Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 161: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Horror Comics!

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 146

May 1957 Part I

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Adventure into Mystery #7

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Invisible Doom!" (a: Gene Colan) ★1/2

"The Watcher!" (a: Marvin Stein) ★★

"One Hour till Doomsday!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Beware... the Brimm!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★★

"Mission... Murder!" (a: Howard O' Donnell) ★

"Trapped in the Room of Darkness" (a: Syd Shores) ★★1/2

Brilliant scientist Professor Jason has created a formula that will enable its user to become absolutely invisible (except to himself, that is). Jason has had successful attempts on rats and seems assured that humans will follow suit. That's where Jason's grotesque, hunchbacked assistant Phil comes in. Phil sees dollar signs in the act of becoming invisible and forces Jason to give him the juice.

Jason goes out and steals a million dollars from a bank (for some undisclosed reason, everything that Phil touches becomes invisible so he's able to walk out of the bank vault without anyone the wiser) and then comes back to the lab demanding an antidote. Jason is brilliant so he's able to trick the dope into taking a knockout drug. The police arrive shortly thereafter. The Colan work in "The Invisible Doom!" is good but the script is day-old fish. We're never told what it is that this ding-dong Phil does in the lab. Sweep up dead rats? Mix highly-combustible solutions? Run algebraic problems with the boss? 

Andrew Morris, "a rather colorless man," in his own words "a nobody," invents a portal where he can transport part of his body to save his fellow human beings. He scoops passengers out of a crashing auto, grabs a baby who's climbed out on a ledge, and commits various other selfless acts. But suddenly Andrew's portal opens up onto a distant planet and the startled genius realizes that the portal might be two-way and the people on the faraway world are very aggressive. A fun little bit of dopiness starring one of the most unlikely Atlas protagonists: a brilliant genius who uses his invention to save people rather than knock over liquor stores! It's got the cliched climax but otherwise "The Watcher!" is an entertaining distraction.

In the dopey "One Hour till Doomsday!," hardened criminal Biff Malden holds an old couple hostage on their farm until the woman begins cackling about the end of the world and Biff can't take it anymore. He runs out of the house and down the road but suddenly everything turns black! The old woman was right! Well, no, once the cops arrive we discover it's just an eclipse. -Groan-

Australian cowboy Rick Mallory is out searching for lost sheep one day when he comes across a cute little creature hiding in the brush. Not recognizing it from the approximately one million species to be found in the Outback, Rick grabs the thing and heads back to the ranch. There, the natives become restless, claiming the nipper is the fabled Brimm.. an evil being that brings chaos to anyone around it. Rick scoffs but then his bad luck begins. Could this little gremlin really be a miniature demon? "Beware... the Brimm!" is a fabulous little fantasy, so much more entertaining and clever than anything else I tripped over this time out. The Torres art is right on the level (style-wise) of Frazetta and Williamson, and the Brimm has a Wally Wood-ian look to it. 

In the discardable three-page "Mission... Murder!," foreign agents (read that as stinkin' Commies) are sent in to destroy a mechanical brain that the good guys have invented. It doesn't go well. How to make a three-pager seem like thirty. In the finale, hardened criminal Oliver Deane is given a chance at parole if he'll participate in an experiment that will wipe out crime as we know it: the Jordan Chamber!

Deane enters the chamber and does indeed exit a changed man, with not one bad bone in his body. But that's because, unbeknownst to Deane and anyone else involved in the test, his bad side has exited his body and been given form as an exact clone of Oliver! The twin goes on a rampage of violence, including knocking over candy stores and Hobby Lobbies and smashing parking meters. Only the "real" Oliver Deane can clear up this mess and get back to Barbara, his one true love. There's a Hallmark Movie of the Week schmaltziness to the climax of "Trapped in the Room of Darkness," but there's also a bit of imagination used, so I have to give extra credit where it's due, especially when the scripter is our favorite target, pulpmeister Wessler.-Peter

Astonishing #61

Cover by Bill Everett

"Midnight in the Wax Museum!" (a: Richard Doxsee)

(r: Fear #20) ★★

"Mystery in Mid-Air" (a: John Forte) ★★

"The Frightful Film!" (a: Gray Morrow) ★1/2

"The Floating Man" (a: Joe Orlando) ★★

"The Too Late Show" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★

"The Creeping Threat!" (a: John Romita) ★★1/2

Tough guy Kenyon accepts a bet to stay the night in the "haunted" wax museum where a criminal named Anders went missing. Everything goes fine until the wax dummy of the bad guy comes to life and threatens bodily harm. As Anders's gun is about to go off, Kenyon awakens to a crowd of cops all laughing at him. Turns out Kenyon had a tussle with nothing but a wax dummy since Anders was arrested the previous night across town. "Midnight in the Wax Museum!" would be completely dismissible were it not for the classy Doxsee art; very Reed Crandall-ish in spots.

