Journey Into Strange Tales! Atlas/ Marvel Horror! Issue 30

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 15

February 1952 Part II

Heath

 Suspense #14

"Death and Doctor Parker" (a: Russ Heath) ★★★★
"We Meet at Midnight" (a: Allen Bellman) ★
"The Last Man" (a: Mike Sekowsky) ★★1/2
"The Hide-Out" (a: George Klein) ★
"Out of This World" (a: Joe Certa) ★★

Dr. Parker kills his mentor, the great bio-chemist Crandall Hart, and steals Hart's serum of eternal life. Injecting himself with the formula, Parker destroys all of the older scientist's notes and then settles back to enjoy a long and leisurely life. Unfortunately, the cops arrest Parker for Hart's murder and sentence him to 99 years but the Doc's jailhouse rants convince them the con is insane and he's committed to an asylum. Parker escapes en route and begins a life on the run, visiting exotic countries and devising his plan for world domination. Nuclear war wipes out most of mankind, leaving only savages, and Parker is forced to hide in alleys and beg for food.

Ten centuries pass and our dopey villain (still wearing the same pants he wore in the 1950s!) has grown weary of life, wishing he could curtail his existence, but mutants capture him and place him on exhibit in a freak museum. War between the planets breaks out and Dr. Parker's cage is vaporized, leaving him a free man once more, but he becomes king of an empty world. As even more time passes, the world becomes overgrown with jungles and insects grow to a massive size. A swarm of giant wasps tears Dr. Parker from limb to limb, eating his skin and leaving only his bones, his head, and a heart. The head giggles and the heart beats.

If Atlas veers from suspenseful horror and tame monster yarns into the much more sleazy and gory offerings that would become a standard for Harvey, EC, and Master (publisher of the infamous Dark Mysteries), then I would point to "Death and Doctor Parker" as the moment the worm turned. Deliciously delineated by the master, Russ Heath, "Doctor Parker" not only winds its way through several wonky scripted twists and turns but also holds so many visual surprises as well. Parker grows old with the years (but, since his body doesn't fall apart despite being viable for over one thousand years, I would say he ages in "reverse dog" years) and we see his body fall into decay, his exposed chest mere ribs and scant flesh. His journey is wrought with distractions and obstacles that would have a normal man on his knees in tears but Parker just shrugs at his 99 years sentence and exclaims, "you have no idea how humorous that is, judge!" The final panels, of Parker being ripped to shreds by mutated insects, are sheer genius and our last glance at the fragments is laugh-out loud funny and chilling at the same time.

The crazed finale of "Death and Doctor Parker"

Alas, the rest of the material this issue is not even close to the standard set by "Death and Dr. Parker." The plot of "We Meet at Midnight" (man in a car wreck visits a house, meets death, discovers he's really dead, wakes up at crash scene thinking he's had a dream, visits a house...) is taken whole from "Reflection of Death!" (Tales from the Crypt #23, May 1951) and the art by Allen Bellman isn't nearly as stylish as Al Feldstein's.

"The Last Man" has an intriguing premise: Jimmy builds a fallout shelter for him and his girl, Pam, but said dame wants to die with everyone else when the big one falls. As they're arguing, the attack occurs and Jimmy hightails it into his vault, which is equipped to keep Jimmy safe from radiation and giant wasp mutations for forty years. When the time expires, Jimmy (now an old man) rises from his tomb to explore what he believes will be a vast wasteland, only to discover gorgeous, gleaming skyscrapers and flying cars, along with a still-young and gorgeous Pam, tending to her multitude of children. Seems as though the big attack wasn't so big after all and humanity has discovered the secret to happiness and eternal youth while Jimmy has been moldering in his underground hole with his Ritz crackers and old Playboys. Depressed, he heads back to his fallout shelter to die alone. A very thoughtful, deep script (with some silliness, yes) that almost seems to demonize Jimmy for his zeal to remain alive through a holocaust. It is amazing that Pam never thought to knock on Jimmy's iron door and let him know everything was ok (perhaps she thought he was a dingbat and que, sera, sera) and that the developing committee that erected all those skyscrapers around Jimmy's mountainside tomb never thought to level the nuisance.

"The Hide-Out" is three pages of fluff about a crook who takes refuge in a department store and discovers a party going on. Turns out the mannequins come to life at night and celebrate life; the thug's rude interruption dooms him to a life of wearing bad clothes in a Macy's window. I'll say this though: reading these quick three pages beats the hell out of watching Mannequin. Finally, Kupert Boggs III, the rich SOB of "Out of This World" wants to conquer space and he'll spend every dollar he's amassed to secure that feat, but flying to Saturn is a difficult task and even Earth's greatest brains are failing to find a solution. Finally, a small man enters Boggs' office and tells him he's got a rocket warmed up and ready to go; the duo blast off into space but halfway through the trip, the little man doffs his disguise and allows how he's a man from Saturn and Boggs is his trophy. The final panel shows the disgruntled billionaire in a cage at a Saturnian zoo. That's a final image that's been used quite a few times over the decades. I love how these space explorers in Atlas comics never seem to have to notify their government that they'll be lifting off in a rocket to outer space.

