Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 158: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Horror Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 143

April 1957 Part II

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Mystery Tales #52

Cover by John Severin

"Mystery of the Silent Fog!" (a: Bernard Baily) ★

"The Fish Men!" (a: Marvin Stein) ★★

"The Betrayer" (a: Dick Ayers) ★

"The Too-Perfect Crime!" (a: Pete Morisi) ★

"The City That Died!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★1/2

"Midnight on the Moor!" (a: Mort Drucker) ★★

After a rollicking storm leaves the town of Middleton enveloped in a thick haze of "silent" fog, the townsfolk become rattled and start throwing out crazed theories about what's happening to them. When the town idiot ventures into the fog and returns with a wild tale of seeing outer space all around the town, the mayor posits that the town is the target of an experiment by government scientists to see how normal people react to space travel. 

He orders his friends and neighbors to go home and dress in the craziest costumes they own. Soon, the fog lifts... Was it just coincidence or the result of a crazed liquid lunch in the Atlas break room? The goofy last panel sure doesn't solve the "Mystery of the Silent Fog!" nor does it edjamucate us on the disasters a non-silent fog could put into motion. The art by Bernard Baily is the safe, stiff, boring work we've seen become the norm around these parts.

During a routine dive in his bid to be the man who discovers Atlantis, deep-sea diver Hank Ferris stumbles upon a series of holes in the bottom of the sea. Upon further investigation, he finds the portals are actually windows above the world of "The Fish Men!" The gilled goons capture Hank and explain they were just about to commence their worldwide invasion of the surface world and Hank is invited along to watch. 

Hank shivers in fear as he realizes the gill men easily outnumber his surface world brothers and sisters. But, in the grand tradition of War of the Worlds, nature steps in to halt the illegal immigration of these sea thugs. The sun burns their scaled skin and the warriors are forced back into the depths to plan another invasion some rainy day. A perfectly enjoyable (albeit completely inane) fantasy that neither taxes the brain nor scars the eyeballs. The Marvin Stein art at times reminded me of Don Heck's work.

After a vicious bout with amnesia, Paul Declaire heads back to France in order to discover the identity of the man who betrayed his platoon in WWII. Eleven men died that day at the hands of the Germans, with only Paul surviving. Now, he hears the voices of those long-dead comrades in his head, begging him to find "The Betrayer"! Well, let's help Paul solve this mystery. He's the only one who survived. Everyone else died. He had amnesia for years and couldn't piece it all together. I think I've got it...

In the three-page mundanity known as "The Too-Perfect Crime!," Roger Reynolds invents a camera that can shrink its subject to miniature size so, naturally, Roger starts photographing expensive sports cars on the street and taking them home in his pocket. Later, he reverses the process and sells the autos for big bucks. But when the cops get suspicious, Roger turns the camera on himself so he can hide. Problem is, once the detectives have left, the dope can't reach the camera to revert himself back to normal size.

Bart Graham and his fellow explorers stumble upon a priceless cache of gems buried under an ancient Mexican temple. Bart wants to split the profits with his partners but they, understandably, remind Bart that anything found on the expedition belongs to the museum! Bart's having none of that crap so he grabs the jewels and disappears into the night. He soon comes across yet another ancient temple, but this one is populated by ancient citizens. Has Bart stepped into a time warp? Well, kinda, but don't expect a sane rationalization to "The City That Died!" Instead you're going to get another of those cockamamie Atlas scientific theories guaranteed to made you giggle. The Winiarski art continues Atlas's backslide in the graphics department. What was once dependable has become spotty.

Another ridiculous denouement awaits those who make it through the four pages of "Midnight on the Moor!," wherein businessman Ken Barrow becomes stranded in Edinburgh mere hours before an important board meeting. His only way out is a haunted stretch of swamp. Will Ken make it? The only way I made it was focusing on the joys of Mort Drucker's penciling. Mort singlehandedly represents the word "art" in this dismal issue of Mystery Tales.-Peter

Mystic #58

Cover by Bill Everett

"Those Who Vanish!" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★★1/2

"The Straw Man!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★

"The Day the World Ended!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"Dinosaur" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★

"The Swami Strikes Back!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"Maha the Demon!" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

Unlike Mystery Tales #52, Mystic #58 has more than its share of good art and it gets started quickly with the atmospheric work Richard Doxsee contributes to "Those Who Vanish!" Clyde Duvlin is a genius inventor who just can't stand to be patient and wait his turn, so he schemes to rid himself of the upper rungs of management at World Electronics. Clyde invents a camera that transports its subject to wherever the developed picture is mailed and he takes advantage of the US Postal Service by mailing pics of all his bosses to places hither and yon.

