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! Special Double-Sized Holiday Issue!

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part Nine

July/August 1951

Sol Brodsky & Christopher Rule

 Mystic #3 (July 1951)

"The Jaws of Creeping Death"  
(a: Gene Colan & Christopher Rule) ★
"The Undead!" (a: Allen Bellman) ★
"The Man in the Moon" (a: Frank Sieminski) ★
"Beware the Eyes of Horror" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★

Poor Bruce has the same nightmare every night: he’s a judge sentencing a man to die in an iron maiden. To get away from the pressures of work, he accepts his boss’ offer to deliver an important cargo. Too late, Bruce realizes his boss has set him up to fall for an embezzlement scheme. To keep him quiet, the boss puts Bruce in an iron maiden. Other than its fabulous pulp-influenced title, "The Jaws of the Creeping Death" is a yawn-fest. And let's deduct a half-star for the cheat of a cover.

In "The Undead!," a scientist works on a formula to raise his dead wife from the grave but research can take time, and time is not kind to the flesh. How is it that Anthony Brenton, “one of the world’s most important men of science,” doesn’t know that his wife won’t look as lovely after being in the ground for 12 years? Allen Bellman contributes some truly awful, ugly art. Not much better is Frank Sieminski's work for "The Man in the Moon," wherein the first man in the moon is captured and made a mind slave by moon creatures who want to conquer Earth. Our hero tricks the moon men though, and Earth is safe. I'm well aware that deadlines could result in rushed, sketchy, and amateurish art but if I'm to judge these stories fairly, I have to put that contributing factor to the side.

"The Undead"

Museum guard Joe Ravek is having problems keeping his domineering wife happy; she wants more dough and thinks Joe is spineless, so Joe shows her. He steals the priceless ruby eyes of a statue at the museum, only to have the idol show up at his doorstep (ringing the doorbell!), to request its eyeballs back. For good measure, it takes wife Mary’s as well. A killer statue who’s mannered enough to ring the doorbell is all right in my book. "Beware the Eyes of Horror" is a not-bad little piece of borderline-humorous fluff.

The murderous but well-mannered beast of
"Beware the Eyes of Horror!"

Sol Brodsky

 Suspense #9 (July 1951)

"Back from the Dead" ★1/2
"The Weatherman" ★★ 
"Step Into My Parlor!" (a: Don Rico) ★★ 
"The Little Men"  (a: Dick Rockwell) ★★1/2
"Norman's Nightmare"  (a: Gene Colan) ★★

Detective Mike Carter is ordered by his Captain to tail the swami, Egon Tarel, who is suspected of murdering two rich clients through a rite known as "projection of the living ghost" (the Captain manages to keep a straight face while explaining this to Mike), and Mike sticks to the fortune teller like glue. His persistence pays off when the Detective witnesses Tarel murdering a third wealthy client and arrests the vicious fiend on the spot. Tarel stands trial and is found guilty of first degree projectional murder and sentenced to life in prison. Tarel, somehow still wearing turban and cape rather than prison stripes, swears he'll get revenge on Mike. Sure enough, Tarel astrally projects his ghost into Mike Carter's room and strangles him but, the joke's on the murderer when the spirit world deems his crimes too evil for him to return to his body.

"Back from the Dead" is stuffed full of wooden dialogue and really strange decisions on the part of its characters. Mike's Captain, for instance, is skeptical about the mystic arts but assigns his top cop to investigate and, similarly, the State decides it's got enough proof to warrant a first-degree murder trial despite the lack of anything resembling evidence (the DA cites Mike's statement and the say-so of the deceased's doctor who claims the man was in good health). Wildly, Tarel is found guilty, so my reservations about the case are obviously moot. The GCD has no artist credited to this story but it sure looks like Dick Ayers' work to this untrained eye (but then a whole lot of artists in the 1950s pumped out average art that resembled Ayers' stuff).

Paul Lowry is out shopping one day when he stumbles upon a small wooden house in a curio shop window. It's not so much the toy that catches Paul's eyes but the uncanny resemblance between himself and the small, carved "Weatherman" standing outside the house. On a whim, Paul purchases the oddity and brings it home, wondering if "The Weatherman" can, indeed, predict the weather. After  seven straight days of accurate predictions, Paul wonders if the toy can see into the future and make him a wealthy man. Horses, stocks, land deals, and a fortune follow until, one day, Paul notices the little man lying on his face in front of his house. What could this mean? Several close calls with death (including falling girder, spider attack, and getting caught in the middle of two trigger-happy gangsters) convince our protagonist that the prone figure is predicting Paul's death. The suspense is killing him, he can't deal with not knowing how he'll go, so he takes matters into his own hands and blows his brains out.