 Strange Tales #5

"The Room Without a Door" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★1/2
(r: Chamber of Chills #16)
"Little Man Who Was There" (a: Jim Mooney) ★1/2
(r: Crypt of Shadows #16)
"The Trap" (a: Manny Stallman) ★★
(r: Tomb of Darkness #14)
"My Brother Harry" (a: Tony DiPreta) ★★
(r: Crypt of Shadows #17)

Obsessed with time travel, nutty Professor Wilkins has turned his back on science and instead seeks the "truth" through black magic. His colleagues all plead with him to stop the madness but Wilkins won't listen. One day, he sees an article in the newspaper about the relative of Roxanna Narrse, a famous witch who was burned at the stake in 1692. The old woman, Albitra Narrse lives in an old house that, she claims, contains a "Room Without a Door," and Wilkins makes it his goal to attain the old house. He pays the back taxes owed on the rickety mansion and has Albitra tossed out on her ancient behind. Wilkins tears the house apart until he finds the fabled "room without a door," a small box covered with wallpaper. He breaks the box open and is transported back in time just as he always had hoped. Unfortunately for the professor, he ends up in 1692 and he's burned at the stake as a witch. Nonsensical and clumsy but enjoyable nonetheless if only for Joe Maneely's art. Albitra Narrse is about as crone-ish as you can get.

Dennis Ames has a shadow, a ghoulish figure, that follows him everywhere and leaves death and destruction in their wake. During the war, Dennis encounters the man in his foxhole and, after he flees, the hole is bombed. Encountering the figure on a train, Ames gets the willies and disembarks, watching as the departing train crashes in flames. And so on and so on. Dennis grows weary of the mounting death toll and drifts around the country, trying to shake the man but he finally decides to come home. Hitching a ride on a truck, Dennis sees his wraith along the side of the road and, as the driver is pulling over, Ames grabs the wheel and crashes the truck. On the operating table, Ames opens his eye to see the surgeon is... yep, Dr. Spectre! "The Little Man Who Was There" is another of those quickies that makes absolutely no sense (why is this figure following Dennis and what exactly does the final operating table scene mean?) and makes no apology for the shortcomings. How did Stan keep track of these titles so as not to use them over and over?

Equally baffling is "The Trap"about a man, named Kane, stuck on a flight that heads into outer space. The man parachutes to Earth (!) and finds his life a jumble. Kane knows people he's never met before and can anticipate events before they happen which is great but that's not really what the story is about. This guy is a gambler, he embezzles funds from his company and when his boss finds out, Kane murders him, is executed in the electric chair, and wakes to find it's all a dream. Well, sorta. It's all done in Tarantino-esque non-linear fashion, which would be a dazzling effect if the story was any good.

Space travel becomes so much easier in "The Trap"

In the last story this issue, "My Brother Harry," Phil has had enough of his wife, Margie, and her nutty brother, Harry, who has a bit of a wild imagination. Every night, Harry sits on the sofa and talks to his dead mother's ghost, a ritual that has Phil tearing out his own hair and beating his lovely wife. One night, after tea, Phil and Margie have a particularly nasty spat and Phil heads down to the local dance parlor, where he meets up with his regular squeeze, Lola. While on the dance floor, Phil doubles up and collapses. When he awakens, he hears the doctor tell Lola that Phil has been poisoned. Enraged, Phil bolts out of the bed and heads out the door without so much as a by your leave, racing home to even the score with Margie but, once he gets there, Margie won't give him the time of day. Harry, though, tells Phil he hears him perfectly. A nice little final snippet of dialogue saves "My Brother Harry" from being a total waste of time. We never do find out who poisoned Phil's tea (though Margie does tell Harry that "Phil's not coming back!") and, oddly, Harry's mother never makes an appearance.

Everett

 Venus #18

"The Little Man" (a: Manny Stallman) ★★★

Ex- WWII pilot Ryan thinks he's tough stuff so he accepts a job from Anything Inc. to find “The Little Man” for the richest man in the world. Seems this billionaire saw the smallest man in the world years before in the jungles of Africa and really must add the freak to his collection of oddities. Things go south for Ryan when he discovers that the witch doctor in Bali Bali must have a blond man to make a little guy and Ryan is the only blond around! For a four-pager, “The Little Man” is a lot of fun and I really didn’t see the twist coming ’til it was right on top of me. Even better is the lead-off “Venus” story, “The Sealed Specters,” wherein the titular goddess contends with a Tunnel of Love packed-full of demons. Some jaw-dropping art from Bill Everett on this one. That cover reminds me of Amando de Ossorio's Templar Knights in Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Just a taste of the Everett goodies found in Venus #18

Journey Into Unknown Worlds #9

"The People Who Couldn't Exist!" 
(a: Mike Sekowsky) ★★★
"The Spaceman" (a: Allen Bellman) ★★
"Don't Kill Me Twice!" (a: Werner Roth) ★★
"Beyond Time!" (a: Pete Morisi) ★★1/2
"The Four Walls" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★★1/2


The first manned expedition to Pluto expects to land on a deserted barren landscape but, instead, they find a town just like "back home," populated with very familiar faces. Dead wives, children, and mothers run from houses to greet the explorers; when prompted, the relatives just shrug and give no explanations, simply inviting their loved ones in for endless nights of partying. The space travelers get used to the cozy atmosphere very quick until they start becoming ill, as if they hadn't had a meal in weeks, and a terrified voice over the phone sends the Captain racing to the local hospital. One of the crew, Benson, has gone blind and has discovered the secret of Pluto: the planet itself has hypnotized the crew into thinking they've landed in paradise. As his men die around him, the Captain heads for the rocket ship to warn the oncoming second expedition of the danger but only a nonsensical message is received by the nearing ship.

