. Just before Whitey goes under the knife, the creatures give him the choice of death or becoming a zombie who will travel back to the upper crust and recruit more fresh bodies. Our final panel shows a zombie-fied Whitey reaching out for another skid-row bum. Much like my newly-acquired fondness for Paul Reinman, I have to admit to being a newcomer before the altar of artist Werner Roth. I'd probably seen his work in the pages of Crypt of Shadows or another of the Marvel reprint titles, but I hadn't really made a mental note of the name. Now, I smile whenever I see Roth's name attached to a terror tale.

A Korean War pilot has the wing of his plane burned off by a strange beam of light reaching out of the clouds. The ensuing crash kills the pilot but his soul rises and he is confronted by a tentacled terror that explains his situation in full. The pilot is dead and soon his inner being will be reduced to cosmic particles but, before that happens, the creature gloats about the upcoming Conquest of Earth by his home planet, Trisis. Years before, the aliens had infiltrated our society and masked themselves as humans. As our hero begins to fade away, the monster lifts the curtain and shows him a screen of marching aliens that slowly transform into stinkin' Commies in Russia! Oh, these 1950s Red-baiting funny book stories just do not hold up very well sixty-seven years on. "The Thing That Waited!" (I can't help but hold out hope for the ultimate Atlas title someday: "The Thing That Was the Man Who Couldn't Live in the House of Horrors!") is full of long, repetitive speeches made by the Lovecraftian tentacled monster and exasperated replies from the doomed pilot. Just get on with it, already! I still have yet to read in one of these "alien invasion" stories a valid reason for wanting Earth (let's say, maybe for its golf courses or fast food at least); they just want it!

The dope who claims "Nothing Can Stop Me" grows tired of coming out on the losing end of the love stick and downs an experimental strength drug that turns him into an ape. Neither script nor art (Walton can't seem to figure out exactly how big the main protagonist's head should be) inspire anything approaching thrills or chills. "The Quiet Men" (a really dumb title) has an intriguing premise (the crew of the bomber that drop the "cosmic bomb" that begins the destruction of the Earth are cursed to fly through  space forever) that isn't given the proper breathing room to bloom into anything other than an intriguing premise, though the visuals garner a big thumbs-up.

Reporter Johnny Hart stumbles across the story of the Century: an entire town's population has disappeared! Heading back to New York, a bolt of lightning fells a tree and blocks his car, uncovering a deep tunnel under the tree's roots. Johnny follows the tunnel down into an underground city where he witnesses ape-like creatures rounding up the people from the empty city and turning them to dust. As each human disappears, another of the monkey-men transforms into a human being and heads up to the surface. Johnny runs to the nearest station, hops a train, and spills the scoop to his editor. The boss-man tells Johnny well done and urges him to get to sleep, and then places a call to the ape-man leader telling him Johnny's address. Three old, tired, worn-out cliches are regurgitated once again and form the barely readable "The Empty City": the newspaper reporter (Atlas' favorite profession), the underground city (always looking for a way to conquer those insufferable surface people), the friend who is revealed to be the alien (the city editor who has an ape-like shadow!), and the manuscript found in the empty room that tells all (this time out we're told that boarding house landlady, Mrs. Markham, brought the manuscript to "Weird Worlds Publishing Company" when Johnny disappeared, rather than to the police!). Throw in hyperbolic sentences ("I felt a strange, unnatural, weird sensation standing there in the storm...") and the oddest coincidences (the tree that covers the tunnel to the city at the center of the Earth just happens to be struck by lightning just as Johnny is driving by), and you've got one silly and dull read.

Maneely

 Suspense #15

"The Machine!" ★★
"The Strange Shoes!" (a: Norman Steinberg) ★
"The String of Pearls" (a: Ogden Whitney) ★
"The Wrong World" ★★1/2
"Death Comes Calling" ★1/2

Five rather weak fables this issue, starting off with "The Machine," yet another crook-steals-a-time-machine yarn. Karl Gogan is on the lam and needs to get out of the present really bad when he hears about a nutty professor who's built a time machine and is about to test it. Throwing caution (and common sense) out the window, Grogan forces the scientist to show him how to use the machine. The egghead explains that the machine's bugs still haven't been ironed out but Grogan hops aboard anyways and makes the trip. Well, his skeleton does anyway, as we learn the hiccup with the machine is that anyone riding in the machine ages as well. Some nice art, and a legitimate "twist" in the tail, but the script is pretty silly (for some reason, this hardened hood has no problem believing in a time machine) and it drags on too long.

"The Machine"

In "The Strange Shoes," a derelict finds a pair of beat-up shoes and, when he pops them on, they give him anything he wishes for. Only catch is that he must wear them at all times. We don't see the shower scene so I imagine our hobo gets pretty odiferous after a couple pages. So does the story. Margaret has always coveted her husband's prize "String of Pearls," but Gerald insists the jewelry is cursed. And he would know, since he forced several natives to dive into the grotto of the Devil-Fish to acquire the pearls, and they suffered the fate of the damned. Later, one of Gerald's salesladies tries the beautiful bauble on and is choked to death  (the coroner remarks, "Death due to strangulation! I know that what I'm about to say will sound goofy... but by the marks on her throat, I'd say that she was choked to death... by an octopus!"). But what Margaret wants, Margaret gets, so she murders Gerald, opens the safe, and dons the necklace. And then the Devil-Fish enters the room and kills her. Nice Ogden Whitney artwork, very stark and animated, but the script falls back on cliches and doesn't make much sense (in the first murder, the octopus doesn't have to make an appearance, so why does the fella chance dry land to throttle Margaret?).