Laughably, it seems those supervisors can't get back to the US and Clyde becomes the man in charge at WE. Unfortunately for him, his gorgeous wife is proud of the beautiful colors found in her hubby's developed pics and sends one she took of Clyde to her brother... who's serving time in a Chinese prison! That climax is alternately brilliant and giggle-worthy. Also hilarious is that Clyde invents this dazzling camera but doesn't realize its true power until his wife mails a pic of herself to her mother and is teleported to the old lady's living room. File Doxsee in with Angelo Torres and Al Williamson as pencilers who can lay out work that is alternately brilliant and sketchy but all the while dazzling.

Farmer Paul Miller always sees to it that "The Straw Man!" in his field is dressed to the nines in good times but pestilence and drought have struck Paul's farm and he decides it's time to pack it in and sell the land. A preacher comes to Paul's farm and begs him to pray to God for rain but Paul tells the holy man that he's all prayed out. Suddenly, it begins to pour and the priest points to the straw man, who's now in a kneeling position. The lord works in mysterious ways, indeed. There's no rhyme or reason as to why Paul had to endure all his traumas when a religious scarecrow watched over his farm the entire time, but I'm not one to pick nits. I wouldn't have been able to identify the art as belonging to Joe Maneely had it not been signed; gone are the detailed, gorgeous visuals Maneely was once responsible for and in their place is something very average and very 1958 Atlas.

On the eve of war, brilliant scientist Dr. Eric Norath discusses the future of Earth with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. Both women declare hatred for war and the men try to explain calmly that those stinkin' evil commies will stop at nothing to rule the world. Something must be done to stop the Red Threat!!! A few days later, Norath is working in his lab when he accidentally tips over a vat of a solution he's working on (let's call it... oh, I don't know... how about oxychloride x?) and the liquid begins eating a hole through everything it touches.

Word is sent out to the government that nothing can contain the chemical and Americans watch as it dissolves miles of earth and moves downward, seemingly to the core of the planet itself. When the government appeals to the stinkin' commies to ally with them to find an antidote, the entire world joins forces and a solution to the solution is found. The Nations are at last United in peace while Mrs. Norath scolds her husband for dumping the juice and holding the antidote the whole time. With "The Day the World Ended!," writer Carl Wessler probably counted on very few of his 8-year-old readers being familiar with the old Lights Out radio show and its 1938 episode "Oxychloride X," which Wessler happily ripped off, later cashing his $27 check from Stan. 

Explorers in the Amazon run across some preserved dinosaur eggs and are elated by their historic find. Well, almost all of them, that is. All but Osborne, who hates mosquitoes and animals and vegetation and just wants to go home. So Osborne hides the eggs, stomps some fake dino tracks in the dirt, and waits to see what happens. His colleagues are mortified and skulk out of camp the next night, leaving Osborne alone. Surveying the camp, he finds giant prints in the dirt that he didn't make! Anything Bernie Krigstein worked on automatically becomes readable and the delightful (and delightfully simple) "Dinosaur" is a perfect example. The script (by Krigstein himself?) is almost a comedic romp, filled with funny dialogue and sight gags, and Bernie lays out the story in his trademark multi-mini-panel style. If only we could have had whole issues filled with Krigstein's work.