The truly awful splash

"The People Who Couldn't Exist" is a perfect example of the highs and lows of Atlas science-fiction. Though the completist in me forces coverage of the SF titles, I'm  not ignorant of the fact that it was in the horror tales that the company excelled. Still, "The People..." is a hoot from beginning to end and I sure wish I could ask the writer a few things about the script (not that he'd remember). First of all, how is it that the men suddenly find it safe to remove their helmets and spacesuits on a planet that, according to scientists, falls to almost 400 degrees below zero on a warm summer day? What is the planet's motive for fooling and, ultimately, killing these space travelers? How could you not realize, until it's far too late, that you're starving and severely dehydrated? Most important of all, should we care about my nitpicks as funny book fans? That last one is easy. Nope, not at all. Not when you've got a wonderfully entertaining and loony yarn such as "The People...," so entertaining in fact, that I barely realized I was wading through Sekowsky-Swamp. Loaded with choice dialogue and amusing captions ("We were all overjoyed to see our loved ones... but still a little worried... The men began to relax a little... after they got used to the idea of dining with the dead") and graced with one of the funniest final panels I've yet read on this journey.

The rip-snortin' finish to "The People Who Couldn't Exist!"

Reynolds, "The Spaceman," accepts a secret space trip on the "Stardust" for a whole lot of money, but then regrets his decision when he discovers the ship is aimed at Betelgeuse II, a star that would take 35 years to reach. When he confronts the Captain, he's told that the trip will only take a matter of months since the ship is taking a convenient "time warp" short cut (see handy scientific explanation reprinted here) and our hero goes back to counting his money. But it turns out the Captain wasn't entirely forthcoming when Reynolds lands back on Earth and finds that, though he's only aged 6 months, Earth has seen 70 years go by; Reynolds' love, Joan, is a 95-year-old grandmother! Despondent, Reynolds heads back to the "Stardust"for another run. Though Allen Bellman delivers the most amateurish art this side of Manny Stallman, "The Spaceman" does contain a few moments of genuine pathos, as when our spaceman faces what once was the apple of his eye and then heads back to port with his head hung low. But, my goodness, Speedos in space?

Four people are all snatched from the moment of death but then reappear on a future Earth with no answers and a feeling of constant dread. Then, one by one, they begin to die in the same manner they passed the first time around. The answer comes too late and only one "survivor" is graced with the explanation: scientists from the future were monkeying with a time machine and accidentally teleported the four doomed individuals to the future but now, to insure that nothing disrupts the space/time continuum (or something along those lines), the eggheads must rectify their mistake. "Don't Kill Me Twice" starts out as your average, cliched "I beat death" yarn but veers into a different playground altogether with its surprise revelation. It doesn't all come together cleanly in the end but the finale is effective and downbeat.

Two quickies round out the package this time out: "Beyond Time!" has very nice Heath-esque illustrations by Pete Morisi and tells the tale of a scourge that winds its way across the Universe, snuffing out planets, stars, and suns for nourishment. The last planet standing, Excto, manages to capture its combined knowledge and condense it into a very small ball and then eject it far into space. That ball becomes... Earth. Pretty risqué for a 1950s funny book to turn its nose up at Creation and offer up its own (admittedly reasonable) explanation for how we got the ball rolling. Unless I'm mistaken (which happens frequently around here), this only the second time we've seen art from Morisi (the first being "The Waiting Grave," back in Suspense #6, March 1951) and I'm looking forward to more from the artist (next up: Strange Tales #6 next month), but it looks like the bulk of Pete's work appeared in the Charlton horror titles (a company that I will get around to some day!) according to this (incomplete) checklist. "The Four Walls" also contains some dazzling art, this time by future Marvel superstar Joe Sinnott, and has a very Bradbury-esque flavor to its script about a man trapped on mars who finds a house that adapts to his needs... or so he thinks. Nice twist in the tail I never saw coming. Not a bad issue of Journey Into  Unknown Worlds!

The shocking climax of "The Four Walls"

In Two Weeks...
Peter wonders just how much madness he can take
as Marvel adds two more genre titles!

Star Spangled DC War Stories Issue 151: August 1974

The DC War Comics
1959-1976
by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Dominguez

Weird War Tales 28

"Isle of Forgotten Warriors"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Alfredo Alcala

Peter: Sadistic Colonel Deermont rules the Black Cat Battalion with an iron fist and its mascot, a cute little feline, with an electric collar. The Battalion comes to an island in the Pacific and wipes out the Japanese soldiers in no time. Then weird stuff starts happening: soldiers and equipment disappear. When the men are ambushed by more Japanese soldiers, the Colonel flees and comes face to face with the secret of the disappearances when he falls down a hole and awakens the size of a pea. The natives have discovered a rite that shrinks the military men down; they place them in a miniature POW camp in the middle of a moat and keep them prisoners for entertainment. Deermont discovers soldiers of different wars in the camp and quickly takes charge. When he discovers there are Japanese on another part of the miniature camp, he focuses his attention on wiping them out. When the ragtag team comes up against numbers too great to vanquish, the Colonel's men mutiny and he mows them down with a machine gun. Using a subterranean tunnel (dug by ants, which he encounters along the way), Colonel Deermont escapes but then encounters his black cat, who toys with him before putting the Colonel out of his misery.