"String of Pearls"

A scientist, testing his rocket ship (again, we discover that in the 1950s you didn't even need a permit to test a space ship!), stumbles onto the greatest discovery in the history of mankind: on the other side of the sun is a twin world of Earth where everything happens exactly the same at the same time. He happens on this revelation when he is hit by a meteor and thrown off course, crashing back on Earth a few days later, just intimate to attend his own funeral. Yep, he crashed on Earth-II. So, our hero relaunches his ship and travels back to the other world but his dilemma is:which Earth is the "real one?" Wildly goofy and highly imaginative, "The Wrong World" is also very confusing at times but its sense of adventure and nice visuals more than make up for it. A rare case of a happy ending in the Atlas Universe. In our final story this time out, "Death Comes Calling," Dr. Cavari has decided his time is too precious to him and thus only the rich can afford his services. No more charity cases. Unfortunately, this new outlook on the medical field occurs just as a plague hits Cavari's little town. The people are falling all around him but Cavari's attitude remains unchanged. Then, one day, the good Doc gets a visit from someone who appreciates Cavari's stand; it's Death, of course, and after a long, rambling, boring speech, he cures the town and gifts the selfish doctor with the only fatal dose of plague. Nothing new here but I liked the stylish art; the artist is uncredited but several panels look like Everett (but Everett usually signed his work so probably not).

Astonishing #10

"The Man Who Owned a Ghost!" (a: Bill Everett) ★★★
(r: Weird Wonder Tales #6)
"I Solved the Problem" (a: Mac Pakula) ★★1/2
"The Walking Dead!" (a: Al Eadeh) ★1/2
(r: Creatures on the Loose #31)
"Melvin and the Martian" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★★
"Only an Insect!" (a: Pete Morisi) ★
(r: Vault of Evil #14)

Alan Kent uses black magic to summon forth a ghost to kill his wife, Helen, who's planning to kill Alan very soon. The ghost explains to Alan that he can't kill humans but he can scare away all of Helen's guests and then Alan will have the peace and quiet in which to kill his wife himself. The haunting goes swell and the cliff house empties, leaving only Helen, who refuses to be frightened by the ghost. Alan sneaks up on the gorgeous dame while she's looking out the window to the rocks below and lunges at her, with an eye to knocking her off the balcony. But the dopey sorcerer takes a header right over the rail and down to the water below. As Ala is wondering how his wife could be a ghost, she explains to him that it's he who is the ghost. She killed him in his sleep a few nights before and has been wracked with guilt ever since. She plunges a dagger into her own heart and falls into the sea as the revelation comes to Alan that he summoned his own ghost.

Though it's monumentally silly and the climax is quite a few too many finales, Bill Everett makes "The Man Who Owned a Ghost!" a spooky riot, a la Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters. The last reveal, that the summoned ghost belongs to Alan himself, is a head-scratching hoot (if Alan is dead, how could he summon his spirit if he is the spirit?), as is the final panel where the two of them look at each other and scream in terror. Lots of great stuff here: Helen is a classic Everett beauty; Alan stands above what we come to find out is his own grave -- on the beach!; the ghost is a creepy/kooky concoction, part Scooby-Doo villain, part Poltergeist; and the layouts are pure Everett, with tons going on in each frame.

In the far future, war no longer exists and that creates the problem of overpopulation. Every square foot of land the world over has been given over to housing; no more space for harvesting or livestock. How to feed this mass of hungry people when the food supply will run dry within a year? I'm glad you asked. Luckily, the world's smartest man, Dr. Fell, has anticipated just such a nuisance and has applied his grey matter to solving the problem thus: he has created a plant that will bear fruit and grow on concrete walls, making it very easy for the populace to harvest their own food. But there's always a drawback isn't there? Dr. Fell doesn't anticipate the side effects to a plant that can grow anywhere and the foliage goes out of control, strangling its owners until the world is barren but for Dr. Fell, who lives in a very tall skyscraper. As the mad (but well-meaning) scientist contemplates what he's done, the ivy reaches out for him. "

I Solved the Problem" is a well-done ecological nightmare that predicts the similar wave of science fiction films of the early 1970s (Silent Running, Soylent Green, etc.). It almost seems as though this catastrophe has snuck up on the scientists, who should have known that when you pave paradise and put up a parking lot, Mother Nature will rebel.  Mac Pakula illustrated a boatload of war strips for Atlas at the same time "I Solved the Problem" appeared, but I have to say I don't care for his bland layouts and sketchy pencils.

Dr. Drago has been obsessed with bringing the dead to life for quite a while and, finally, all the proper ingredients are mixed (vibrating table to stimulate the heart, heat lamps to relax the reflexes, etc. etc.) and...voila!... a living breathing zombie. Drago is so excited he invites all his colleagues over for cognac and caviar, springing his zombie-man on them as a dessert. Isn't it like the science community to bring down a man's dream? One of the other professors commends Drago for the ability to raise an inanimate object from the dead but to what purpose when the thing cannot talk, reason, or think for itself. "You are right," sighs Drago, "I had created a mindless horror... the first of a race of living-dead idiots!" (oh, if only Drago had lived to see the teenagers of the 21st-Century!) The dejected doctor blows up his laboratory, killing both himself and his creation. Three pages does not allow for much character development (but then, neither does seven, does it?) so the primary appeal here would be for the art, which isn't bad, outside of that awful forced-perspective splash (is the zombie's arm really that big?).

"The Really Big Arm of the Walking Dead!"

"Melvin and the Martian" is a mildly funny short about a simple-minded man put in charge of guarding a Martian prisoner, and the mind games the alien uses to get information from Melvin about Earth's battle capabilities. After the Martian is told about a super-secret rocket that will be used against Mars, the alien steals the ship and heads home, only to detonate an H-bomb once he lands (a punchline we've seen before). "Only an Insect" is a really dumb yarn about a slow lab assistant who tortures insects and then has the tables turned when he's splashed with his boss' experimental shrinking formula.

In Two Weeks!
We'll look at 25 more shockers
Guaranteed to keep you
Spellbound!!!