Egregious in both art and script, "The Swami Strikes Back!" tells the tale of a group of college punks who kidnap the titular entertainer to teach them how to project their spirit. In this way, they can rob a bank. Hard to believe a four-page story could take so long to read but allow for nodding-off time. Nap time continues with "Maha the Demon," about a museum guard who unwittingly unleashes an ancient pharaoh onto present day streets. The "stranger in a strange land" angle is amusing for a couple panels but then the entire affair ends tediously.-Peter

Mystical Tales #6

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Iron Trap" (a: Dick Ayers) ★

"The Forbidden Room" (a: Joe Sinnott) ★1/2

(r: Tomb of Darkness #11)

"The Sinking Man!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★

"He Hides in the Tower" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★

"In the Dark Attic!" (a: Dave Berg) ★1/2

"The Clock Strikes Thirteen" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★

An unhappy physicist named Andrew Kastro is experimenting with atomic matter when it explodes, causing a brief flash of light and making everything in the room giant-sized! After two hours, he grows back to normal size and it dawns on the genius that it was he who got smaller while everything around him stayed the same. Like most Atlas protagonists, Andrew's thoughts turn to crime, and he decides that he'll shrink himself down and steal a valuable pearl from a museum. All goes as planned until Andrew forgets about the two-hour limit on his small size and is caught in "The Iron Trap"--a ventilating shaft--as he exits the museum with the pearl.

Groan! Dick Ayers was uninspired and his art is lifeless. The story isn't much different from "The Too-Perfect Crime!" in this month's Mystery Tales in that both deal with someone who accidentally discovers how to shrink himself and turns to crime. You'd think these brilliant scientists would see the pitfalls.

Helen is an aging woman whose husband forbids her to enter "The Forbidden Room" in their mansion. She can think of little else and finally opens the door one night while her husband sleeps. Inside the room she sees... her husband, who welcomes her! As she reaches for him he disappears; she passes out and wakes up on a psychologist's couch, where she is told that she is really an aging spinster about to wed who has finally conquered her fear of marriage, which was represented by the forbidden room. Got it? Even Joe Sinnott can't make this interesting.

The sole survivor of an explosion on a ship, Andrews finds himself on an island that is strangely familiar. He recognizes one thing after another and finally comes to a time machine; pushing a button, he finds himself back in the water, just having left the sinking ship and heading for the island, where the events will play out time after time.

"The Sinking Man!" is only three pages long and still seems tedious, but the art by Angelo Torres is at least bearable, if hardly his finest work.

From the moment Tony Lund sees Dorwin Manor, he becomes obsessed with the idea that there must be money hidden in the basement. He meets and seduces Madge, a pretty servant who works at the manor, and when she is about to elope with him he sneaks into the basement and finds the cash. Arnold Dorwin catches him in the act and a gun battle ensues, but Tony ends up locked in the attic after Arnold turns out to be a ghost and Madge discovers Tony's treachery.

I have to hand it to Bernie Krigstein--he put more effort into this terrible script than most Atlas artists would have. "He Hides in the Tower" has enough twists, turns, and verbiage for a ten- or twenty-page story, yet none of it is interesting or original.

A young man is used to using his handsome face to cheat people, so when he is approached on the street by a wrinkled old man offering to paint his portrait, the young man jumps at the chance, figuring he can cheat the old man out of some valuable pictures. Up the stairs they go till they are together "In the Dark Attic!," where the artist seems to paint an imaginary portrait on an imaginary canvas. In the end, the old man wraps the imaginary canvas around his face and, when the young man emerges into the daylight, he does not realize that the old man's wrinkled face has replaced his own.

Dave Berg's particular art style, which tends to exaggerate faces, is perfect for this tale, though the denouement will surprise no one.

Villagers are shaken when "The Clock Strikes Thirteen," thinking that the imported edifice bears a curse. Little do they know that Fuller faked the thirteenth strike, certain that everyone in town will be so focused on the clock the next day that he can rob the local bank. Rob it he does and, when he's trying to get out of town, he's easily captured. It seems the thirteenth strike presaged someone about to suffer a great loss, and that someone turned out to be Fuller.

It's back to Earth after some pretty decent art this issue, as Howard O'Donnell puts no effort into illustrating a story that is needlessly complicated and has yet another letdown of an ending.-Jack

Spellbound #33

Cover by Carl Burgos

"At the End of the Dark Hall" (a: John Forte) ★★

"Don't Throw That Switch" (a: Ted Galindo) ★

"The Gypsies' Secret!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★1/2

"No Way Out!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"The Fury of Nick Foster!" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★

"The Unhuman" (a: John Tartaglione) ★

Pierre Denoir steals a woman's purse and flees through the fog-shrouded Parisian streets, ducking into a building and racing down the stairs. "At the End of the Dark Hall" he opens a door that reveals a group of criminals seated round a long table. Pierre recognizes them and remarks that they are all supposed to be dead! They chase him around for a while and he at first begs to join them and then grabs a gun and takes a wild shot before racing back up the stairs and into the waiting arms of the police. The fog has lifted and they point to the sign above the building entrance that reads "Mme. Rousseau's Wax Works."