Start to finish, "Isle of Forgotten Warriors" is one huge pile of rubbish, save the usual heroics of Alfredo Alcala. As usual with these stories, the chief antagonist, Deermont, is so sadistic it's hard to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the dopey adventure. The saga is all over the map and stocked with funny book cliches. According to the GCD, this story was originally intended to be published as an installment in the short-lived "Adventurers Club" series in Adventure Comics. It was rewritten to fit in Weird War Tales but it wouldn't have had to be altered much, since the "Adventurers Club" series was simply a narrator (Nelson Strong) relating weird tales that had happened to the members of the club. Strong would appear in bookended panels (a la Cain in House of Mystery), but would not star in the stories themselves. I haven't read the other tales in the "Adventurers Club" series but, after reading "Isle of Forgotten Warriors," I'm not sure I've missed anything.

Jack: I remember those few offbeat issues of Adventure from 1973. I think you give Alcala too much credit here, since his art isn't particularly impressive. We know early on that Lt. Deermont is a bad dude because he tortures his pet cat. Later, he shoots and kills his own men! Part three of the story veers into Incredible Shrinking Man territory, as Lt. Deermont battles giant ants. The end is a nice turnabout, as the black cat gets revenge on the soldier, but this is not much of a story.

Heath

G.I. Combat 172

"At the Mercy of My Foes!"
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Sam Glanzman

"Conqueror!"
Story by John David Warner
Art by Dan Green

Peter: While on patrol, the Haunted Tank is damaged by a Nazi tank and the men must forage for parts before they can get back on the road. Meanwhile, over the next ridge, their old adversary, the vicious but honorable General Preiss (see issues #168 and 170), has had equal problems with the jeep he was riding in. The driver has been mortally wounded and the General is stranded. Luckily for him, a German tank rolls up to his rescue and it just happens to be commanded by his pupil, the vicious and dishonorable Helmut Kuhl. Preiss spots the Jeb Stuart on the other side of the hill and lays down a trap to catch the men. Kuhl would just as soon slaughter them but that's not the way of the honorable General. When Kuhl tries to run Gus and Jeb over with his tank and then toys with them as they dangle off a cliff, Preiss puts a bullet in his student and swears, as God is his witness, he'll kill the crew of the Haunted Tank... but in an honorable way.

"At the Mercy of My Foes!"

I'm too lazy to go through my notes to see just how honorable the good General was in his previous appearances but Archie seems to be setting him up as a quasi-good guy for future cameos. The script for "At the Mercy of My Foes!" is a mish-mosh of good and bad. I liked the little throw-away touches here and there, not designed to make a splash but to resonate: Preiss inquires as to the whereabouts of Kuhl's academy buddy, Steinmetz, to which Kuhl chillingly replies:

"Can you believe it? He actually confided to me his mother was a Jew. I had no choice but to report him. After that, it was the Gestapo's business."

But wrapped around Archie's gems is another plot that finds the Tank crippled and vulnerable but still somehow able to weather any storm. Sam Glanzman's art is horrendous; other than Gus (for obvious reasons), you can't tell one crewman from the other. You have to pay very close attention to the word balloons to decipher identities as they all look like shriveled-up corpses. Still, there are enough positives here to give it a thumb-sideways.

"Conqueror!"

In the back-up, Voltag the "Conqueror" sails the English coast in search of defenseless castles to rape and pillage. Voltag gets wind of a huge castle on a cliff, and he and his men arrive to find no defenses whatsoever. When a holy man meets them at the gate to convince them to turn back, Voltag cleaves him in two and continues over the drawbridge. But when the Vikings break down the inner door, they discover piles of corpses: the castle has been struck with the plague! I'm not a fan of these war stories from ancient times but I have to admit that "Conqueror!" is a cut above the rest. The reveal is predictable but the dialogue is readable and the art is gorgeous. Dan Green renders these Vikings as strong, vicious men and the castle as a great structure; these are not cartoony doodlings, a la Ric Estrada. Green went on to be second banana to Romita and the Buscema brothers, which is a shame since he could probably have had a successful career penciling one of the Conan books, based on his work here.

Jack: I'm not sure I'd call Green's art here "gorgeous" but it is good and a heck of a step up from Sam Glanzman or Ric Estrada. The Haunted Tank story's not bad, despite the dreadful pictures; it's good to see an enemy soldier with ethics who realizes that the rabid youth he's paired with must be sacrificed for the greater good. "Conqueror!" is somewhat predictable but I like the Viking characters and the setting in the Dark Ages.

Kubert

Our Army at War 271

"Brittle Harvest"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Russ Heath

"The Gun"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ric Estrada

Jack: Privates Krull and Rankin have joined Easy Co. as Sgt. Rock and his men march toward the Kroder Dam, a key spot that the Nazis plan to blow up in order to flood the valley roads around it and make the movement of heavy equipment impossible. Krull is a farmer from Maine who talks about crops, and when three unknown members of Easy Co. are killed in a land mine explosion, Krull compares the guns sticking up from the ground and marking their graves to sticks marking the sports where spinach or carrots have been planted on a farm.