Journey Into Strange Tales! Atlas/ Marvel Horror! Issue 27

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 12 

December 1951
+ The Ten Best Stories of 1949-1951

Maneely

 Journey Into Unknown Worlds #8

"Face of Stone"(a: Paul Reinman)  ★★ 
"When a Planet Dies!" (a: Joe Maneely)  ★★1/2
"No Return!" (a: Russ Heath) ★1/2
"The World Beyond" (a: Al Hartley) ★★ 

World renowned sculptor, Lucifer Marsh, has spent a lifetime making masterpieces out of stone but, one night at his gallery, Marsh stumbles across what he feels will become his greatest achievement: the beautiful Jane. Marsh talks the gorgeous gal into posing for him and, while she's not paying attention slips her a special mickey designed to transform her lovely bones into stone. The process complete, Marsh stands back to admire his "work," when Jane's boyfriend busts down the door, demanding to know where his girlfriend is. A fistfight breaks out and the vat of Marsh's special stone-juice spills on both the men. They quickly become statues but the crazed Lucifer Marsh looks on the bright side of things: he is his own last masterpiece.

Another of the standard 1950s horror plots was the crazed sculptor/wax museum owner and Lucifer Marsh holds his own with the best of them. Even more evil than turning his subjects into stone is the fact that the victims don't die (well, I assume they do eventually, but we aren't given a time frame) and that's particularly nasty since poor Jane is an innocent as is her white knight, the doomed Henry. The final panel, of Marsh complaining that the formula prevents him from smiling while his face turns to stone is darkly humorous. Paul Reinman continues up my chart of Favorite Atlas artists; he's simple but effective without the typical cheats and shortcuts.

When scientists discover that the military on Jupiter is sending a robot to conquer Mars, powers-that-be on Earth decide we have to build a robot capable of conquering Mars first! To that end, the big brains select Anthony Rogers as the perfect specimen of manhood, the only human being powerful enough to concentrate on rocketing the robot to Mars. The two robots met and duke it out but Rogers is just too powerful for the puny Jupterian and Earth claims Mars. But Rogers doesn't stop there. He sends his juggernaut to Jupiter to destroy all life and, with his final order, then return to Earth to do the same. Why? Because Anthony Rogers isn't human, he's a peace-loving Martian! Lovely Maneely art propels "When a Planet Dies!," a decent space opera script with a clever twist in its tail. Not so clever is "No Return!," which wastes the vast talents of Russ Heath on a silly time travel story about an industrialist who muscles his way onto a time machine (it's amazing that the scientists in these tales always set the way-forward lever on 3951, exactly 2000 years into the-then future) and then finds himself stranded in a utopia that has no need for money. We're not even told how the greedy guy found out about the time machine!

Jack Buckley buys a gorgeous mirror in a shop and gets it home to discover a flaw: the glass does not reflect but, instead, shows the way down a tunnel to the underground world of Stygia. Jack takes the mirror back to the shop owner, who shows an interest in tracking down the tunnel, and the two go on an adventure. Jack and Marla find the tunnel but, halfway to Stygia, Marla pulls a gun and discloses her true nature. The pair meet up with the citizens of Stygia and their leader explains to Jack that they lure humans down to test on them from time to time and then release them back to the surface to sell mirrors to unwary consumers. He further explains that Jack will now only be able to breathe surface air for a short period of time and that he must sell his quota of mirrors to regain entry to Stygia. And Jack is a lousy salesman. "The World Beyond" features a fanciful hook, but one that draws the interest of the reader and wraps up with a dark and satisfying climax. Not so satisfying is Al Hartley's art, which is sketchy and crude, appearing almost unfinished in spots. Hartley's number one claim to fame was his work on the long-running teenage girl title, Patsy and Hedy, for Atlas/Marvel.

Everett

 Venus #17

"The Storm!" (a: Allen Bellman) ★

Carston Fuller is deathly afraid of water and when a storm lashes his remote cabin, that fear escalates to terror. Somehow, a single drop of water leaks from the roof and grows larger before Carston; soon he's engulfed by the water and imagines a world of mermaids. The gorgeous fish-girls tell Carston he can remain with them but first he must write out a list of the reasons he hates water. He agrees, and the next morning, his body is found by the local police, drowned by the leaking rain from his roof. A nonsensical fantasy that only takes up four pages but somehow seems to be ten times that size. Much better (but beyond my purview) are the Venus stories this issue, wherein the gorgeous goddess must tackle the terrors of  "The Tower of Death" and quash the attack of "The Stone Man." As usual, the anything-goes scripts and superb Everett art combine for a boatload of fun.

George Tuska

 Suspense #12

"The Dark Road" (a: Russ Heath) ★★★
"The Trumpet!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★
"You're Killing Me!" (a: Norman Steinberg) ★1/2
"Draw Me a Picture" (a: George Tuska) ★
"Fingers of Fire!" ★1/2 
"The Old Woman" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★★

A man drives through a driving rain down "The Dark Road," when, out of nowhere, he sees a figure to the side of the road, hitchhiking. Figuring it's not fit for a dog outside in this weather, he pulls over and lets the stranger in. Just as they pull away, the radio announces that an inmate at a local asylum has escaped and the driver eyes the stranger warily. He makes an excuse to stop, his passenger gets out to wipe off the headlights, and the driver runs him down. The tire blows out and another driver comes along, asking about the body on the ground. Our protagonist, hearing another bulletin, this time conforming that the maniac is behind the wheel of a stolen car, fears that this may be the killer looney and crushes his skull with a tire iron. He flees to a nearby diner, where he meets up with a pretty girl. As he's using the phone, he sees a reflection of the woman grabbing a long knife and heading for him. He grabs a cleaver and is about to carve up some lunch meat when he's shot dead by two cops, who tell the woman the man dying in front of them is the escaped lunatic.

