Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 193: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 178

February 1961

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Journey Into Mystery #65

Cover by Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko

"I Am the Brute That Walks!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★★

(r: Where Creatures Roam #1)

"Fear in the Night!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★

(r: Where Creatures Roam #1)

"Kragoo!" (a: Don Heck) ★

(r: Where Creatures Roam #1)

Ninety-pound weakling Howard Avery can't take his girlfriend Sally anywhere without having sand kicked in his face by brutes and nincompoops. Sally says she doesn't mind that Howard is a frail little string bean, but there's a bit of an edge in her voice that convinces him otherwise. How can Howard Avery solve his problem?

Luckily, Howard is not only a snappy dresser but also a brilliant scientist (who'd a thunk?), so he heads back to the lab, situated somewhere between his kitchen and his Murphy bed in his teeny-tiny apartment, and immediately cooks up a potion to help him grow muscles, pronto. Unfortunately, the formula works better than he thought and very soon he's looking down at his apartment building as a furry orange beast. "I Am the Brute That Walks!" exclaims the unrecognizable Howard. 

Sadly, the same disease that has gripped so many brilliant but troubled scientists in the Atlas Universe takes hold of Howard's insides and he takes a lengthy journey of destruction through the city, leading him to Sally's apartment. He'll show her who's a spineless worm! Howard has a problem keeping his words to thought balloons and the police overhear the Brute telegraphing his mission to kidnap poor Sally. They get there first and accompany the frightened woman to the precinct, where she's kept in a cell for her protection.

The Brute sees Sally's Edsel parked at the station house and destroys the building, but Sally escapes. He chases her into a nearby amusement park where, naturally, Sally boards a roller coaster (1961 statistics showed that amusement park rides were the best places to hide from giant monsters). Again, the huge but clumsy Brute misses his chance and Sally escapes into the "Tunnel of Horrors." As he is reaching for Sally in the dark, the potion wears off and The Brute becomes wimpy Howard again. Sally mistakenly believes her beau has destroyed the monster and swears she'll never introduce him to friends as her brother again. Howard, realizing that there are some places where man was never meant to roam, burns his notes and settles into life as a scrawny but satisfied and brilliant scientist.

I've alluded to it before but it bears repeating that all the brilliant minds in the Atlas Uni practice biochemistry at home rather than at more conventional locales. We finally get a giant Atlas monster that doesn't wear briefs and perhaps the most startling aspect of Howard's change-O formula is that it allows him to regain his human form with clothes intact. How does that work? I love how Sally jumps on that roller coaster to evade capture. It would be my first instinct to hide under the ride, but I've never had to run from a giant orange gorilla before so what do I know?

Steve Ditko's minimalist art is the best thing about "Fear in the Night!," wherein two space travelers find themselves shipwrecked on a remote planet and must escape a giant monster while rationing their life-giving "oxygen-concentrate" pills. One of the men is a robot and you won't guess which one it is unless you've read some of Stan's previous scripts. In our last (and certainly least) entertainment for the issue, "Kragoo!" is a warrior from another planet sent to Earth to conquer, rape, and pillage by assimilating himself into another being. Once he's settled in, the alien will be able to use his hypo-powers to enslave the human race. He's warned by his superior that he can only transform one time, so make it a good vessel. The dope picks what he thinks is a strong, healthy male but discovers too late that his new home is a stone statue. Don Heck was an adequate, at times superior, artist, but it should have registered with Stan fairly early that Heck could not design a monster to save his life.-Peter

Strange Tales #81

Cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

"The Scarecrow Walks!" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★★

"A Giant There Was!" (a: Don Heck) ★

"I Went Too Far Back!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

"The Thing in the Cell!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★

(r: Weird Wonder Tales #5)

Evil businessman Jarvis Cragstone owns the mortgage on the farm belonging to the Smiths and when the government needs land for nuclear testing, Cragstone jumps at the chance to make a quick buck. He tosses the kind-hearted Smiths off their farm and, as they leave their home, they say a prayer for their scarecrow, who has helped them for so long to ... scare off crows, of course. The Smiths head for an unknown future as the suits move in and transform the farm into a test site.