"Brittle Harvest"

On their way to the dam, the men of Easy Co. happen on a Nazi patrol down in a valley, shooting at an American patrol higher up. Rock gets his men to make giant snowballs, which they roll down the hill and which then land on the Nazis, burying them. An American plane then drops bombs on the snowbound Nazis to finish them off. On the way to Kroder Dam, Easy Co. is the target of bullets from a Nazi plane, but Krull shoots it down with what looks like a grenade-launcher; he remarks that it's "easy as shootin' crows in a cornfield." Rock and his men finally reach the dam and see that the plane Krull shot down crashed into the top of the structure, creating a breach that allowed water to flow over the top and drown the Nazis below, who had been planning to blow it up. The cold winter temperatures made the water quickly freeze, leaving the Nazis planted in the ice like "some kind of weird garden," according to Rankin, and Krull calls it a "Bitter Harvest."

Well, thank goodness for Russ Heath! Now that Joe Kubert just does the covers, Heath is the best artist we've got illustrating Sgt. Rock stories. I really like this one, perhaps because Rankin and Krull don't get killed at the end, as I was certain they would. Now, that doesn't mean we'll ever see them again, but for once the new recruits are not just there to provide cannon fodder. Heath's art, of course, is superb.

Like Sam Glanzman, Ric Estrada seems best when
his panels omit human faces ("The Gun")

In North Africa, a young Nazi soldier named Hans is quite fond of his machine gun and thinks it is "invincible...and will last forever!" When American soldiers attack and battle begins, Hans is busy shooting away until his dog tags, hanging off his neck, jam "The Gun" and he is stabbed to death by one of the soldiers he shot. The only winners in this fight are the vultures that feast on the corpses in the desert sun.

There's not much to this five-pager; we know Hans will get his just desserts and Ric Estrada's art is never inspiring.

Peter: It's nice to have Heath back after a two-issue furlough but it would have been nice to drop a decent story in his lap. From eye-rolling crop-growing analogies to snow that folds like turf, this is one goofy script, bulging with such lame dialogue as: "Did y'ever think of bullets as seeds? Seeds we plant into men... that harvest nothing but death?" Sheesh. "The Gun" is better, but it doesn't elevate to the lofty heights of previous Big Bob Gallery classics such as "White Devil... Yellow Devil." Estrada's art bugs the hell out of me; it almost looks as though it was crafted on a computer. I would rather the artists had been flipped on these two stories. Give Heath the superior script and let Estrada handle the pap.

Kubert

Star Spangled War Stories 181

"One Guy in the Right Place..."
Story by Frank Robbins
Art by Jack Sparling

"Hell's Angels! Part One: The Hammer of Hell"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Frank Thorne

Peter: In a direct sequel to last issue's adventure, The Unknown Soldier continues his journey to find his brother's grave. What he finds is an eerily-quiet jungle about to be invaded by Allied forces. The quiet is disturbed, though, when the soldiers hit the beach and are massacred by hidden Japanese forces. Burdened with his oversight and with the blood of dozens on his hands, US wanders through the jungle until he is discovered by a group of rebels commanded by a gorgeous little gal by the name of Maria (think pig-tailed Mme. Marie, Jack!), who tells the US that a shadow soldier is slipping through the jungle and wiping out the Japanese, leaving the calling card, "Harry Pays Back!" Since our bandaged hero's brother's name was Harry, naturally we are to assume that Harry didn't bite the dust after all but, in a nice twist after the freedom fighters have laid waste to the scummy Japanese, we discover that Maria herself left the notes to provide confidence to her rebels. Maria leads the Soldier to his brother's grave and, at last, he can make peace with himself.

Not a bad story; "One Guy in the Right Place..." is, in fact, the best US story since the Robbins/Sparling crew took office. Just as I was rolling my eyes at the suggestion of the long-dead Harry somehow surviving the blast and wandering through the jungle, never letting on to his brother of his survival, Robbins throws in a tidy twist we all should have seen coming. I do question why the brass back in Washington have no problem with their #1 secret agent taking lots of time off to soul search but if there was no path to reawakening there would be no story.

Sure looks like Kubert
to these untrained eyes!

In the match-up we knew would come some day, Rittmeister Hans von Hammer collides with "Balloon Buster," Steve Savage in part 1 of "Hell's Angels!" After a brief tussle in the sky, Savage runs out of ammo and von Hammer safely escorts him to a German airfield, where Savage is taken prisoner. But for how long? The first Enemy Ace adventure in four years is certainly not on a par with "Killer of the Skies" or the Ace's debut saga (my picks for the two best stories of 1965), but not a bad re-intro to von Hammer and the less long awaited return of Steve Savage (to be fair, Steve's short run was enjoyable as well, just not on the mythic scale of Enemy Ace), Balloon Boy (with nary a balloon in sight!). There's a major twist coming up at the climax of this three-parter, but we'll get to that in a few months. Frank Thorne's art is uncannily close to Kubert's and that's a good thing. Someone upstairs told Archie not to screw up and assign Sparling or Glanzman to this one.

Jack: The Unknown Soldier story gets off to a shaky start as US seems unable to comprehend that Japanese gunners would be guarding the beach where Allied forces were about to land, but as I read it I found myself (yet again) wanting to read a good book about WWII so that I knew more of the historical perspective. By the end, it's a good story; I like US removing his mask at his brother's grave and I like the twist with Maria turning out to be the person leaving notes in the name of the deceased brother.

The Enemy Ace story is good but, at seven pages, too short to get any real air speed going. I agree that Frank Thorne apes Kubert in a few spots (or maybe Joe was helping out?) but Frank is no Joe and his art, for the most part, strikes me as too loose and '70s-groovy for this series (see Steve Savage's tight pants). The old magic is not back yet, but there are two more stories to read.

