The Marvel/Atlas
Horror Comics
Horror Comics
Part 169
January-February 1960
by Peter Enfantino
and Jack Seabrook
Cover by Jack Kirby
"I Brought Zog Back to Life!" (a: Don Heck) ★★1/2
(r: Where Creatures Roam #6)
"I Spent a Night in the Haunted Lighthouse!"
(a: Joe Sinnott) ★1/2
(r: Fear #4)
"I Planted the Seeds of Doom!"
(a: Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule) ★★1/2
(r: Where Creatures Roam #6)
"I Shrunk Away to Nothing!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★
(r: Where Creatures Roam #6)
A gigantic snow-white monster encased in a block of ice suddenly appears in the North Atlantic. Helpfully, the thing's name, "Zog," is etched into the ice. The world's leading scientists counsel the world powers and strongly advise that the creature not be tampered with. For if it should escape its enclosure, the world would be in peril!
The military catches Burton and he's quickly sentenced to die for treason. Just as he's about to be ventilated, the execution is halted and Burton is brought to a council room where the brass and a select set of scientists are watching Zog on a TV broadcast. Remarkably, the beast is not destroying everything in its path--quite the opposite. Zog dips below the surface and rises several minutes later, once again encased in ice with the word "Zog" above its head. Burton finally sees the truth: Zog is an alien who got lost in space, landed on Earth, and quickly froze itself. You see, its home planet is made of ice and the word "Zog" is not its name but rather the equivalent of our "SOS." At least that's what know-it-all Charles Burton theorizes.
Hard to argue with the guy who lays it all out so clearly in the final panels of "Zog" in a speech so well thought out you wonder why Chuck didn't know all this before he thermo-bombed the big guy. I enjoyed this one despite the fact that it's the rare giant monster story where the destruction is imagined rather than played out. Don Heck isn't an artist I would associate with giant monster tales but his work here is okay.
John is fascinated by the old abandoned lighthouse and his buddies tell him the word on the street is that... it's haunted! Later that day, John is at sea in a small boat when it capsizes during a brutal storm and he's forced to swim to the lighthouse. Once inside, John looks around but finds no ghostly figures. Those arrive shortly thereafter on the ghostly boat that anchors just off the dock. John hides and witnesses a terrifying scene: ghost pirates ransacking the lighthouse and loading provisions onto their ship. The next day, John screams "I Spent a Night in the Haunted Lighthouse!" to his friends and, of course, they laugh... until he produces a life preserver labelled The Flying Dutchman! 100% predictable, but the sight of the pirates loading ghostly cargo onto their ship is pretty cool. What's in the crates? Where are they stored in the lighthouse? Do the provisions replenish themselves automatically?
Luckily, the beast collapses due to dehydration. "Of course!" reasons Hank, "Back on X-41, it rains every fifteen minutes!" With luck, Hank is able to round up the thousands of seeds he sold and he tosses those and the big guy into his rocket ship and heads for X-41, having learned that there are some areas of botany man was never meant to tamper with. Hey, it's a dopey strip, but it's got all kinds of energy and the twist, that the dinos grow from flowers, is an original one. I love how, in the final panels, Hank and his fellow astronauts agree that they should be more careful with what they bring back from now on.
"Hang it!" exclaims Brad, "I'm in no matter what!" When Brad gets laser-beamed by the Shrinkobob, he vanishes immediately and, sure enough, keeps shrinking. Eventually, he ends up in an alternate universe version of Earth and wonders if he'll ever see his real home again. "I Shrunk Away to Nothing!" must be some sort of Marvel milestone as it's the first (that I can recall) to posit the theories of Earth-1 and -2 and... The only question I have is: why does he stop shrinking right there? Shouldn't he keep minimizing?-Peter
Cover by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule
"I Come from the Shadow World!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★
(r: Strange Tales Annual #1)(r: Chamber of Chills #14)
"I Know the Power of... the Genie!" (a: Don Heck) ★★
(r: Crypt of Shadows #15)
"My Name is... Robot X!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★
"I Was Trapped Inside of the Martian Maze!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★
(r: Tomb of Darkness #15)
"I Fought the Molten Man-Thing!"
(a: Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko) ★★
(r: Journey Into Mystery #15)
A shadow man from another galaxy lands on Earth ahead of an invasion armada to see if earthlings have the type of weapon that can defeat the intruders. "I Come from the Shadow World!" Casey, a really smart but "ordinary" electrician comes up with a way to destroy the beast and save the planet. Some nice Ditko graphics but a pedestrian script. I'm not sure why the world's biggest-brained scientists couldn't come up with the kind of elementary trap Casey devised.