The grim ending for Paul Lowry

"Step Into My Parlor"

A ludicrously simple yarn but one that has a few guffaws and an abrupt, disconcerting climax. The hilarious way in which Paul Lowry escalates the weatherman's predictions, from simple weather forecasts to elaborate stock deals, boggles the mind. Since the little man's only answers to Paul's queries is a frown or smile, you can only imagine my puzzled look at the panel where Paul's stock broker informs him he's made a killing on the "Amalgamated Potash," and Paul answers with, "Thank you... now instruct my brother to sell out all my shares of Consolidated Brass." To get detailed information on Wall Street dealings with a simple smile must have taken hours and hours of questioning, no? This head-scratching delight is a strong contrast to the penultimate panel where Paul takes his own life, transforming a light-hearted romp into something a little more daring.

"Step Into My Parlor!" is a three-page quickie about a man whose house is a museum of murder. Don Rico's creepy graphics (almost like a reined-in Wolverton) are the highlight but, for a three-pager, the script is a grabber as well. In "The Little Men," good-natured Clem becomes obsessed with the tiny mechanical men he sells, much to the displeasure of his overbearing wife. Imagine Clem's surprise when one of the little men informs the henpecked schlub that he can become a little mechanical man and forget all his worldly responsibilities. A nicely illustrated, entrancing fantasy, sure to raise a smile or two, wherein the good guy comes out on top for a change. Finally, a man plagued by a toothache, visits a dentist promising no pain thanks to his Nitrous Oxide. The problem is, the gas sends the patient into a nightmare world that he never really leaves. Some genuinely creepy Colan, in "Norman's Nightmare." Colan was, at the time, just beginning to invest his rather dull art with the noir-ish techniques that would make him famous a decade later.

"Norman's Nightmare"

Bill Everett

 Astonishing #5 (August 1951)

"Death from the Sky" ★
"Menace from the Moon!"  (a: Cal Massey) ★1/2

Two very short science-fiction pieces break up the adventures of Marvel Boy this issue.

The first, the inane "Death from the Sky," concerns a jet pilot who lands on a solid cloud and discovers the sky is being overtaken by a race of "cloud-men" who kidnap wayward pilots and transform them into fellow cloud beings. When the population of cloud clods outnumbers that of the human race, they will conquer Earth. How they'll do this is, blissfully, ignored. Writer Hank Chapman injects plenty of the goofy word play he became (in)famous for years later on the DC war books. Here, we're graced with such gems as "What in blazes is happenin' to this jet crate? The engine's purrin' like a mouse-stuffed kitten... yet I'm droppin' like a ton of GI bricks! This baby ain't foolin'! She's headin' for a boom... an' Mrs. Edison's lil' boy Harry better shake his GI carcass an' hit the silk!" How did we ever get through the 1950s DC war books without Hank? "Menace from the Moon" is a very rare two-pager about the first return trip from the moon. It doesn't go well.

"Death from the Sky"

Sol Brodsky

 Strange Tales #2

"The Egg!" (a: Morris Marcus & Frank R. Sieminski) ★★
"Trapped in the Tomb!"  (a: Norman Steinberg) ★★1/2
"The Pin!" (a: Russ Heath) ★★★
"The Island of Madmen" (a: Ed Moore) ★ 

Canadian scientist Sir Alexander Laurier is summoned to the estate of Sir Humphrey Devonshire one cold Christmas Eve, where he is shown aerial pictures of a giant egg discovered in the Arctic Circle. The next day, a group of four of the scientists fly up (without notifying any authorities whatsoever) in a cargo plane and confront the huge white oval. Since this is the snow-covered Arctic Circle, you'd assume the colorist would naturally leave the ground around the egg a nice white tone rather than the orange or green they settle on. Curiously absent from the professors are any kind of instruments, gauges, pencil and paper or, believe it or not, snowsuits. This would have to be the warmest icy environment ever recorded. The professors decide that this is the greatest discovery man has yet to find but, rather than study it a bit, they feel it best to ram a hole into the egg with a nearby log. Through the hole geysers a black goo that eats anything around it, including two of the scientists.