Though this plot line is as old as Moses, the uncredited writer (probably Stan) delivers a couple of clever twists to throw us off guard and keep us guessing up to (what turns out to be) the predictable outcome. I assumed from the get-go that it was the driver who was the madman, as that twist has been done to death, but the escalating violence gave me hope that we were in for something new. Alas...  Oddly enough, Al Feldstein will write almost the exact same story ("The Escaped Maniac!") and it will see print a mere one month after this issue of Suspense, in Crime SuspenStories #8. How about that for coincidence? Russ Heath does a marvelous job accentuating the driver's fear (Heath loved those beads of sweat, didn't he?), an effective way of confounding our expectations. That hitch-hiker looks almost like a zombie; surely he's a homicidal maniac!

"The Trumpet" is a silly two-pager about Gabriel having his horn stolen while on a train. If it wasn't signed Joe Maneely, I'd have a hard time believing this was his work. It looks more like a rushed Don Heck to me. Equally inane is "You're Killing Me!," about a guy who murders his uncle for money and then must contend with the parrot who witnessed the killing. Not much can be done with three pages but artist Norman Steinberg gives it a go, delivering a nasty and effective splash.

Fred is a 60-buck-a-week artist at a New York ad agency when the boss rejects a drawing Fred did and gives him a gift, a new pencil that somehow has a magical, but deadly, gift. When Fred draws a picture and then uses the pencil to erase part of the drawing, disaster follows. It works with a bridge, a jet, the horses, anything Fred puts his nib to. Lots of dough follows and that's great because Fred is in love with the office secretary, Lil, who is in love with the green stuff. Fred shows off the fruits of his "labor" and Lil shuts down her boyfriend to marry Fred, but before it can happen, disaster falls when Fred accidentally erases a drawing of himself.

"Draw Me a Picture" is another Atlas story that resembles an EC story, one that wouldn't be published for another two years: "Easel Kill Ya" (from Vault of Horror #31). I doubt if writer Johnny Craig got his inspiration for "Easel..." from "Draw Me a Picture," but even if he did, he batted that one out of the park and "Draw Me..." barely gets to first base thanks to its lifeless art and snail's-pace script. One hilarious scene which makes it almost worth the read is when Fred stumbles on horse racing to win a bundle. How would he go about that, you ask. Fred stands next to the track and sketches each horse he wants to stumble as they're running by. This guy can not only draw faster than anyone on the planet but he can make each sketch unique in its own way!

Heartless businessman James Evans is in a nasty train crash and appears dead but it's only his body that's comatose. His brain is still working and he works feverishly to send off some signal to his "rescuers" to let them know he's still alive. At the funeral parlor, his associate is called in to identify Evans and one of the attendants excitedly points to what appears to be a tear on Evans' face. "Impossible," the associate sighs, "Evans was a man who could never cry!" Into the cremation chamber goes Evans! Yes, "Fingers of Fire!" bears a more-than-striking resemblance to the Louis Pollock short story, "Breakdown," published in a 1945 issue of Collier's (and later adapted as a Hitch-directed episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but Evans meets a fiery end while Pollock's character evades death thanks to his tear ducts. Does that make this story worth reading then? Nope; it's just a shameless steal and it's got really really bad art.

Two grifters, on the prowl for an easy mark, come upon the house of "The Old Woman." Thinking they can ease their way into the woman's confidence, Hink and Grace rent a room from the old lady, get her to trust them (she confides that her money was made from writing romance books), and then drop the boom on her. They tell her to cut herself off from the outside world and sign her checks over to them from now on. The sweet old thing happily agrees, thinking it all so exciting and a break from her old routine. Her grin and general good mood eventually wear thin for the con artists and they demand to know what's going on. The woman allows that there may just be a fortune stashed in her cellar and, after very little prodding, she leads the way. Once in through the cellar door, Hink and Grace are locked in and told they'll be inspiration for her new trade: writing suspense novels!

There's a deliberately vague climax to "the Old Woman" that intrigues me. After telling her prisoners of her plans, the old woman becomes almost ghostly and then the final panel caption reads: Perhaps there are screams still coming from that deserted little White House... perhaps not... over a drawing of a dilapidated cottage, clearly the house shown in the opening but then not quite the same one. So, was the old woman a ghost the entire time? It appears so. Whatever the case, that final three-panel sequence is supremely creepy, as is most of the story, thanks mostly to Paul Reinman's visuals and a light foot on the gas that allows for the gradual eeriness.

 Strange Tales #4

"The Evil Eye" (a: Bill Everett) ★★★
"Dial... City Morgue!" (a: Sol Brodsky) ★
"It!" (a: John Romita) ★
"The Man on the Beach!" (a: Bill LaCava) ★★1/2


Scientists assume that the huge object deep in space which has popped up in their telescopes is a new star but the closer it gets to earth, the more apparent it becomes that it's a giant eye. Only one man, Professor Lyle Chambers, knows the secret of "The Evil Eye," but is he mad or is he responsible for bringing this monstrosity into our atmosphere? Death, destruction, and wild scientist hair equals everything you could ask for in a 1951 science fiction comic story. And it's got a nice art job by the legendary Bill Everett to boot. Just about anything Everett worked on was worth... looking at.

Ted discovers that his new phone used to belong to the city morgue. Now, when he makes a phone call to someone exactly one year after a death in the city, the person he's calling will drop dead (yes, I know, it's a bit complicated so you can skip this one if you want... I wish I had). Things go great for Ted when he calls his business rival and his rich aunt and both meet with untimely deaths, leaving Ted a boatload of money. But, as these things usually go, Ted makes the wrong phone call at the wrong time and ends up a victim of his own greed. "Dial...City Morgue!" is incredibly silly and unnecessarily complicated with its hook. It's also about three pages too long.

Not Pennywise, but "It!" nonetheless!