In the lame "My Name is... Robot X!," it's 1990 and master criminal Joe Kane begins using a robot to help him with his heists. The big tin guy hates what he's doing, but Joe is his boss, so he keeps right on bending bars and breaking open safes. That is, until his joints rust due to a lack of oil right in the middle of a heist. Looks like Joe's crime spree will have to be put on hold. In 1975, the Martians have put trade talks on hold until we simple earthlings can figure out how to get out of their mystery maze box. Earth's smartest scientists give the box a crack, but no dice. Looks like we'll have to do without those Martian hovercrafts for one more year. "Hang on just a sec'!" exclaims simple spaceship steward, Will, "Can I have a go at this thing?" And just like that, Willy becomes the only man who doesn't scream "I Was Trapped Inside of the Martian Maze!"
Using the intuition of a pilot, Frank realizes that lava cannot just get up and walk, so something must be inside the beast, something like a living engine. Frank manages to lure the thing into a wind tunnel at a local airstrip. The cool air proves to be too much for lava thing and it heads back to its home inside the volcano, leaving Frank to explain the scientific hows and whys to a bunch of natives who have no idea what he's saying. That's OK, though, I was having a hard time making heads or tails of the baloney he was spouting, too. Like all the best Atlas monster destroyers, Frank just happens to know what makes this one tick. The Kirby-Ditko team (I see lots of Kirby but very little Ditko) do what they can on "I Fought the Molten Man-Thing!" but there are way too many talking heads and not enough Molto.-Peter
Cover by Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko
"He Waits for Us in the Glacier!" (a: Don Heck) ★1/2
(r: Strange Tales Annual #2) (r: Where Creatures Roam #2)
"We Met in the Swamp!" (a: Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko) ★★
(r: Where Monsters Dwell #5)
"I Lived a Ghost Story!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★1/2
(r: Where Monsters Dwell #5)
"I Saw the Other World!" (a: Dick Ayers) ★
(r: Fantasy Masterpieces #1)
"I Spent the Night with the Thing on Bald Mountain!"
(a: Steve Ditko) ★★
(r: Where Creatures Roam #2)
While cruising near the North Pole, an atomic sub encounters a giant glacier and uses gamma rays to melt through it. This releases a giant creature that lifts the sub up and then uses mental telepathy to tell a strange story. The creature explains that it is an alien from another planet and it has spent a million years waiting for the major life forms on Earth to die out. First, the dinosaurs disappeared, then cavemen, and on through the various civilizations of mankind that warred with each other. The creature warns that atomic weapons could finally wipe out the human race and, when they do, it will rise from the glacier and claim Earth for its planet. The creature fades from sight and the sub commander ponders its warning.
"He Waits for Us in the Glacier!" is a combination of a boring history lesson and a cautionary tale. The story is nothing new, but Don Heck draws a nice giant creature.
A reporter journeys deep into Black Tree Swamp to interview an old man named Lem Whipple, who spends his time looking up at the sky. Lem explains that he's waiting for aliens to return and confesses that "We Met in the Swamp!" Years ago, an alien ship landed in the swamp and got stuck. Six aliens emerged and offered Lem their greatest treasure in exchange for tools to free the ship. He complied and they gave him a box and took off. Once Lem realized that, when the aliens return, it would be to conquer mankind, he vowed never to look inside the box and to keep watching the skies until it was time to sound the warning about the aliens' return. The reporter opens the box to find only air, which Lem realizes is the most important thing to anyone traveling through space.
A bit of a letdown, but I'm enjoying this new Atlas development where Ditko inks Kirby. Look at the face of the man on the cover--pure Ditko, while the giant creature is all Kirby. In this story, Ditko succeeds in smoothing some of Kirby's rough edges and improves some of the faces without taking too much of the Kirby style away.
A real estate agent named Howard tries to talk a prospective buyer named Lang out of purchasing the old Greenwood place because it's haunted. Lang insists on checking out the house and agrees to spend a night there. At night, ghosts appear and make a believer out of Lang. The next day, he tells Howard he wouldn't buy the house for anything. That night, Howard heads to the Lang house and joins his fellow ghosts, glad that they avoided having a human move in.
"I Lived a Ghost Story!" reminds me of the sort of tale found in 1970s Charlton ghost comics--safe, corny, and not particularly well illustrated.
A cameraman runs into the street, shouting "I Saw the Other World!" Explaining that he's discovered a parallel dimension, the cameraman says he found a most unusual camera the day before. When he took random photos on the street and developed them, he saw an ultramodern city and concluded that it exists side by side with his own. The cameraman supposes that the camera came from that world, but the man he's talking to doesn't believe him. Just then, the sky gets dark, a lightning bolt strikes, and a hand emerges from an electrical force field and grabs the camera. The man that the cameraman was talking to has also disappeared! The cameraman thinks he imagined the whole thing. In the parallel dimension, the man who disappeared is now in the position of the cameraman, trying to convince a stranger on the street that another dimension exists.