For some reason, I feel compelled to rank the art in the four comics this month from best to worst:

Inside stories: Heath, Green, Thorne, Alcala, Sparling, Estrada, Glanzman

Covers: Kubert, Heath, Dominguez

Peter? Care to weigh in?

Peter: Oh, Jack, you know I can never ignore a challenge! Therefore:

Heath, Green, Alcala, Thorne, Sparling, Glanzman, Estrada

Next Week...
Uncle Creepy gets a companion!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents-The Opportunity-J.W. Aaron Mystery Solved!

by Jack Seabrook

When I wrote about "The Opportunity" back in 2014 (see here), I was unable to find anything out about J.W. Aaron, the author who wrote the story on which the TV show was based. The FictionMags Index lists ten stories by Aaron, all published in the mystery magazines in the late 1950s:



"Pat Hand," Manhunt (April 1956)
"Death of a Tramp," Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (December 1956)
"You Can’t Beat Routine," Verdict (January 1957)
"Golden Opportunity," Manhunt (March 1957)
"Kidnap Case," Trapped Detective Story Magazine (June 1957)
"Cut-Throat World," Manhunt (October 1957)
"The Snatchers," Guilty Detective Story Magazine (November 1957)
"Blonde in the Bathtub," Trapped Detective Story Magazine (December 1957)
"To Crack a Safe," Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, (February 1958)
"Mad Dog Beware!," Manhunt (October 1959)

"Golden Opportunity" was published here

I recently heard from Bob Bjorkman, who writes:

Regarding your blog, bare-bones e-zine, Thursday, September 4, 2014.

The blog topic that day was "Golden Opportunity," written by J.W. Aaron and made into a 30-minute Alfred Hitchcock television segment. There was some discussion about who the author was. I can tell you that J.W. Aaron was a pseudonym for my father, John D. Bjorkman, who wrote several short stories during the 1950s.

I attach correspondence between H.S.D. publications and my father for "Death of a Tramp," which was published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The document identifies J.W. Aaron as John D. Bjorkman.

I queried further and received more information:

Dad was born and raised in Minneapolis. After high school, he enlisted in the army. He was in the 3rd Infantry division in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Coincidentally, James Arness, also from Minneapolis, and Audie Murphy were in the same division. After WWII he attended South Dakota State for a couple of years, then married my mother. He became an agent/ telegrapher on the Milwaukee Railroad and spent his career in small South Dakota towns along the railroad from Sioux Falls to Rapid City, while raising a family, finally retiring in 1984. He was about 35 in the picture I attach, which would have been about 1960. Which is about when he wrote the last of his short stories for the crime magazines.

Following are excerpts from his obituary:

John D. Bjorkman

Sioux Falls--John D. Bjorkman, 80, died at his home on Wednesday, October 13, 2004. John D. Bjorkman was born on May 14, 1924 in Minneapolis, to Alfred and Grace Bjorkman. After high school, in 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army, where he served as a combat infantryman and later as a military policeman. He participated in the North African campaign, the Sicilian campaign, and four amphibious landings on the Italian coast, including Anzio Beach, serving with a valor he never acknowledged in life, but for which he was awarded numerous medals, including the Bronze Star. Upon his return from the War, John attended South Dakota State College in Brookings. John was an agent and telegrapher for the Milwaukee Road in various towns in South Dakota from 1950 until his retirement in 1984. He was an ardent sports enthusiast. He coached his sons for many years in youth baseball and developed a passion for golf, which he continued to play several times each week, until two months before his death. He also authored several short stories, published under his pen name, J.W. Aaron, in magazines such as Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock and in hardcover in a compilation of best short stories. He was a member of the American Legion, VFW, and Elks.

I am grateful to Mr. Bjorkman for kindly sending along information about his father and for solving the mystery of the identity of author J.W. Aaron!

The Hitchcock Project-James P. Cavanagh Part Five: One More Mile to Go [2.28]

by Jack Seabrook

F. J. Smith's short story, "One More Mile to Go," begins as an "elderly, small-town storekeeper" named Jacoby strangles his nagging wife, Edna, as she sleeps. Having planned the murder in advance, he loads his wife's body in the trunk with "a box of iron weights" and drives from his home in Edgetown toward New Orleans. He plans to sink the weighted corpse in a "deep bayou" off a "seldom used dirt road."

As he gets close to the place where he plans to turn off the highway, his reverie about having committed the perfect crime is shattered by the siren of a police car behind him. The policeman tells Jacoby that his car's taillight is out. Nervously, Jacoby chats with the highway patrolman, who suggests that he stop at Fischer's Service Station, "up the road," to have the taillight replaced. Jacoby does as instructed, giving the gas station attendant a five-dollar bill and asking him to install a new bulb. The bulb fails to work, however, and the trooper pulls into the station to buy a Coke. The policeman deduces that Jacoby's car has a "bad connection" and notices that its trunk looks "pretty loaded down." Jacoby, who owns a feed store, explains that heavy bags of fertilizer are in the trunk. The trooper suggests opening the trunk to fix the loose wire, but Jacoby, feeling "as though he were about to fall or faint," claims that he left the key to the trunk at home. The policeman tries to yank the trunk lid open but the lock holds; finally, the trooper bangs on the fender and the light goes on.