Bill and Jenny Carter have just adopted the sweetest baby and can't wait to get home to spoil him. Once there, though, Jenny becomes increasingly agitated and exhausted, and Bill becomes convinced the baby is to blame. Then he discovers poison in his coffee pot and suspicion swings to his wife. Could she be mentally ill? Jenny takes a bad tumble down the stairs and breaks her neck, leaving Bill to fend for himself and their son. Hearing a noise in his study, Bill opens the door to discover his baby boy holding a gun, pointed at his pop. Just before he pulls the trigger, the child explains that he's actually an alien from outer space and his mission was to kill Bill and Jenny. At Bill's funeral, all the women fawn over the new orphan and wonder who will be lucky enough to adopt the little darling.

The humorous climax of "The Man on the Beach!"

"It!" explores the fears and angst that every couple face when they become parents, the deep-rooted terror that maybe you're not doing your best... Yeah, right. Well, maybe that was the initial goal of "It!" but the whole thing comes off as so ludicrous, it's tough to consider that the writer may have had loftier goals in mind. The poor kid is never clothed, spending his entire four-page life in a nappie and nothing else and the sight of him hoisting that gun, looking all the world like a young gangster, is more hilarious than ten issues of Melvin the Monster. But what's the goal of this baby alien? He kills his parents for what purpose? They could have raised him to be the first Damien Thorn just as well as the next couple, right? Clarity is all I ask for. Ray Bradbury spun this first, and much better I hasten to add, with "The Small Assassin" (adapted by Al Feldstein for Shock SuspenStories #7).

A young couple come across a disheveled, wild-talking "Man on the Beach," who claims he is the only man who can save Earth from destruction. They invite the gaunt man into their beach tent and hear his fantastic story. Time-traveling scientists, who warn of armageddon and time backwashing, shrink the Earth and then entrust it to our grizzled hero for safe-keeping and send him back to present day. Unfortunately, the scientists didn't do their homework or else they'd know this is the world's most clumsiest man and, sure enough, he manages to lose the world on the beach. The couple scoff at the man's claims until things start disappearing around them. "The Man on the Beach" is so complicated (even for a 1950s Atlas funny book) that it defies description and almost warrants a Tylenol or two. That's not to say it's a bad story (though the LaCava art is tough to sit through),; it's actually quite clever and earns an extra star for breaking the fourth wall in the final panels. I wonder how many kids figured it was a printing error!

More from "The Evil Eye!"

Maneely

Astonishing #7

"Nightmare" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★★
"Paid in Full" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★
"Out of My Mind" (a: John Romita) ★★1/2
"Out of the Darkness" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★

The third anniversary party for Connie and Tony ends after a night of wild partying, when the doorbell rings and a gorgeous dame walks in. Tony gasps and utters a single word, "Rita!" Seems as though Tony hadn't told Connie about the girl he dumped to marry her, but Rita is here to wish the both of them the best. After the babe mixes them all drinks, the room spins for Connie and a terrifying tableau lays itself before her. Tony grabs Rita and kisses her madly and Rita urges her old beau to kill Connie so that they can be together. Tony picks up the andiron and sinks it into Connie's head as she screams...

Herself awake! Yep, all just a "Nightmare!" Now Tony tells her to calm down and get ready for the anniversary party that night. But Connie has a sense of doom approaching and can't relax all night. Sure enough, after the party is over, the doorbell rings and it's Rita! The whole scenario repeats itself. Connie screams... herself awake. Yep, we've gotten the "it was only a dream but hang on, was it really cuz it's about to happen again" plot a zillion times but maybe it's because this one happened so early in the game that I can excuse the tired old cliche one more time. And then there's an extra jolt when the murder scene is repeated a second time and Connie's last thought is Am I really awake now... or is this too, a... a... nightmare? That's scary stuff.

Nathaniel Hastings begs miser Jeremiah Leech (who holds the note on Nathaniel's farm) to just give him a little more time to pay his mortgage, but Leech tells the poor old man he doesn't care about anything but money and he'll be foreclosing very soon. Nathaniel heads back to his farm in a driving snow and suffers a fatal heart attack. A few nights later, Leech, still smiling about the foreclosure, answers a knock at his door and discovers Nathaniel Hastings on his porch. A bit surprised, Leech asks the old man what he's doing out when he's supposed to be dead and the very pale Nathaniel answers that he can't find peace until he's paid his debt. The dead man promises a great fortune if Leech will follow him into the night and Jeremiah, afraid of nothing, agrees. The men end up in  Nathaniel's tomb, where Leech finally finds something to be afraid of when he finds he's been locked in. Yet another money-hungry scrooge gets his comeuppance in "Paid in Full." There's nothing new nor interesting about this latest variation although I must admit I thought Harry Lazarus's art very atmospheric in spots.

Horror writer Isaac Bartley is beyond astonished when he discovers that his greatest creation, the murderer named Axton, has somehow come to life and is threatening his creator when the creation gets wind that Bartley is about to kill off the golden goose. Axton lets on that he's set up shop in a gambling establishment downtown and Bartley heads on over to check it out to see if he's losing his mind or if this could be the real deal. Sure enough, once Bartley gets past the thug at the door, he sees Axton, lording over a roulette wheel. Axton sees his maker and gives chase but has a nasty fall down the staircase and is impaled on a statue holding a sword. Exactly how Bartley write Axton's death scene! Relieved, Bartley heads home to finish his book but, unbeknownst to the absorbed writer, Axton sneaks up behind him and...

"Out of My Mind" is not a great story but it benefits from some early John Romita work and an early example of the "fiction comes to life" plot line used to great advantage decades later by Stephen King (The Dark Half) and John Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness). At one point, Bartley's editor tells his writer to tone down the scary stuff since "three people have been driven insane trying to read your books!," another avenue explored by Carpenter. Romita's Axton is not very threatening though with his Zorro eyes, Elvis lip, and Michael Jackson nose. The climax is a letdown but the build-up is a winner.