Dick Ayers's art is even worse than Paul Reinman's, and this four-pager was a bit confusing at the end. I finally figured out what happened, though. The big hand coming from the sky reminds me of a Batman story with a big green hand coming out of the sky.
A successful sculptor named Anton George moves to a castle atop Bald Mountain in Central Europe, where he creates giant statues of two figures representing Good and Evil, locked in battle with each other. During a storm, the Evil statute is struck by lighting and springs to life, chasing George around the castle before grabbing him and hurling him at the Good statue. Good suddenly comes to life and puts George down safely before battling with Evil, a fight that ends in both falling to their death. George wonders what caused Good to come to life and save him from Evil.
For my money, Steve Ditko is single handedly making these comics worth reading at this point. "I Spent the Night with the Thing on Bald Mountain!" is really stretching things as a title, since the mountain is never identified, the statute is hardly a "thing," and the sculptor spends a few minutes being chased by it--hardly "spending the night." In any case. Ditko gives it his all and makes it worth a look.-Jack
Cover by Jack Kirby & Bill Everett
"Grottu, King of the Insects!" (a: Jack Kirby & Bill Everett) ★★
(r: Strange Tales Annual #1)(r: Where Monsters Dwell #3)
"I Saw the End of the World!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★1/2
(r: Fantasy Masterpieces #3)
"I Was Captured by the Mole Men!" (a: Don Heck) ★★★
(r: Monsters on the Prowl #14)
"I Am a Walking Time Bomb" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★
A reporter named Frank receives an urgent telegram from his friend, a scientist named Lynn, alerting him to the biggest story of the century! Frank hops on a jet plane and soon is with Lynn, who tells him that an African native wrote to Lynn about an army ant that is as big as a house and has human intelligence! Frank and Lynn voyage for three days to Mombasa, Kenya, before making their way into the jungle.
The native, Kasenga, tells them that, months ago, Commies came to Kenya and conducted an atomic bomb test. Not long after, the natives saw a swarm of army ants, and one of them was "Grottu, King of the Insects!" Grottu led the army ants on a path of destruction and communicated by mental telepathy. Frank, Lynn, and Kasenga soon locate the army ants and Grottu and find that they are headed to Mombasa to destroy it! The men convince everyone to evacuate the city, but when the ants arrive, Grottu leads them to the port. It plans to spread destruction to other countries! Luckily, Frank has a plan. He lures Grottu to a warehouse, where a huge amount of sugar is dumped on top of him. The rest of the army ants come scurrying for the sugar and smother Grottu, killing him and eliminating the menace.
I was remined of D.W. Griffith's 1909 short film, A Corner in Wheat, where the villain is smothered by a load of grain dumped on top of him. I guess we've officially reached the Atlas era of giant monsters created by atomic blasts, and it's a relief to read something other than alien invasion stories or tales about people who suddenly develop powers and want to use them to get rich quick. Everett's inks let Kirby be Kirby and don't alter the panels quite as much as Ditko's inks do.
When a scientist figures out how to build a time machine, the scientific community says it's too dangerous and the military shuts him down. He begins to work in a hidden cave and builds the device, with which he travels to the future, stopping in 2009, 2109, 2209, 2959, etc. What he finds is that the development of civilization goes in an endless loop, with mankind advancing, going backward, and advancing again. In the end, he finds himself back in his lab, again figuring out how to build a time machine.
Ditko's regular panels are good enough, but his depictions of the scientist in his time machine, traveling through space and into the future, really stand out in "I Saw the End of the World!" Ditko's first Captain Atom story would hit the stands a month later, and I see strong similarities in this tale to that later work.
This is the kind of story I've been waiting for! Although the end is a bit much, there's some thought behind what happens and Heck's art is above average. In a sense, the writer takes bits and pieces of Atlas cliches and weaves them together into something that seems new and more interesting.
A robot from Xenon Major lands on Earth and makes his way to the U.N., where he announces that "I Am a Walking Time Bomb" and he will explode in 24 hours! The choice is to surrender to the other planet's conquering forces or to be utterly destroyed. People are skeptical, so the robot is taken to a hospital for examination, where he is surprised to see that Earthlings care for their elderly. On Xenon Major, people are killed when they're too old to work. Out on the street in NYC, the robot is again surprised when a mother protects her child; on Xenon Major, no one risks his life for another. Eventually, the robot decides that people of Earth should be left alone and he heads speedily home to explode and destroy his own unworthy planet. At the U.N., representatives of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. shake hands, promising to stop their conflict.
Not as good as the story before it, but still not bad! Reinman's art isn't as strong as Heck's at this point, and the story features some of the cliches we've come to expect from Atlas, but perhaps the new, six-page length allows the writers to develop their themes a bit more.-Jack
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