David Wayne as Jacoby

Jacoby drives off, relieved at his "remarkable deliverance from near calamity" and convinced that it was "the result of his own ingenuity." As he approaches the turnoff to the dirt road that leads to the bayou, the trooper's car approaches from behind and Jacoby again has to pull over. This time, the policeman gives him the change he neglected to take from the five-dollar bill he gave the gas station attendant. Unfortunately, the trooper notices that Jacoby's taillight is out again and suggests that Jacoby follow him "a half mile up the road" to police headquarters, where the mechanic can fix the light at no charge. Jacoby has no choice but to follow the policeman to certain discovery of his own crime.

Smith's suspenseful story is built around a situation with which any reader can identify: the feeling of fear and powerlessness that overcomes a driver when he or she is pulled over by a policeman. Usually, the infraction is minor, but here, where the driver in question harbors a terrible secret, the stakes are immeasurably higher. The reader is forced to identify with the driver, a cold-blooded murderer, and the transference of guilt is complete as the reader cannot help but root for the killer and hope he makes his escape. Ironically, despite all of Jacoby's planning, his scheme is unraveled by something as simple as a malfunctioning taillight. It is as if the universe will not allow him to succeed in committing the perfect crime.

Steve Brodie as the cop

Smith's story was published in the June 1956 issue of Manhunt and it was collected by David C. Cooke in the 12th Annual Collection of the Best Detective Stories of the Year, published in 1957. The tale was purchased for adaptation on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Alfred Hitchcock chose it as one of the three episodes he would direct for the second season of the series. He was in between finishing The Wrong Man and starting Vertigo when "One More Mile to Go" was rehearsed and filmed in three days, from January 9, 1957, to January 11, 1957; the show aired on CBS on Sunday, April 7, 1957. The telefilm is a brilliant piece of work that shows the master enjoying a technical challenge and exploring themes that he would return to in Psycho.

James P. Cavanagh's script features minimal dialogue for long stretches and one wonders how many of the wordless sequences were invented by the director. The show opens with a fade-in on a view of a house in the distance, with bare trees in the foreground suggesting a winter scene that will soon be reflected in the cold relationship between the main character and his wife. A picture window on the house is the only source of light, and its placement at the center of the shot makes it resemble a movie screen at a drive-in movie. There is a dissolve and we get a closer look as the screen is filled by the multi-paned window, whose central pane is cracked--again, this suggests a fracture in the relationship behind the glass. The camera moves forward a bit but cannot penetrate the window glass, so it remains outside as the scene plays out in a room beyond the window and inside the house.

Louise Larabee as Jacoby's wife

We hear muffled voices but cannot make out words clearly, and ominous music playing on the soundtrack foreshadows dark deeds to come. A man (Jacoby) sits, reading the paper by the fireplace (the cold temperature outside hardly matches the chilly marriage portrayed inside), while a woman, presumably his wife, stands before him, berating him. She snatches the newspaper from his hands and throws it in the fire (I think I could make out her yelling, "Now you're listening!") and he stands and uses the fireplace poker to push the burning newspaper further into the hearth. The argument intensifies and the woman slaps her husband; he begins to threaten her with the poker, she steps out of the view of the camera, and he violently hits her over the head with the poker.

For the first time, the camera enters the house, as there is a cut to a close-up of Jacoby's face. What was the argument about? It does not matter--a typical battle between husband and wife has ended in sudden, angry murder. Contrast this to the short story, where Jacoby planned out the murder and strangled his wife while she slept. In Cavanagh's teleplay, Jacoby's actions seem to constitute a crime of passion, and this makes his subsequent behavior easier to identify with. The initial scene that portrays the events leading up to the murder is added to the story to establish motivation.

Norman Leavitt as Red

Jacoby confirms that his wife is dead and looks around the empty house to see if anyone witnessed his act. Seeing no one, he picks up the telephone but sees blood on his sleeve and puts the phone down. The sight of the blood on his clothing tells him that he cannot hide his own guilt and makes him change his plan. But what was his plan? Who was he going to call--the police? Did he think he could get away with murder and then change his mind when he saw the blood? We have no idea and we must try to read the thoughts and emotions on Jacoby's face because, to this point, there has been no dialogue other than what was muffled behind the window when we could not hear clearly.

Deciding to cover up his act, Jacoby uses a handkerchief to clean the blood off the poker. He also wipes off his own fingerprints, putting the poker back in its stand and throwing the handkerchief in the fire. He enters the garage (we see that his car has California license plates, so the location of the story has been moved from Louisiana), picks up a shovel, and puts it down--perhaps he thought about burying the body and then changed his mind. Unlike the Jacoby in the story, this Jacoby planned nothing in advance and is making it up as he goes along. It is a credit to Hitchcock's direction and the acting of David Wayne (as Jacoby) that we are able to understand his thoughts as he processes his options without a word of speech or even voiceover narration. There is a quick shot of his wife's dead body on the floor, and then we see Jacoby take a large sack from the garage and put her body into it. We see him pulling the sack slowly over her clothes and, with the closing of the bag, she ceases to be a person and becomes a thing to be disposed of.