The oddball in this issue's quartet would have to be the final story, "Out of the Darkness," an old-fashioned science fiction story about life 2000 years after World War III. The Earth's surface had become poisoned and man had had to go underground and build a new world but evolution is throwing a funny (but annoying) monkey wrench at the survivors: the children being born in this generation resemble rats and are massing together to murder their human parents. It's up to scientist/super-stud Carleton Lar to invent a contraption that will clear up the poisons and allow man to walk the Earth again. Preliminary scouts discover a freakish form of dinosaur has evolved up top and the creatures must be destroyed if civilization is to "move upstairs." Luckily, Carleton's machine kills two dinosaurs with one stone; when the poison clouds disappear, the monsters die! Not sure who thought this would be a good fit amidst three horror stories, but "Out of the Darkness" is imaginative and enjoyable for both its wild scenario and its Joe Maneely artwork. It's funny to think of this as a throwback story since it was published 66 years ago but it has the feel of a 1940s SF adventure. I assume the radiation is to blame for the full-grown dinosaurs our heroes have to face.

THE TEN BEST STORIES FROM 1949-1951

I didn't feel that enough issues were published from 1949 and 1950 to warrant a Ten Best list but the end of 1951 seems a good place to start a yearly Best of.

So far we've covered 247 stories from 65 issues and the quality is surprisingly high. Of those 247 stories, 34 received a rating of three stars or higher (out of four), with two receiving the full four stars.

  1 "The Devil Birds" (Mystic #4)
  2 "The Evil Eye" (Suspense #8)
  3 "Don't Open This Door" (Suspense #8)
  4 "Juggernaut" (Marvel Tales #98)
  5 "The Spider" (Marvel Tales #101)
  6 "The Brain" (Adventures Into Terror #4)
  7 "The Man Who Lost HIs Head" (Suspense #3)
  8 "Felix the Great" (Suspense #6)
  9 "A Man Named Satan" (Marvel Tales #98)
10 "The Pin" (Strange Tales #2)

In Two Weeks...
Could '52 be even more grim than '51?

A change of format for the text piece in Astonishing #7

Journey Into Strange Tales/ Atlas/ Marvel Horror! Issue 26

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 11 

November/December 1951

Mystic #5 (November 1951)

"The City That Vanished"(a: Jerry Robinson) ★1/2 
"It Creeps By Night!" (a: Hy Rosen) ★
"The Face in the Picture" (a: Al Hartley) ★★
"Trapped!" (a: Mike Sekowsky) ★

Entire cities are vanishing in thin air and Colonel Blake thinks he has the answer: an alien race, somewhere in the galaxy, is pulling our cities to their own world in order to conquer Earth one piece at a time. "The City That Vanished" is a totally loony yarn spiced with totally loony dialogue (when the Colonel’s girlfriend is confronted with a crater where her home town used to lie, she exclaims, “Oh, Ted, something awful has happened… I can feel it!”).

In "It Creeps By Night!," John is deadly afraid of cats but girlfriend Ellen comforts him with the fact that when he dies, he’ll be reincarnated as someone who isn’t afraid of cats! Now, John knows just what to do. He goes home, blows his own brains out, and is reincarnated… as a mouse (an adult one, at that). Who writes these things?

The pulse-pounding finale of "The Face on the Picture"

"Trapped!"

Paul’s a photographer but his wife, Clara, hates having her picture taken. Now Paul has fallen in love with gorgeous neighbor, Maila, who convinces Paul that Carla should be committed for her photographic phobia. Paul goes to his psychiatrist friend to get a writ of Habeus Loonyus but finds his buddy has been attacked by “creatures from the slime of creation” who have “found a way to enter our source orbit, disguised as humans!” The doc dies and Paul heads home, convinced his old lady is one of these creatures. When he explains the situation to Maila, the curiously-convinced babe tells Paul they should kill Clara before she kills them. The gullible sap beats his wife to death with a fireplace poker, only to discover that it’s actually Maila who’s the monster! "The Face in the Picture" is one fun bit of dopiness, with red herrings and major coincidences galore.

When Henry is offered a job at his girlfriend’s office, he has to see the company psychologist first to run through a set of mental tests. The doc shows Henry a cube and asks the man what he sees within. An astonished Henry sees a tiny man "Trapped!," who begs him to release him from his prison, and suddenly the whole world believes Henry to be batty. Deadly dull SF tale with bland art and half-witted scientific dialogue.

Suspense #11 (November 1951)

"In the Dead of Night" (a: Pete Tumlinson) ★★★
"Haunted!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★1/2
"The Suitcase!" (a: Manny Stallman) ★1/2
"Harry's Hate" (a: Mike Sekowsky) ★
"Behind the Door!" (a: Norman Steinberg) ★

Walter meets a mysterious and exotically beautiful woman one night at the cemetery and strikes up a conversation with her about the dead. Katie says she believes the dead rise and co-exist with the living and Walter, smitten, does his best not to scoff. Later, when Walter meets Katie's father, the graveyard groundskeeper, he learns of a double-slaying near the cemetery and listens with interest as Katie's pop tells him that he's convinced the killings are the work of a vampire. Katie scolds her father and tells Walter not to pay attention but, a couple nights later, the old man is found dead in his cottage. The devastated  girl meets her new Beau at her father's graveside and embraces him, then falls to the ground as Walter goes back to his grave.

The unique finale of "In the Dead of Night"

Now and then, Hank Chapman can confound me with an interesting story amidst all the junk he pumped out and "In the Dead of Night" is one of those examples. Pete Tumlinson's art can be fabulous or by-the-numbers; his Katie is a tall, gorgeous brunette, who clearly looks like a vampiress. Obviously a red herring to throw us off the scent of Hank's twist finale, which is handled oddly. We never see Walter sink his fangs but we are to assume he's a vampire and he's killed Katie in the end. I like the ambiguity and I really like the atmosphere created by writer and artist.