Never a good idea

Only one, Laurier, manages to make it back to civilization, where he tells of the world-eating ooze. Deemed a nutcase by the society he's trying to protect, Laurier is institutionalized, but escapes and convinces an old friend to loan him a dive bomber and a one thousand pound bomb. Armed only with steel nerves, prayers, and a really big explosive device, the ostracized professor flies right into ground zero and blasts the goo to... well, smaller bits of goo, I guess. Once on the ground, it's discovered that the egg was actually a spaceship, the first wave of an invasion of aliens from the planet Goo. Okay, I made up that last bit about the planet name but all the other events in the story, we're told, are based on an actual incident. Only the names and the clothing choices were changed.  "The Egg" is the perfect example of the sort of bland "horror" and fantasy that made up the first few issues of Strange Tales but still holds quite a bit of warped charm.

George has always shown patience with his friend and mentor, Professor Lapham, whenever the old fool would come around with some crazy new invention but this time is a bit different. The Prof. asks George to babysit his new gizmo, a weird little box studded with buttons, wires, and lights. As George's wife, Helen, prattles on about her less-than-ideal living situation and how George promised her diamonds and minks when they married, he wishes he was on top of a remote mountain as he accidentally pushes one of the buttons atop the box. Magically, he's whisked away to a Utopian tor, complete with waterfall and mermaids. Hot damn! This is the life! But, unfortunately, the spell lasts only one hour and, as his spirit returns to his body, George realizes that, while he was gone, life just rolled on without him. Soon, George is using the contraption to play the stock market and rack up huge dividends. Too soon, the day comes when Lapham returns from his vacation to claim his toy and George must return to his life of "too much wife." Our hero gets the bright idea of murdering his wife with help from Lapham's invention but he arrives at the Prof's home just as the old man is dying. With his last breath, Lapham tells George he can't lend him his golden goose because someone else has borrowed it. George arrives home to find out exactly who that "someone" is as Helen holds a gun on him and explains that she, too, can play that game.

An interesting variation on the "spirit migration" plot, with "Trapped in the Tomb" (perhaps the most misleading title we've yet encountered) allowing its characters to do more than merely visit other places with their spirit; these spirits can take out loans, play the stock market, and hold firearms. George is in the middle of a nasty spat with his shrewish wife when he experiments with spirit travel and returns to his body one hour later (yes, actual time elapses) to find he's still in the same argument with Helen; that's one hell of a rhubarb. Ostensibly, George just sat and took it, without opening his mouth, like any smart hubby would. "Trapped" is a little bit long at seven pages but it's fun and entertaining.

Wally Ambrose opens his door one day to find a basket holding a tiny tot and, after due diligence, adopts the precocious toddler. The baby comes equipped with an odd pin, one that he sticks into Wally one day "by accident." This is no ordinary tot, as Wally soon finds out. Buster, as he's come to be known, grows up very fast, becoming a quite intelligent young man within months, while Walter grows younger by the day. Eventually, the tot is a man and Walter is the baby and the expository comes: Buster is actually "Professor Lungham, age 55," who concocted a miracle drug that reverses the aging process. Unfortunately, the side effect is that Lungham couldn't get back to age 55 and so had to invent an antidote, "The Pin," that needs to be injected into an unwary and innocent bystander and creates an "age-youthexchange" between the two. Lungham pops Wally into a basket, with a pin, unceremoniously dumps him on a doorstep and rings the bell. Variations on this formula have been done to death through the years but "The Pin" is a weird, almost sordid little yarn that keeps you guessing and doesn't disappoint in the end (aside from the wordy, but necessary, elucidation in the final panels). Wally Ambrose is another of those rare Atlas characters who seems to be a generous and kind soul who meets a bad end through no fault of his own. One question though: if Professor Lungham morphed all the way down to a baby, who put his basket on Wally's doorstep?