The opening shot resembles a drive-in movie

Jacoby struggles to put the heavy burden in the car's trunk and throws in some heavy, metal objects to weigh it down, along with a rope and a chain. He opens the garage, gets into his car, and drives off into the night. There is a dissolve to the car driving on a lonely road (a highway sign identifies it as Route 99, a north-south highway later replaced by an interstate) and many critics have commented that the shots of Jacoby driving are similar to those of Janet Leigh driving to the Bates Motel in Psycho; both characters fear discovery of their crimes and have something with them in the car that they must keep hidden. Jacoby is pulled over by a motorcycle cop and finally the first words are spoken, approximately ten minutes into the episode. There is a nice shot where the cop examines Jacoby's license and Jacoby notices the blood on the cuff of his sleeve and rolls it up to conceal it. He is from Edgetown, though there is no such place in California and this is surely carried over from the short story.

At the gas station, Jacoby once again does something while no one else is looking, this time surreptitiously checking that the trunk is still securely locked. Rather than drinking a Coke, the cop drinks from a water fountain, perhaps because Coca-Cola was not one of the show's sponsors. There are several tight close ups of the characters' faces that allow us to get a good look at their emotions, and a look of terror comes over Jacoby's face when the cop asks the gas station attendant for a crowbar to pry open the car's trunk. As so often happens in Hitchcock's films, the viewer is fully engaged with the killer and is afraid he will be caught; the transference of guilt is strong in this scene, as we quietly pray that the cop will not find the body in the trunk. Fortunately for Jacoby, the act of trying to pry open the trunk causes the taillight to go back on, and Jacoby's face shows delight in his deliverance.

Cracked glass as metaphor for broken marriage

There are more shots of Jacoby behind the wheel as he lights and smokes a cigarette; these shots alternate with point of view shots of the road and the lake as he approaches it with the intention of submerging his wife's corpse. The cop pulls him over, the taillight fails, and the show ends with Jacoby's car pulling out to follow the cop's motorcycle to his doom, but there is one final shot--that of the car's taillight flickering on and off, evidence of the cruel fate that the killer was unable to escape.

"One More Mile to Go" is  a triumph. In his seminal article on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Steve Mamber notes the "superbly executed opening scene" and comments on the show as a whole that the "incident is suspenseful because the audience knows the hero to be in even greater danger than the law officers themselves suspect." The fact that Mamber refers to Jacoby as a "hero," even inadvertently, demonstrates how successful Hitchcock is at making the viewer identify with the criminal. Patrick McGilligan calls this episode the "season highlight" and comments that it represents a "tour de force of macabre humor and suspense..."

The author of the short story, F.J. Smith, had one other story adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Reward to Finder," broadcast later in 1957) and the FictionMags Index lists 15 short stories that he wrote, but I have not found any biographical details about the author. The fifteen stories appeared mostly in mystery magazines between 1956 to 1960, with two more in 1966 and 1967; "One More Mile to Go" is the earliest one listed. In Patrick McGilligan's Hitchcock bio, he lists Smith as "George F.J. Smith," and this is also reflected in The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, but I have found no other source for this added first name--both the short story in Manhunt and the onscreen credit for the television adaptation simply list the author as "F.J. Smith."

David Wayne (1914-1995) was born Wayne James McMeekan and began acting on stage in the 1930s. He started appearing in films in 1940, with a bit part in Stranger on the Third Floor, then spent time fighting in WWII before joining the Actors Studio. He first appeared on TV in 1948 and his screen career lasted until 1987. He won two Tony Awards for his stage work and was seen on The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. Wayne memorably played the Mad Hatter on the Batman TV series and co-starred with Jim Hutton as Inspector Queen on the Ellery Queen TV show that ran from 1975 to 1976. He also starred in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Thirty-First of February."

The motorcycle cop is played by Steve Brodie (1919-1992), who played the husband in Cavanagh's "The Creeper." Born John Stevenson, Brodie was on screens big and small from 1944 to 1988 and was seen in four episodes in all of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as on Thriller and in such films as Out of the Past (1947) and Winchester '73 (1950).

Poor Louise Larabee (1916-2002) once again plays a nagging wife who is murdered by her husband; her other appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents is in a similar role as a wife who is murdered by her husband in "The Orderly World of Mr. Applebee." Born Alberta Louise Lowe, she worked briefly in film from 1935 to 1936, then pursued a stage career beginning in 1937, supplemented by roles on TV from 1951 to 1966.

Finally, Red, the gas station attendant, is played by Norman Leavitt (1913-2005), a busy character actor whose screen career stretched from 1946 to 1978 and included roles in seven episodes of the Hitchcock show, such as "John Brown's Body." He was also seen on The Twilight Zone and Thriller.

Watch "One More Mile to Go" for free online here or buy the DVD here. Read the GenreSnaps take on this episode here. Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of the story!

Sources:

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/search/.

Mamber, Steve. The Television Films of Alfred Hitchcock. www.tft.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Mamber-Television-Films-of-Alfred-Hitchcock.pdf.

McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: a Life in Darkness and Light. Regan Books, 2003.

“One More Mile to Go.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 2, episode 28, CBS, 7 Apr. 1957.

Smith, F.J. “One More Mile to Go.” Manhunt, June 1956, pp. 19–26.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Nov. 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: Father and Son, starring Edmund Gwenn!

• The podcast "Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents" continues on a monthly basis. Al Sjoerdsma from the Ann Arbor District Library dissects one episode per installment; the latest is "Breakdown." This podcast is extremely detailed and very well done.
• Another podcast worth a listen is "Good Evening: An Alfred Hitchcock Podcast." Sisters Annie and Kathryn examine an episode every other week. This podcast is less serious and less detailed but the commentary is entertaining. The most recent episode discussed was "Murder Me Twice."