Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 128: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Horror Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 113

July 1956 Part III

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Tales 48

Cover by Carl Burgos

"The Deserted Lighthouse" (a: Bob Forgione & Jack Abel) ★1/2

"The Man Who Stole a Skyscraper" (a: Manny Stallman) ★

"The Man in Space!" (a: Bill Walton) ★★1/2

"I've Got to Hide!" (a: Mort Meskin) ★

"Medicine Man!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"The Last of Mister Grimm" (a: Dick Ayers) ★

An international criminal seeks to elude the famous Inspector Dumont by hiding out in a deserted lighthouse, a structure rumored to be haunted. It's not haunted but it is populated by other-dimensional beings. They offer sanctuary to the fugitive and he happily agrees, considering another dimension to be off limits to the stubborn Dumont. Alas, it turns out Dumont is from that dimension as well. On go the shackles! "The Deserted Lighthouse" has some good elements (the obstinate Dumont and the creepy atmosphere swirling around the lighthouse) but those are wasted by the inclusion of yet another dimensional travel plot twist. Visiting other dimensions is right up there with time machines for most over-used plot device in mid-1950s Atlas.

A skyscraper disappears and the only clues the police have is that a man with a scar and a tape measure (!) were seen near the building the day before. When the cops catch up to the man, he explains he's from another world and he was merely borrowing the skyscraper. The police don't buy his fantastic story so they send a head-shrinker into the stranger's cell and the doc uses fancy measures: he tells the guy that he's broken Earth law and he must now replace the building with one from the man's planet. Sure enough, the next day there's a really weird building hovering over the hole where once stood the proud skyscraper. "The Man Who Stole a Skyscraper" is bottom-of-the-barrel drivel in both script and art departments. The only panel that made me smile was when one of the witnesses mentioned the alien's tape measure. I wonder if it was bought at a nearby hardware store or if he brought it with him from Mars. And if the building disappeared, what happened to the people inside?

It's been a long eight years for Don Arlen, creator and pilot of Earth's first space station, but now it's time for him to head home, where his beloved wife is waiting for him. Now, finally, another man has been trained to fill in for Arlen and he's mere days from returning home to her. Then, disaster strikes in the form of a runaway meteor, a giant dirt clod that collides with the ship and risks the lives of everyone on board. Don must space walk outside the ship to fix the damage or no one will return to Earth. Don does what he must but, after the crisis is averted, he decides he really must stay aboard for a bit longer. A really enjoyable space oater, "The Man in Space!" has the feel of a SF strip written in the '40s rather than the '50s. The climax, where he delivers the bad news to his sweetie, only for her to tell him she'll do more damage to him than the meteor if she doesn't let her take the next shuttle up, is a rare happy ending that left me smiling rather than rolling my eyes.

In the nauseatingly predictable "I've Got to Hide," power plant worker Mitch accidentally blacks out a whole block of the city and heads underground to hide from the authorities. There he finds a race of weirdos who all have red 'F's on their forehead (for "fugitive"). Mitch scorns their offer of sanctuary and returns to the surface world for the requisite happy ending (the blackout wasn't his fault after all!).

"Medicine Man!" Harry Tinker thinks he's found the miracle cure-all that will make him millions but it's not to be. The formula he was given turns out to be a fake, given to him by... well, we're never told who the guy is but he disappears into thin air in the climax. Time/space continuum? Time machine? Extra-dimensional soda vendor? 

In the finale, "The Last of Mister Grimm," Henry Grimm is a tyrant to his adopted nephew, going so far as to take away an antique mirror the boy finds in their new house. The mirror turns out to be the gateway to another dimension, but when Grimm investigates, he becomes trapped there forever. The joke's on Henry and alone else who forked over a dime for this sub-par Atlas funny book!-Peter

Uncanny Tales 45

Cover by Carl Burgos

"The Hand!" (a: George Roussos) ★1/2

"The Men with Green Blood" (a: Herb Familton) ★★

"Inside the Pit!" (a: Pete Morisi) ★★

"The Cure!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"An Hour to Live!" (a: Bill Benulis) ★★

"Behind the Wall!" (a: Gene Colan) ★

Whitey admires Barlow, the best thief in the business, and has heard rumors that the man's prowess is due to the gloves he wears. One day, while following Barlow, Whitey manages to make off with the left glove. Knowing he'll look like a fool wearing only one glove (although decades later, someone took that idea and ran with it...), 