Three shipwrecked friends end up on "The Island of Madmen," a little piece of property owned by a demon known as Lucretia de Velli, a master of mysticism and soul transference. One by one, the hapless adventurers end up victims of de Velli's evil ways. "The Island of Madmen" is the only real stinker in the bunch this issue but it's a royal odor. Badly-written (the concept of de Velli is introduced and then jettisoned, never to be explained) and illustrated, seemingly, by an artist with both hands tied behind his back. To be fair, Ed Moore was best known for newspaper strip illustration and that's exactly the type of visuals you get here, stripped-down and unattractive, with no flair or imagination. Best line and biggest smile comes when one of the survivors notices a skeleton in the bush and informs his comrades that he knows "enough anthropology to tell these are human bones!"

Bill Everett

 Venus #15

"Escape from Death" (a: Sol Brodsky)  ★★

After years of plundering the galaxy, space pirate Kallam Raa is finally arrested and convicted for his crimes and sentenced to serve 2 years of hard labor in the Salydium mines on Mars. But, while Kallam is being transported to his rocket ship, his guards are distracted by a procession of lepers who are being marched to their space ship to be blasted into space where they will find “sweet solace in death” while the “flesh falls from their bones.” The crafty space pirate blasts the guards (“Out of my way you sniveling sheep, or you’ll be meat for the moon vultures!”) and hijacks a nearby rocket and blasts off. Unfortunately for the nitwitted scalawag, he’s just hopped on the leper ship. Pure pulp nonsense but laugh-a-minute dialogue and a very short running time make “Escape from Death” a pleasant experience. You gotta love a strip that features a vain galaxy pirate (“Close the hatch! This space helmet is bad for my complexion!”) and a group of men walking the plank in space! Nice trick, that. Though just a little guppy in the pool of Atlas artists, Sol Brodsky would, of course, become a permanent fixture at Marvel during its explosion in the early 1960s.

 Journey Into Unknown Worlds #6

"The Day That Saturn Struck!"  (a: Hy Rosen) ★1/2
"The Voice of Death" (a: Russ Heath) ★★
"The World Below" ★1/2
"The Terrible Toy" (a: Gene Colan) ★1/2

Dismissed as a crackpot by his fellow scientists (and banned by the Association of Astronomers!), Prof. Henry Malvern nonetheless continues his monologue on the dangers of the planet Saturn. Malvern believes that, deep under the Saturnian crust, an evil race prepares an attack on Earth that will leave the entire population burnt to cinders. The fire-beings of Saturn get wind of the Prof.'s theories and send emissaries to capture the scientist, his shapely daughter, Adora, and her boyfriend, Lank. Can the brave trio quash the invasion threat and still find happiness in the Rocky Mountains on "The Day That Saturn Struck!"? The Prof.'s theories are, admittedly, a bit out there but you have to give him credit for being right on the money about a species of aliens who live under the ground sixty bajillion light-years away! What I want to know is: can a pair of lovebirds named Lank and Adora find true happiness in the world of the 1950s?

Ham radio enthusiast Mac is chewing the fat with his buddy, Sparks, when Sparks' ticker abruptly fails and he dies in mid-sentence. For some reason, Mac decides that Sparks' death would make for a great piece of vinyl but then discovers the LP has strange powers. "The Voice of Death" turns even whackier when Mac tries to convince the army that this is the way to win the Korean War, with a 78 that's music to the Grim Reaper's ears. The army isn't biting (imagine that) so Mac, now enraged to the point of insanity, cuts a few copies of the sinister slab and sends it off to all the Army brass that scoffed at him. The military is suddenly short its top men but they're convinced so they make thousands of copies and send them to Korea! While I allow that "The Voice of Death" is a little... out there with its theories on death, I do have to admit that I smiled through the entire five-page run. Sometimes, as I've noted before, lunacy is all I need for a good time.

"The World Below" gives us a treasure-seeker who dives "30,000 leagues under the sea"(approximately 90,000 miles!) and gets a little woozy before being saved by a merman and discovering an undersea kingdom that houses more gold and baubles than Jennifer Lopez' jewelry box. It's all a bit silly and not too pretty to look at. Rickie and Dickie, the local JDs, torture and pester toy-maker, Mr. Grisby, until he can stand it no longer. Grisby concocts "The Terrible Toy!," a board game that sucks its player in and transforms him into a marble (no, seriously!) and traps the two little monsters. That is, until an even worse kid moves into the neighborhood and turns the tables on poor Mr. Grisby. Gene Colan brightens up what would otherwise be a waste of reading time; evil youths Dickie and Rickie are almost too ruthless to be believed.