The Delta-Ray bomb goes off and incinerates everything within miles, everything except the straw man, who somehow keeps it all together and exits the other side a rejuvenated, some would say better scarecrow than ever before. The blast has not only given the sack of weeds a brain but also expands his height twenty-fold. The straw man heads out on the range to find his destiny. After ignoring several ranches and necking teenagers, the scarecrow finds what he's looking for: the office of Jarvis Cragstone! With a little persuading, Cragstone agrees to give all the proceeds of the farm sale to the Smiths. Sack of dough in hand, the scarecrow finds the Smiths camping in the wilderness and leaves them the bag of green. He then reverts back to his normal size and intelligence, leaving the Smiths to ponder the wonders of the world.

There's nothing original in Stan/Larry's script for "The Scarecrow Walks!," including the old standby of immediate change due to radiation, but it earns an extra star for originality in its monstrous protagonist. It's also rare for one of these monsters to have nothing but good intentions. Not once does our straw super-being stop at a jewelry store or candy shop to do a bit of looting. The panel of the scarecrow walking through the desert with a huge sack of cash in its gigantic hand (the bag would be larger than Jarvis, mind you) is a Kodak moment.

"A Giant There Was!" is a silly melodrama about a thief who breaks into a curio shop and discovers magic beans. Tossing them out the window, he watches in amazement as a beanstalk grows high into the clouds. Remembering the children's story, he climbs the beanstalk and indeed finds a giant's castle at the top of the stalk. Thoughts of priceless gems and rubies fade as he discovers it's all an elaborate trap for thieves. Too elaborate for my tastes; it would be so much simpler for the giant to squish his prisoners than to feed them. And let's talk about the raw sewage disposal problems for a castle in the clouds. That's the truly horrifying aspect of this loser.

It's 1971 and, yep, time travel is possible. A jealous lab assistant decides he's going to go far into the past and with his revolver he'll become the most powerful man in the world. But this dope didn't factor in that if you go too far into the past you land in the future, an era where guns are no good against human beings. At some point, the law of averages decrees that Stan will pump out a decent time machine saga, but "I Went Too Far Back!" ain't it.

A truly wretched issue of Strange Tales comes to a much-awaited close with the supremely dopey "The Thing in the Cell!" Hans Vogel, gendarme in the European village of Bork, fines every traveler who drives through the town ten dollars (yes, I agree, an odd fine for a European village, but let's not dwell on that), not for personal financial gain but for an ego-related matter. Once Hans has saved up six million American dollars, he has a huge, state of the art prison built in the middle of town. Why would Hans need a prison in a crime-free zone? Because it's always been his dream. 

Well, Hans's dream becomes a nightmare when he arrests a vagrant walking through Bork on the wrong side of the road. The stranger insists that Hans should let him go because "they are coming to get him," but the Inspector ignores the man's pleas and throws his prisoner in a cell for ten days. Sure enough, "they" in the form of chubby, hairy aliens arrive to take their friend back to Planet X in the Vortex 7 Solar System, but they can't get the darn cell door open. With no other option available, they steal the entire prison. Hans is discredited by the village of Bork and sent packing, regretting his past behavior and pondering the sheer bigness of the galaxy. So the aliens couldn't find a way to pick a lock but they've got the tech to pull up the whole building and, what, stash it inside their spaceship? I'll accept a lot (walking scarecrows, giant snails, etc.) but this is a bridge too far.-Peter

Tales of Suspense #14

Cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

"I Created the Colossus!" (a: Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko) ★★1/2

(r: Monsters on the Prowl #17)

"I Am... Gorak!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★1/2

(r: Where Monsters Dwell #16)

In a certain, unnamed country behind the Iron Curtain, a sculptor is ordered to build a huge statute as a symbol of the government's power. After months of toil, he can exclaim, "I Created the Colossus!" A flying saucer crash-lands outside the sculptor's workshop and the crablike alien that emerges from it uses mental telepathy to tell the sculptor that it has to protect itself until it can be rescued. The alien enters the statue, which starts to move, much to the shock of the government officials who arrive on the scene.

"The Colossus Lives!" and nothing--not an electric fence, not artillery fire--can stop it. The sculptor cannily invents a tale and tells the representatives of the tyrannical government that the giant statue's purpose is to stop the dictatorship. It heads for the bay, where gunfire from submarines has no effect. This being 1961, the next step is an H-bomb.

But the tyrant's fighting forces can't defeat "The Power of the Colossus!" Jets are scrambled and the big granite guy takes flight himself, crushing planes in his hand and forcing the bomb to explode in outer space. A flying saucer finally arrives and the alien exits the statue to return home. The Colossus may be still now, but the sculptor warns the government agents that they had better change their ways or it will return and cause more destruction. Guess what? They make peace with the West!