Whitey stops in at a thrift store and steals a white right-hand glove, unaware it once belonged to a minister. Later, while cracking a safe, he discovers his right hand refuses to partake in the illegal affair. No big deal to Whitey, and neither is the fact that he can't get either glove off his hand. But it does become a problem later when the thief sleepwalks and the "good" hand writes a confession to the police! I wondered why the "bad" hand didn't try to stop his counterpart from ratting them out. In the pre-code days, an axe would have solved the problem. George Roussos does his best imitation of lower-tier Colan but, otherwise, "The Hand!" is snoozeville.

Brilliant physician Mark Crewe has stumbled across an anomaly... two dying men have been brought to him for operations; both had green blood! After doing a little detective work, Crewe discovers the men are a part of a minority race known as "mutants" who only discover their "special abilities" at the age of forty. Soon after, Crewe realizes he's one of "The Men with Green Blood"! Early Marvel mutant concepts are intriguing but we're never told what special abilities these guys have, other than a "strange developing powers" mention. 

Some things never change and, in our distant but maybe close future, Fred Graham gets really tired of his wife Edna's nagging. Sure, he once exhibited initiative but that was years ago and he's comfortable in his job down at the power plant. Later that day, an accident at the plant bombards Fred with trillions of radioactive particles and reboots his energy. Suddenly, he's got the stamina and power of a twenty-year-old. 

But, alas, the blast also damaged his psyche and, before too long, Fred is telling his foreman that he'll be blasting the city with radioactivity unless he's paid a princely sum. Luckily, Edna is home from the mall and she hoofs it to the power plant, just in time to talk her hubby out of destroying life as we know it. Like "The Men with Green Blood," "Inside the Pit!" has some superhero ideas packed in its short length. The climax is sappy as hell but just do what I did and imagine an alternate universe where Fred pushes Edna into the fiery pit and goes through with his brilliant plan of destruction.

In "The Cure," two scientists build a time travel machine to go back to the dawn of man to wipe out flu viruses. The experiment works but there are repercussions.

Brilliant scientist Eliot Crabbe is given only months to live, so he does what any egghead would do in his position: he builds a time machine so that he can travel to the future and beat the odds. Unfortunately for Eliot he lands just as the last rocket is transporting the human race to another planet; Earth has run out of oxygen. "An Hour to Live!" is not a bad little SF yarn; it's certainly better than most of its company this issue, but Crabbe's logic muddled my brain. Why would his frail body be energized by leaping into the future? It's the same body.

Historian Noel Taylor hates the Great Wall of China so much he wishes he could go back in time and prevent its erection. Somehow (it's not really explained), Noel gets his wish and faces off with the emperor who oversaw the building. Having a hissy fit, Noel grabs a crate of gunpowder, fashions a bomb, and blows the wall to kingdom come. This, as all Atlas readers know, changes the future drastically. The plot device in "Behind the Wall!" is just about the most dim-witted we've stumbled upon during this journey. There's no explanation given for Noel's trip back in time. Not even the standard time machine. Some of Atlas's best artists (among them, Gene Colan) were being wasted on this crud.-Peter

World of Fantasy 2

Cover by Joe Maneely

"Inside the Tunnel" (a: Al Williamson)★★1/2

"It Stands in the Snow" (a: Sol Brodsky) ★1/2

"If...!" (a: Jay Scott Pike?)★★

"Midnight on the Mountain!" (a: Manny Stallman) ★

"A Cry for Help!" (a: Kurt Schaffenberger)★★

"One Night!" (a: Bob Forgione & Jack Abel)★★

A modern-day submarine crew plans to test out Jules Verne's imaginary blueprints for going to the bottom of the sea! They travel a thousand miles and descend to the ocean floor, where they exit the sub and their heavy-duty suits protect them from the pressure of the depths. The crew encounter a giant octopus and take refuge in a cave, which leads them "Inside the Tunnel," where they find an open area with bright light. They meet undersea fish men, whose leader hands over an object wrapped in oilskin. Back inside the sub, they unwrap the package to find a copy of Verne's book!