 Adventures Into Terror #5

"The Man Who Was Death" (a: Russ Heath) ★★★
"Find Me! Find Me! Find Me!"(a: Don Rico) ★★ 
"The Clock Strikes!"(a: Gene Colan) ★★ 
"The Hitchhiker"★
"The Hand" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

Dr. Banks of the J. Kling Hospital happens onto a weird conspiracy: some of his fellow doctors (led by the mysterious and sinisterly-shaded Dr. Cragmore), actually from the planet Jupiter, are injecting patients with a serum (2X13 to be exact) that interacts with human blood to transform its carrier into a human bomb. Much easier than setting off atom bombs, according to Dr. Cragmore, and since Banks has discovered the secret of the Jupiterian invasion, he'll be the next to be infected. Once the poison is introduced into the human bloodstream, the victim has about two hours before he goes WHAM! Banks is injected with the serum but he manages to escape and finds his way to the office of Strategic Civilian Defense (and, if you've read a lot of Atlas stories, you know how long the line can be to get in) and lays out his story to the top brass. The suits lend Banks a sympathetic ear and then send him on his way, convinced he's a crackpot. Our poor Good Samaritan wanders the street, warning passersby that he's a human time bomb. Alas, they ignore him or call him insane. They shoulda listened.

What begins almost like a 1950s noir crime-drama heads down into science fiction territory with the outer space connection and then wraps itself up on a very bleak note when Banks takes out an entire city with his eruptive hemoglobin. Russ Heath's penultimate panel of Banks ripping at his shirt and screaming "I hear it inside myself, like a sizzling fuse! I'm blowing up!" is pretty compelling stuff, not your usual kiddie fare.

Speaking of noir, the protagonist (as well as the writer) of "The Clock Strikes!" has definitely been watching some of the latest B-flicks down at the Rialto; how else to explain his proposed suicide by hit man, when he finds he's about to die of a heart ailment? Unfortunately for the poor dope, after he's signed the contract, the doc calls him back and says there might have been a misunderstanding.  In "Find Me, Find Me, Find Me!," an overworked artist gets drawn into his painting of a hand holding a picture of a hand holding a picture of a... (on and on) but, just as the narrative gets interesting, we're cut off as if the writer had no idea to close this intriguing premise.

"The Hand" quiets a yawn

Two more hoary cliches are dusted off and put to bad use with "The Hitchhiker" (man picks up hitchhiker just as radio warns of escaped lunatic but, wait, it's the driver who's the looney -- fooled ya!) and "The Hand." The latter, at least, provides a boatload of guffaws (not sure that's what the scribe intended but take what you can get, I says) with its story of Jack, a mountain climber who loses his best friend in a hiking accident and the hand (belonging to the deceased) that shows up on his doorstep. All manner of terror ensues: the hand tears up Jack's office papers, pours water on his face when he's sleeping, screws up a great game of poker and, in the ultimate betrayal, rings Jack's girlfriend's doorbell! Even though Jack manages to get rid of the offending appendage, it shows up at the most inopportune time (while Jack is enjoying a mountain hike) to exact its final revenge on our hapless protagonist. You gotta hand it to the Atlas writers... they could wring a thousand stories out of the most overused plot line. Oh, and take a second look at that cover as it advertises what would have been Basil Wolverton's first terror tale for Atlas, "The Eye of Doom," which must have been pulled (and had "The Clock Strikes" put in its slot) at the last second, possibly because it wasn't completed. "The Eye of Doom" will arrive in Mystic #6 in January of '52.

Marvel Tales #102

"A Witch is Among Us" (a: Mike Sekowsky)  ★★★
"The Man Who Dreamed" (a: Gene Colan)  ★
"The End of the World" (a: Basil Wolverton)  ★★★
(r: Curse of the Weird #4)
"The Island" (a: Cal Massey)  ★★★

A sleepy New England town is rocked by the disappearance of several new-born babies and the residents of the village blame the kidnappings on an old woman who lives on the edge of town, a woman they all suspect is a witch. Into this maelstrom comes young Dr. Jonathon Poole, who takes a room at the residence of Faith Bonham, an old biddy who believes in the witch theories. Just as Poole is settling, a scream from the garden has him racing outside to find the beautiful Rosa, who claims her grandmother is, at that moment, being burned in her house as a witch. Poole, Bonham, and Rosa rush to the house, only to find it in ashes, Rosa's grandma up in smoke. Poole takes a liking to Rosa and offers her a room at Mrs. Bonham's place (to the consternation of his landlady), where they settle in to domestic bliss.