"Haunted!" is a three-pager about a man who buys a haunted house but we discover, in the finale, that he's actually the one haunting the house. How he went about buying the place isn't discussed but we only have three pages after all. Nice splash by Maneely.  After a bank robbery goes awry and his co-horts are arrested, Maury Ryan has to get his tough babe wife out of town pronto so they head into the hills to stay at a cheap hotel. There, they hear from the locals that there's a hermit living in a mansion atop a hill who keeps all his money stashed in his house (and swears he'll blow any interlopers to kingdom come).

Come home, Don Heck.
All is forgiven.

Needing a cash fix quick, the couple head to the creepy old house and break in, confronting old man Flemming. No way will this old coot part with "The Suitcase" crammed full of greenbacks so bury ventilates him and grabs the trunk. Miles away they stop at a cabin and open the suitcase to find a time bomb. Blooooey! The art is the chief downfall of "The Suitcase" (Stallman's work begs the question, "Were there art standards for 1950s funny books?") but its story is none too fresh either. Writer Carl Wessler (who would become a .500 hitter during his stint on the EC All-Stars a few years later) peppers his dialogue with noir-inspired lines like "Once Billy and Joe start spilling, the law will start hunting..." but they come off as cornball and fake rather than realistic.

Every man's nightmare

Harry hates Lois but he loves her money and Lois can't stand the oily jerk, so the con-man/chemist whips up a batch of love potion and drugs the girl one day, assuring he'll be swimming in money in no time. Problem is, the drug works for only two weeks before the subject needs another dose (How Harry finds this out is anyone's guess; he just seems to know despite the fact that the drug is brand new!), so Harry has to keep Lois drinking to keep her fawning even after they're married. On the verge of getting Lois to sign over her billions to him, Harry perfects a formula that will ensure love forever (again, how he knows this is never explained) but the damn poodle knocks the vial to the floor and the spell on Lois wears out. She reveals to Harry that an hour before Mitzi broke the bottle of love potion, she poured a swig into harry's iced tea. Now the sap is head over heels with Lois and she's got him doing the dishes and vacuuming. Well, if nothing else, "Harry's Hate" provides us with our first peek at a lothario who happens to be a crack chemist as well. Why does the guy need Lois' fortune when he could make ten times that on his strange brew. And how is it that the elixir knows who its intended target is? Why doesn't Lois fall in love with the waiter at the restaurant or her garbage man?

"Behind the Door" waits stupidity. Eye surgeon, Dr. Brent, has a problem with the bottle but doesn't let it hamper his full plate. Stinking drunk, Brent operates on a man and leaves him blind but is not held accountable for his actions. Until later, when he's called to an address in the middle of the night on emergency and has his teeth kicked in by two thugs. Brent hightails it to the nearest dentist (who is working very late), busts through the waiting room door, and finds the two thugs who beat him. They'd been hired by the dentist to separate Brent from his teeth; the dentist is the patient who was blinded and now it's his turn to operate! The entire twist of "Behind the Door" relies on coincidences too extreme to be believable but at least it's got one great one-liner -- after Brent is exonerated of wrong-doing, his thought balloon exclaims, "Good! No one realizes I was drunk! This calls for a drink in celebration!" You gotta love dialogue like this!

Russ Heath

 Marvel Tales #104 (December 1951)

"Freddy's Friend!" (a: Russ Heath & Bill Everett) ★★★
"Gateway to Horror"  (a: Basil Wolverton) ★★★
"The Murder Mirror!" (a: Morris Weiss) ★★
(r: Weird Wonder Tales #9)
"I Saw Tomorrow!" (a: Norman Steinberg) ★★

Fred Walker comes home after a long day at work to find his wife, Helen, has invited in a massive robot who happened to knock at their door. But Tabor is no ordinary robot; this one can make every wish come true. Fred tests Tabor's gift-giving skills and finds them exemplary, so he decides to go whole his and order up gems and jewels and gold and the usual stuff greedy Atlas men desire. But there's one thing that nags Walker to the point of distraction: how does "Freddy's Friend" produce impossible products at the drop of a dime? How does he lay the pot of gold (along with the rainbow) at the feet of the Walkers? Tabor confesses that Freddy can learn the secret but he'd have to become a robot for a day, while Tabor would inhabit Freddy's body. Freddy agrees to the identity switch but discovers he's been conned when a trio of robots from another planet arrive to cart him away in his new body. Tabor had been diagnosed with mental disorders on his home planet of Algolia and the boys are here to collect him and take him back to the asylum. They don't even pay attention as Tabor tries to convince them he's really Freddy Walker.

A fun fantasy frolic with lots of delightful segments, guaranteed to raise a smile in between stories of rotting zombies and vampire beauties, with fabulous art by two funny book titans; their styles seamlessly mesh. I love the series of escalating wishes Freddy gives to Tabor, including polka-dotted paint, a pail of steam, a three-footed fish, and "sky hooks" (they allow you to catch hold of clouds!). All the while, Helen seems to have a laissez faire attitude to the goings-on. Except for the dark climax, this is a perfect children's fable.

Sam and Vic are searching for the "famous Benson lode," a vein of silver that's supposed to be worth a fortune, located in the Nevada desert. They hire a small "jeeplane" (yes, a combo jeep/plane) and land near the hill where the silver is rumored to be, but are surprised to see a small shack at the base of the crag. They're invited in by a friendly old prospector for coffee, but it's soon apparent this old-timer is not what he appears to be when Sam's face starts to melt. Vic follows suit and, while his body begins to gain weight, the prospector confesses he's part of an invasion from the underground (again, like so many other classic Atlas SF invasion stories, we're not given a reason why this race wants to leave the comfort of their own domain to take over a world filled with smog and polluted rivers) and Sam and Vic have ingested a potion that increases the weight of flesh. Vic still has some power left so he tackles the old guy and turns tables by dumping the potion down the prospector's gullet. The alien's face melts, revealing a gorilla-like appearance below the synthetic flesh.