This three-part story runs eighteen pages and, at the end, the editor asks readers if they'd like to see more full-length stories. My answer is yes! The Colossus tale is not bad. Kirby does his usual thing of drawing as many big pages as he can, but the extra length allows for more story development. Reading these late '50s/early '60s Atlas comics is certainly an education in seeing how all of the pieces of the classic Marvel super hero comics started to come together. The Colossus resembles the Thing in some ways.

A master of illusion announces that "I Am... Gorak!" and does a lot of talking as he wows his audience. He is deemed to be the world's greatest magician, but he has a secret. When jealous folk begin to attack his reputation, Gorak proves his mettle with amazing feats and eventually reveals that everyone else is but a figment of his imagination. But wait! Gorak doesn't realize that he's just a character in a comic book story, and he must vanish when the story ends!

The self-reflexive conclusion does nothing to improve what is essentially five pages of a character talking to himself. Ditko is wasted here.-Jack

Tales to Astonish #16

Cover by Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko

"Here Comes... Thorr the Unbelievable" (a: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) ★1/2

(r: Where Creatures Roam #3)

"My Touch Means... Doom!" (a: Don Heck) ★★

(r: Tower of Shadows #8)

"Save Me from the Mole Men!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

(r: Where Creatures Roam #3)

"I Am the Victim of the Sorcerer!" (a: Steve Ditko) ★1/2

(r: Where Creatures Roam #3)

A henpecked archaeologist named Linus and his shrewish wife, Helen, fly to a newly discovered island in the South Pacific that features unusual statutes that look like giant heads made of stone. While digging around one of them, Linus accidentally triggers it to come to life and, sure enough, "Here Comes... Thorr the Unbelievable," who announces that he is (yet another) scout for an alien race that is just waiting till the right moment to conquer the Earth.

Linus tricks Thorr into summoning its fellow aliens in a big yellow spaceship and, after they land, the archaeologist uses dynamite to blow up the island and save the world. Guess what: giant stone statues can't swim, and they sink to the bottom of the ocean. At long last, Helen realizes that her husband is a brave man!

The most interesting thing about this story is surely the name of the alien, who refers to himself as "the mighty Thorr."

Desperate to get the money he needs to pay for an operation to cure his ailing wife, bank teller Bill Howard steals money from his cash drawer and drives into the New Mexico desert, police chasing him. He unknowingly wanders onto an atomic testing site and soon discovers that "My Touch Means... Doom!" When police approach Bill, he jumps off a cliff rather than harm them. Suddenly, he wakes up and is back at the bank. It turns out he was hypnotized by the psychiatrist hypnotist bank guard who was testing Bill. That evening, the teller learns that the surgeon will operate on his wife free of charge!

This issue is quickly becoming a test lab for the near future at Marvel--in this story, a man wanders onto an atomic testing site and gains superhuman powers. The idea of making him a hero/monster with unusual adversaries remains unrealized, as does the idea of a continuing series, but we're getting close.

A cruel middleweight boxer known as the Crusher enjoys beating the stuffing out of his opponents in the ring but wishes he were a heavyweight so he could punch even harder. He hears about new pills guaranteed to make a person gain weight, so he steals a bunch and downs them, only to discover that he's gaining weight so fast that no floor can support him! He crashes through layers of Earth and rock until he must cry, "Save Me From the Mole Men!" when furry denizens of the underworld begin to use him as their punching bag.

It's a dumb story with unattractive art, but once again a piece of the Marvel puzzle is seen! These mole men look nothing like the ones the Fantastic Four would soon face, and we've actually seen mole men at Atlas before, but it's still interesting to watch the early stages of development.

A ragged man walks the foggy streets of a city, unable to remember his identity yet aware that some inexorable, evil force keeps drawing him toward it. Unable to get anyone to help him, the man finally allows himself to be drawn toward his fate. He passes through a door and walks down a hall toward a light source, finally disappearing into vapor and unable to escape his fate. Later, two men in an art gallery are disturbed by a painting called "The Sorcerer's Betrayer," which depicts the ragged man cowering before a magician.

"I Am the Victim of the Sorcerer" isn't much different than "I Am... Gorak!" in this month's Tales of Suspense--both feature a main character who talks a lot and ends up a character in a work of art. Ditko does a decent job but the story is just filler.-Jack

On Thursday...
The Boys Discuss the Genius
(and the Drawbacks) of Kubrick

Next Week...
The Debut of
the Original Hulk!!!