The Great Alfredo is in love with two objects: his lovely wife and his marvelous trapeze. One day, while high above the circus floor, waiting for an available swing and wondering why his wife has never said anything about her past in all their years of marriage, Alfredo swears he will put on the show of a lifetime. He shall swing faster than any other trapeze-ster. And that he does! In fact, Alfredo swings so fast he lands in another dimension! Luckily, rather than become Alfredo Sauce, our hero lands safely and is escorted out of the tent by some rather strangely-garbed gentlemen. He's taken to the leader of Trapeze-World and promised that his daughter will make a good wife.

"My wife! She's still waiting for me to land!," exclaims the befuddled performer. With that, he turns tail, runs back into the tent, and climbs to the highest swing. His engine at Mach-10, Alfredo swings right back into our world and into the arms of his mysterious wife, who admits she's that gorgeous chick back in Trapeze-World! No wonder she's never come clean about her early days. She was a swinger. (drum beat) I gotta say that "Mystery in Mid-Air" made me laugh almost as hard as that time Jack swore Bill Shatner was a great actor. None of this four-page delight makes sense, but who cares? Just savor it.

Photographer Eli Payne runs out of plates for his camera box so he digs out some old stock created by his father, also a photographer. Turns out these plates can change a person's face with just a little monkey business on the photo. The proof is when Eli makes himself twenty years younger with some retouching. Eli suddenly realizes he can become the richest man in America if he uses the new process to blackmail vain millionaires. But, as we've seen with so many of these Atlas mad-genius-get-rich-quick schemes, Eli is in for a rude awakening. "The Frightful Film!" is Wessler back to doing what he does best... pumping out sub-par microwaved scripts low on ingenuity and high on groans. Normally, I'd give anything sporting a Gray Morrow art job two stars, but even Morrow looks tired here.

In a stinkin' Commie compound, U.N. prisoners are given little to eat and made to slave for backbreaking hours on end. Danny wants to get home to see his newborn son and the only way out he can see is Rupa Sidi, an Indian prisoner who has perfected the "rope trick." Danny is convinced that Rupa can elevate Danny over the barbed wire and from there he can make his way home to his family. I'm not spoiling anything when I tell you that, by the climax of "The Floating Man," Danny will be changing diapers and his wife will be bitching about the broken air conditioning. I'll say this though (for the 100th time), that Orlando guy sure knew his way around a pencil. 

Old penny-pincher Jason Bond buys a cheap television set at a rummage sale and sits in wonder at channels that aren't listed in the TV Guide. You're not going to believe this but everything he watches on the set comes true the next day. Apartment fires. Train crashes. The mini-skirt. So Jason decides he's going to get even richer on this wonderful miracle. He bets on the stock market and makes enough to buy the Empire State Building. That night, he watches in horror on his TV set as he's killed by a falling brick from the building. Jason Bond swears he'll now turn this miracle into a good tool for mankind if given the chance. In heaven, the angels who rigged Bond's TV have a laugh and head for the next penny-pincher on their list. For a three-pager, "The Too Late Show" is not all that bad. It's got a hilarious final shot and some scratchy Winiarski art perfect for the subject. I don't see Win doing cheesecake art.

Leading professor in ant science Dr. Paul Marsden believes he can communicate with the little bugs and that they are even more intelligent than man. So he does what any other brilliant mind would do: he sets up a communicator between himself and a trio of ants he's weeded out of dozens of test subjects. These three are all strictly A (for Ant) students. Soon the ants are requesting human history lectures and studies in science. Marsden spends the better part of a decade reading the little critters every book on science he can find and then the exhausted egghead takes a nap. That's when the ants make their move.

There's nothing particularly original to "The Creeping Threat!" but, like "Mystery in Mid-Air," it generated several out-loud laughs from this jaded comics consumer. Marsden supplies the little buggers with materials they request and darned if the trio doesn't build a mini-laboratory and make plans of world conquest. The climactic panels, where Marsden takes his insect friends out to lunch at a nearby cafe and a well-meaning waitress squishes the bugs is comic book gold. The devastated scientist, unaware how close he came to destroying the world, can only sob and make "dumb waitress" jokes. These are the moments I live for when cracking open Atlas funny books. This was John Romita's 33rd and final appearance in the Atlas SF/Horror titles, but Spider-Man fans know he'll be back in a big way.-Peter

Journey Into Mystery #46

Cover by Carl Burgos

"The Middle of the Night!" (a: John Forte) ★★

"Voodoo!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"The Red Doom!" (a: Bernard Baily) ★1/2

"The Desert Rat!" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★

"The Betrayer!" (a: Manny Stallman) ★

"Nightmare!" (a: Angelo Torres) ★★

A mysterious stranger visits Alfred Mott in "The Middle of the Night!" He asks Mott to repair a pocket watch before midnight the next evening and offers to pay twice the going rate. Mott greedily accepts and stays up late working on the watch. Testing it to see if it's fixed, he pushes the hour hand backwards and realizes that he's traveled to the day before! He turns the hands back a week and travels back in time seven days.