Faith explains to Poole that "each year of a newborn baby's life extends a witch's life one day." Poole, of course, scoffs but very shortly thereafter, the Harris baby is kidnapped by "a big black creature" and Rosa is suspected of inheriting her grandmother's genes. Mrs. Bonham searches upstairs for the witch-girl but finds something more alarming when she opens Mr. Poole's door -- the young doc sits in the middle of a pentagram, about to slice up the Harris baby! Faith wrests the child from his grip and, sacrifice denied, Poole the witch crumbles to dust. I really dug "A Witch is Among Us," a genuinely spooky little chiller that had me guessing right to the climax. Since we've read millions of these witch stories, we suspect that Rosa's granny is the red herring, a victim of mob madness (although that famous EC story where the accused witch was actually the witch comes to mind when I read these things now), but who could the real demon be? I take shots at Mike Sekowsky's art constantly and though I'm not ready to say things sure have changed, I will allow that there are plenty of good goosebump-raisers here. Those two shots are, of course the ones reproduced here, of Poole holding the Harris baby in one hand, a huge dagger in the other. Like the final panels of "The Man Who Was Death" (in this month's Adventures into Terror), this is pretty nasty stuff and far removed from the silly pablum of "The Hitchhiker," "The Hand," or "The Island of Madmen."

"The Man Who Dreamed" is a forgettable yarn about a guy who has nightmares about being upside-down and it turns out he's not having dreams; he's being visited by aliens who intend to shift the Earth off its axis. Much better if only for historical reasons is "The End of the World," the first of eight Basil Wolverton stories to grace the pages of the Atlas anthologies. Yes, alas, only eight but, scripts be damned, Wolverton could make anything readable, couldn't he? In "The End of the World," we enter a future Earth where man's ultimate goal is the conquest of the universe. Caught in the web is brilliant scientist, Julius Kane, who has developed a world-killer that harnesses "the full power of magnetic force," an explosive device deadlier than an H-bomb.

Kane wants no part of the plan the military has to use the weapon on Mars and so he craftily rejiggers his baby and then tells the army it's ready for testing. The "lethal load" is exploded on the far side of the moon, pushing it into Earth's atmosphere and causing catastrophes all over the globe. Kane manages to jump into his little anti-gravity air car and watches the devastation from above until chunks of the moon send his auto earthward. For some reason, Kane goes into suspended animation and wakes up (months? years?) later to find the Earth completely uninhabited. I absolutely love these apocalyptic, bleak, downbeat sagas that dotted the Atlas landscape, if for no other reason than to remind me that adults like to read funny books sometimes, too. Wolverton's panels are cluttered (in a good way) with all manner of detritus and destruction while his human characters look... anything but human!

Shipwrecked, Bob Archer rides a plank of wood to "The Island," at first a Godsend but later, after Bob meets the residents of the uncharted hunk of soil, a curse. Though friendly, the people of the island are ugly, almost cadaverous in appearance and Bob's only thought is escape. But his savior, Captain Windruff, insists that Bob should stay here for the rest of his life. Our wary protagonist feigns happiness by day, builds a boat by night (crafting a pretty good little ship in no time) and before long he's sailed and made it back to his sleepy little harbor town home. But something's just not right; as Bob makes his way through the village, people run screaming from a man they once called friend. When the bewildered Bob finally arrives at home and looks in the mirror, he finally understands: he never survived the shipwreck and "The Island" was a haven for souls lost at sea. Archer hops back into his skiff and heads out to sea, hoping to return to the island. A really depressing tale, but also one with hints of hope. Why his entrance into the after-life is kept secret from Bob is probably the only false note in "The Island." There's nothing sinister, we discover, about the people of the island, so why not let their new friend in on what's going on? Although, now that I think about it, the Captain's "office" has a flag bearing the skull and crossbones! At first very scratchy and ugly, Cal Massey's art becomes more suited to the mood of the story as it progresses and packs a wallop by tale's end. Except for the hiccup known as "The Man Who Dreamed," this is a solid issue of Marvel Tales!

In two weeks...
Let's welcome famed Batman artist
Jerry Robinson to our creepy neighborhood!