It's nice to admit that, for once, Carl Wessler surprised me with the ending of this story. I was expecting Pierre to realize that he was dead just like the rest of the criminals. Instead, we get the old bit about the wax dummies seeming to come to life. John Forte's art, which I don't usually like very much, is rather evocative in the panels with fog and in the candlelit cellar.

Walter Garland learns a terrible secret from his dying grandfather--the old man has spent eighty years maintaining a machine that kept an unknown person from aging. The old man dies before he can tell Walter the young man's identity (hint, hint) and Walter quickly determines that his sworn enemy, Howard Blye, must be the man! Walter confronts Howard, who cries "Don't Throw That Switch!" and begins to pay blackmail money and welcome Walter into high society. Walter falls hard for Howard's fiance Joyce and, in order to get rid of his rival, turns off the machine. Not surprisingly, the young man who has been kept vibrant for eight decades turns out to be Walter.

Unlike the prior story, I knew what was going to happen in this one by the end of page one. The art by Ted Galindo does nothing to elevate the tired storytelling.

Tony Hayden is a con man who travels from town to town selling fake patent medicine at sideshows and carnivals. In one location he happens on a gypsy settlement and thinks he can make a quick buck selling his "medicine" (flavored water) to the seemingly ignorant folk. His spiel is interrupted by Kazar, a burly, bald Roma who says that Tony's product is fake and no substitute for the real thing that Kazar doles out. Kazar agrees to give Tony his secret formula to help his people and Tony promptly makes up more fake bottles of medicine and sells them as if they were Kazar's elixir. The people revolt once the trickery is discovered and they beat Tony and leave him in an alley. Kazar appears and cures Tony with his own formula before disappearing and leaving Tony to lament his failure to recognize a genuine cure-all.

"The Gypsies' Secret!" benefits greatly from fine work by Angelo Torres, who seems to rise to the occasion when given anything resembling an interesting script. This time out, the story mostly makes sense and has a satisfying ending, though I question why Kazar was so willing to give Tony his formula when Tony is obviously dishonest and Kazar could simply have given it to his own people himself.

Caught again on his sixth attempt to break out of prison, Blackie doesn't plan to give up, even though it seems that there is "No Way Out." A new prisoner says he's a chemistry professor and tells Blackie about a formula he's made from powdered wings that will give anyone who drinks it the ability to fly. Blackie takes a drink and is flying over the prison walls when he finds himself drawn toward the searchlight--too bad he didn't know the wings were those of moths!

Robert Sales's art isn't getting any more attractive and this three-pager is just plain silly. Some of Sales's panels really look like he's struggling with anatomy and perspective.

Nick Lazarus is a deep sea diver hired to recover undersea plant specimens for a scientist. Sick of encounters with sharks, Nick is excited to receive a radio message inviting him to join a salvage job where he thinks he'll get rich. The scientist insists that Nick finish out his contract, so Nick lies and says he sees nothing but rocks on the ocean floor. He tosses the ship's charts of the ocean floor overboard to force the scientist to abandon the mission, but when Nick brings up samples of undersea rocks he learns that they mention a treasure house in Atlantis, whose riches Nick will never find now due to the loss of the charts.

Holy cow, what a complicated way to get to yet another Atlantis ending! Harry Lazarus's art is mediocre and the script, undoubtedly by Wessler or Oleck, adds nothing new to the Atlas canon.

Who is leaving the mysterious notes that answer the major problems faced by scientists working on Project Satellite? Dr. Taylor decides that one of his fellow scientists must be "The Unhuman," a mutant with super brain powers. Dr. Fenn is shot and dies just before he reveals the identity of the unhuman. After Dr. Taylor rules out the other two, he is shocked when Dr. Fenn appears, having faked his own death. Taylor says the world isn't ready for Fenn's brilliance, so Fenn agrees and vanishes. This story should have vanished! The world wasn't ready for such uninteresting art and prose.-Jack

Next Week...
More Krigstein Magic
To Save Us From Madness!