Determined to cash in on the handheld time machine, Alfred winds the watch back to the year 1575, where he plans to steal jewels from the King of  France! He scales the castle wall and surprises the king in his bedroom, only to be arrested. To his dismay, Alfred can't find his watch to return to the present because watches haven't been invented yet!

John Forte's art is competent but don't think too much about this story. How in the world does Alfred wind the watch back a week, not to mention almost 400 years? That's a lot of times around the dial! The last panel is funny--Alfred is in his cell yelling about his missing watch and a guard is outside making the "he's crazy" sign with his finger by the side of his head.

Sergeant Lane doesn't believe that Mario really can practice "Voodoo!" and Mario threatens to make a doll of Lane. Mario is using his dolls to blackmail superstitious locals, so Lane gives Mario a few of his own hairs and challenges him to make a doll of the sergeant. Lane's partner, Sergeant Brice, isn't sure what to believe. Lane canvasses the neighborhood and finally finds someone who will testify that Mario has been blackmailing him. Lane and Brice visit Mario to confront him, but Mario shows Lane a new voodoo doll that he's made in Lane's image. Mario drops it out the window, threatening Lane that he'll die, but instead Mario falls out the window to his death. Brice reveals that he switched the hairs on the doll so they were Mario's rather than Lane's.

Stories involving voodoo are always welcome, but Robert Sales's art continues to disappoint me. His characters are just plain ugly and his panel designs are flat.

Jean Lacoste collects the largest jewels in the world. When he's told that he doesn't possess the biggest ruby, known as "The Red Doom!," he vows that he'll have it under glass within a month. Jean flies to India and goes into the jungle, where the locals fear the ruby's evil power. Jean enters a shrine and takes the huge jewel, but when he tries to leave the jungle he finds himself trapped in a large glass cube. His vow came true--he has the ruby under glass!

Cue the "wah-wah" horns for the dopey, cornball ending to this story. Where did the big glass cube come from? What's its purpose? Who knows? Certainly not the writer. Baily's art makes it clear that he didn't think much of this tale.

Why does an old hermit whom the newspapers call "The Desert Rat!" refuse to move out of his condemned shack in the desert to let a road project pass through the property? A reporter named Phil is determined to get the answer. Pretending to be a sick, lost, bewildered traveler, Phil is taken in by Josef Kruge, the hermit, who confesses that he hates the shack in which he lives. Kruge explains that he was once known as Josef the Great, a strongman who performed before crowds. When he began to get weak with age, he sought a way to regain his strength and found Abu Shah, a strongman who traveled with a sheik's caravan.

Kruge discovered that Shah's strength came from a liquid he drank every night, so Kruge grabbed the bag and took a drink. Shah told him that he'd be doomed to live in the desert from then on. Kruge's strength returned and he again performed before adoring crowds, but he was forced to flee to Death Valley and remain there. One night he had reached his hand out of his dressing room tent to see if it was raining and it was, but his hand rusted because he had become a man of iron!

Bernie Krigstein turns in another superb performance on this tale, which creates a mystery and carries the reader along until the final panel, where the secret is revealed. He's able to tell so much more story with his technique of multiple, skinny panels, and at this point his work is the closest thing in Atlas comics to something from the days of EC Comics, even if he was not one of their original stable of great artists.

Igor is a Communist in New York City who can't seem to convince red-blooded Americans of the validity of his cause. "The Betrayer!" keeps being told that the patriots will listen to him when the torch on the Statue of Liberty stops burning. Igor gets the bright idea to blow up the torch, but when he climbs all the way up one night with a satchel of dynamite he suddenly falls over the side to his death. A doctor examines him and concludes that he wasn't killed by the fall but rather from third degree burns, "as if he were burned by a big flame."

It's comforting to see that Atlas Comics were still keeping up their anti-Communist fervor in terrible stories like this one as late as 1957. The rest of the country was emerging from the national nightmare brought on by HUAC, but Stan Lee and co. were determined to show their pre-teen readers that the Red Menace was still alive and well in the U.S. Three pages are wasted here and Manny Stallman's art shows how little he cared about the story.

Just after midnight, an entire town disgorges itself from the Earth and floats off into space! It must be a "Nightmare!" Only three men are awake and aware of what's happening. One is Mayor George Bascombe, who just withdrew the town's welfare fund from the bank and plans to clear out in the morning. Another is Frank Lefferts, the banker, who plans to foreclose on the farm of a sweet young couple tomorrow. The third man is an old farmer, Joseph Brooks, who plans to kill his wife's fiance the next day due to an old family feud. As the city floats off into space, the trio reconsider their cruel plans and suddenly the town reverses courses and settles back down on Earth.

The story is an old one and the conceit of the town flying off into space is bizarre, but Angelo Torres ignored the trite theme and drew some very nice pages, making this a comfortable way to end the issue.-Jack

Next Week...
A Rare Stop in the
Atlas Post-Code Universe
for Dick Giordano!