Knowing they only have moments before the invasion begins, Vic drags the really heavy Sam out the door, sets a dynamite charge just as the monsters are filing out of the mine shaft, and lets go with some prime "Blorite" explosions! Their lust for silver cured, the boys climb into their jeeplane and head home. Another whacko Wolverton presentation, "Gateway to Horror" is fun stuff, with lots of the standard Basil elements. There's not so much a story but a series of events, seemingly created by a  couple guys (perhaps Stan and Basil) throwing out ideas and then using all of them. Sam's melting face comes from out of nowhere; it's not only jarring but it's exhilarating because you have no idea what could happen next; kids (and their funny book-loving parents) must have eaten this stuff up like candy. No one does melting face like Basil Wolverton

A salty old sea dog enters a bar and Charlie takes an immediate interest in the trunk the old guy's lugging around with him. That night, Charlie steals into the swabbies room, knives him, and takes the chest back to his own room. When the lock is broken, the contents of the trunk are revealed to be: a dirty old mirror! As Charlie is about to incur seven years of bad luck, the mirror speaks to him and promises wealth beyond the man's dreams. And Charlie's wishes are answered; jewels begin to fill the  trunk to overflowing. Charlie's landlord gets wise to the murder and theft and wants a cut, but the creature from the mirror steps out and puts a knife in the man's back. His screams are heard from below and the police arrive quickly; Charlie pleads with "The Murder Mirror!" but to no avail and he's hauled away to prison. A really really really old plot is given a few new interesting twists (once the misshapen creature exits the mirror, it attains Charlie's appearance) but is virtually unreadable due to the rough, ugly art by Morris Weiss. I thought for sure when the old sailor enters the bar with the trunk high upon one shoulder, we were going to get one of those "second head hidden in the basket" tricks but, no, the uncredited writer dipped into another pool.

"I Saw Tomorrow" is a dumb four-pager about Peter Marsden, a scientist who perfects a time machine and then travels five thousand years into the future to discover robots have killed off man and have created their own civilization. Since the robots wander around murmuring "Marsden was the first. He created us!," you'd think a big brain like Marsden would catch on pretty quick but, no, he doesn't't realize that he is the manufacturer of man's downfall until he gets back to the lab in present day and his machine reaches out to throttle him. There are a couple of amusing looney bits here (why is it that, when Marsden is heading for the future, they show him passing Saturn and a comet in outer space?) and Steinberg's art is crude in almost underground fashion but the "twist" is a surprise to no one but Marsden himself.

George Tuska/Joe Maneely

 Adventures Into Terror #7 (December 1951)

"The Thing That Grew!" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★★
(r: Vault of Evil #1)
"Going... Down!"(a: Joe Maneely) ★★
(r: Crypt of Shadows #2)
"The Two Were Alone!" (a: Allen Bellman) ★
"Where Monsters Dwell" (a: Basil Wolverton) ★★1/2
(r: Crypt of Shadows #1; Curse of the Weird #3)
"Joe..." (a: Hy Rosen) ★★
(r: Crypt of Shadows #4)

Noted scientist Joshua Borglum rents a creepy old mansion to work on his experiment, creating a lifeform out of nothing. 

He has little success until an accident spills a bit of Borglum's blood on the slide and the organism laps it up and begins to grow. And grow. And grow. To appease its blood lust, the thing slithers out of the lab and begins absorbing unlucky locals. Borglum finally sees the error of his ways and leads the thing to the ocean, where it absorbs its creator and then sinks into the water.

"The Thing That Grew!" features one of those overworked big-brains who know they have to create something but they just don't know what. And, here, we're never told exactly what Borglum is cooking up and why "this discovery can change the course of civilization!" Nor are we shown what the Thing is feasting on during its midnight treks (oddly, the splash features a scene of a man being eaten by the Thing before Borglum's eyes but nothing of the sort happens within the body of the story). The mad scientist's argument with the blob is a gem ("So this is why you leave the house at night!") and Lazarus' visuals are, at least, easy on the eye.

"Going...Down!" and "The Two Were Alone!" are silly short-shorts but both have at least one thing about them worth mentioning. The former, about a would-be robber's ride in a deadly elevator, features art by Joe Maneely (which is always worth turning pages to) and the latter, wherein two people meet on a train platform amidst rumors there's a mad killer loose nearby, is a rare instance of transvestism. Otherwise, both are skippable. The only thing interesting about "Joe..." (which isn't much better than the other two, even at double the length), about a guy who has an invisible follower who grants his every wish, is that no explanation is given for the poltergeist. It's just committing every heinous act Joe blurts out at people who annoy him.

Joe Maneely is "Going... Down!"

As with most Basil Wolverton-illustrated tales, the story becomes an afterthought (if not a nuisance) when compared to the artwork. "Where Monsters Dwell" is no exception. The story of a newspaper editor who interviews the genius scientist, Leon Korber, about a ray the doc has invented that allows us to see into a "hybrid sphere located between the third and fourth dimensions." Before the hack can complete his scoffing, the mad scientist turns the ray on him and he's transported to the "hybrid sphere" where everything is distorted and grotesque. Very soon, that includes our intrepid reporter as his features become malformed and drippy. He encounters other victims of Korea and a slew of monsters before he's able to jump back into the ray and turn the tables on his tormentor. The final panel shows our hero pondering whether he should take a chance, opening the ray and allowing the other victims to return, or if they be better off in their new home.

What indeed?

There's nothing new script-wise (we've seen the base elements several times before) but Wolverton's exaggerated (and yet, not really cartoony, is it?) humans and inconceivable creatures carry the day yet again. Wolverton obviously loved the melty look as he graces both the reporter here and Sam and Vic in "Gateway to Horror" with skin that slides down the bone. It's almost as though Wolverton's characters live in a similar parallel universe where everything is a desert and open Lovecraftian dimensions just happen. Oddly enough, this story was not reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell, Marvel's premier reprint title of the 1970s, but rather in Crypt of Shadows #1 (January 1973).

In Two Weeks...
My picks for the Ten Best Horror/SF
Atlas Tales published in 1949-1951