Wessler's script is predictable, as usual, and the point of it is that the sub crew assume Verne did not have personal experience when he wrote his novel; the surprise ending suggests that he did. The story is of lesser importance than Al Williamson's art, which is some of the best we've seen in an Atlas comic in some time. It's a shame he didn't do more and it's a shame that Atlas didn't feature the work of more former EC greats.

A pair of explorers named Gregory and Oxnard trudge through the snow at the South Pole, looking for a rumored gigantic ice creature. Certain that "It Stands in the Snow," they follow giant footprints and climb a snowy mountain but find nothing. They are unaware that the previously-undiscovered mountain on which they stand is none other than the giant ice creature!

This story runs just three pages and I wonder if that was the plan, since the final panel that reveals the giant ice creature is turned horizontally at the bottom of the last page! Did Brodsky draw it as a full-page panel only to have the editor shrink it and rotate it?

Frank Roland sees a pretty girl standing under a streetlamp but doesn't have the nerve to speak to her. "If...!" he had gone up to her, he would have started a relationship that would have led to a marriage proposal. The only problem would have been the fact that she was from the planet Mercury and reverted to her original appearance every night between midnight and dawn. Frank would have backed out of the marriage just as she and her family were speeding off with him on a rocket ship to the first planet from the sun. After the woman gets in a taxi, having not been spoken to by Frank, he takes the bus home, where his sister introduces him to Lola!

The GCD suggests that the art is by Jay Scott Pike and it's got that slightly wooden, Golden Age look to it. Unfortunately, the title reminded me of the classic EC war story of the same title and this pales in comparison.

As he walks along a mountain, hunting unsuccessfully for uranium, Chris Corbin mopes around and thinks of what a failure he is and how he doesn't deserve his girlfriend, Helen. He falls off the mountain and awakens in a hospital, only to find that he can't move his legs. The doctor says that there's nothing wrong with him and his paralysis is psychosomatic, but that doesn't help. Chris is taken back to his mountain shack, where Helen soon shows up to care for him.

Chris gets frustrated and throws his Geiger counter on the floor. Suddenly, a huge, powerful man calling himself Torga appears in the shack, having traveled from the future along a time passage triggered by Chris's Geiger counter, which interacted with Torga's time machine. Torga is a master criminal on the run from the police; he grabs Helen and that's all it takes for Chris to overcome his paralysis. He leaps from his wheelchair and throws the Geiger counter at Torga, who disappears. The machine broke in the melee and eliminated the time passage. Helen and Chris rejoice at his recovery.

Who in the world was "Midnight on the Mountain!" written for? There can't have been many kids in 1956 who were scanning the comic book racks looking for a heartwarming story about a failure who suffers psychosomatic paralysis and overcomes it by his love for his gal! The art by Stallman equals the writing in poor quality.

Professor George Mason is so wrapped up in his scientific experiments that he can't be bothered with his wife and kids. He decides to build a team of unfeeling robots who can work all the time with no distractions and he soon moves to a remote house where his experiments can continue uninterrupted. Years pass and the house where he works begins to fall apart. One day a beam crashes down on George, pinning him to the floor, but the robots work on, ignoring "A Cry for Help!" Eventually, George's son shows up and rescues him. The lad is now a grown man who tells George that he stopped by for a visit because it's Father's Day! George leaves the house with his son, finally knowing the meaning of love.

The story is pretty bad and the ending is sappy, as are the endings of most Atlas stories at this point, but the art by Kurt Schaffenberger is quite nice. He has a clean line and can draw an effective panel such as the one I've reproduced here.

A cranky old Earthman named Pete is visiting Antares with other Earthmen. He complains that his life back home stinks in comparison to the great life people lead on this planet. After a man bumps into him on the street, Pete punches the man and is sentenced to death, since violence is not tolerated. He is told that he can have anything his heart desires during the "One Night!" he has left to live, but instead, Pete appeals to his captain and is released. On the way back to Earth, the captain wonders why Pete chose to return to Earth rather than spending his final night in the lap of luxury. What Pete didn't realize is that one night on Antares equals 93 Earth years!

My expectations are so low at this point that I laughed out loud at the end of this story, even though we've read this twist before. The art by Forgione and Abel is solid, as usual, and at least this four-pager didn't end with Pete learning a lesson and everyone holding hands.-Jack

Next Week...
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