Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 172: Marvel/Atlas Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 157

August-October 1958

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Tales #64 (August)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Domino" 

(a: Al Williamson) ★★★

"What is Monium?" (a: John Forte) ★★★

"So This Is Mars!" (a: Bob Powell) ★1/2

"The Silent City!" (a: Jim Mooney) ★

"What on Earth?" (a: Bob McCarthy) ★★★★

"The Last Warning!" (a: Vic Carrabotta) ★★

Dr. Domino has a formula that can make years melt away so, naturally, every woman in the country wants it. Experts swear he's a fraud but admit all research on the good Doc proves he's really eighty years old. He's looking pretty good! But Dr. Domino needs time to whip up the potion; time and money. He sells the beverage to the highest bidder, but only he knows the whole thing is a fraud; the mixture is nothing more than water and a bit of Cuervo; the women who have become young in front of his audiences were actresses paid by Domino to put on a show.

Domino will be a rich man after the latest show and, while gloating one night in his lab, he is visited by a sorceress who claims she has the power to do anything but turn back the hands of time. She looks to Domino for the answer, but when he admits he's a phony, the woman exacts a heavy toll on the charlatan. "The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Domino" is more fun than we've had around this place in a long, long time. It's got the feel of a Marvel villain origin story (Domino notes that his appearance is all down to "an accident when working in a laboratory at the age of twenty-one!") with the bonus of dynamite Williamson art. 

"What is Monium?" is a clever little gem about a prospector who stumbles across the rare titular mineral and becomes a magician to make a living. The act is Zorani tossing an object through one hoop and that object materializes through a second hoop somewhere in the same arena. Not a bad way to make a living. A crook discovers the truth behind The Great Zorani's act and steals the Monium hoops to use in jewelry store heists until Zorani uses the ol' noggin to reacquire his props. A charming 1940s-style fantasy with a lot of imagination and some decent Forte art (something we don't see often enough). Rather unlike the usual Atlas character who has stumbled across a gold mine, Zarani seems happy enough pulling off his parlor tricks rather than breaking into Fort Knox. 

Bob Powell's art is the only reason to turn the page on "So This Is Mars!," a witless three-pager about a movie producer and his actor who are working on a film about life on Mars and find themselves teleported to the red planet for no obvious reason. Well, there is a reason, it turns out, but not a good one. In "The Silent City!," Rudwigsburg's clock tower manager Gustave Tarnal discovers a way to stop time and rob his neighbors blind, but clever Gustave, in the end, is not so clever.

Brilliant genius scientist Albert Feldgurt has a wild theory that the other planets in the solar system are barren because they are awaiting a "seeding" and the pods that will reinvigorate those worlds are us humans. Poor Al gets the same kind of reception for his theories that John and Yoko got for Two Virgins; the egghead is cast out of his scientist treehouse and forced to roam the streets penniless. But good things come to those who wait and, years later, Al is hailed as a messiah who reintroduced love to the world. People begin disappearing and their souls travel the galaxy to...

Well, we don't know exactly where those souls end up, since the final panel for "What on Earth?" leaves it all very hazy, which is the ending I'd choose. This could be the first "hippie" comic strip; Dr. Feldgurt's transformation from renowned scientist to bum on the street to Christ reborn is a trippy hoot, unlike much else you'll see in this era. I might be full of blueberry muffins, but I think "What on Earth?" is thought-provoking and spiritual, the kind of story that would fit well with the equally deep stories found in EC's science fiction comics. Easily one of the two or three best post-code tales I've read. This was Bob McCarty/McCarthy's 26th and final appearance in an Atlas genre zine.

Last up, Ham radio operator Don Reide gets a frantic SOS call from a young man trapped in a mining collapse. Coincidentally, Don had been trapped in the very same mine decades before and knows all the ways out. Don successfully helps the kid through the mines before realizing he's talking to the younger version of himself. Don ain't too bright if it took him that long to figure out what was going on, because I knew long before "The Last Warning!"-Peter

World of Fantasy #13 (August)

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Unsolid Man" (a: Joe Orlando) ★

(r: Giant-Size Werewolf #5)

"What Happened on the Mountain!" (a: Richard Bassford) ★★

"The Man in the Cyclotron" (a: uncredited) ★★

"The Chance I Took!" (a: Harry Lazarus) ★★★

"The Mysterious Inheritance" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"When Marty Moves" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

(r: Weird Wonder Tales #7)

Arnold Benson is a stinkin' Commie; there just ain't no two ways about it. But worse, he's speaking out his filthy thoughts and making the kids in town think beyond their "I Like Ike" buttons. This sort of thing can't be tolerated in a free society like 1958 America, so the cops chase Arnold out of town and into a military research facility.

It's there that Arnie finds the experimental "rocket sled" that supposedly can travel at speeds faster than... well, gosh, really fast! As he hops into the sled, the Commie hunters let off a round and damage the sled. Suddenly, Arnold is propelled forward and his entire life changes in the blink of an eye. Hard to imagine Gaines and Feldstein ever writing this kind of propaganda for EC, but Stan always seemed to be one of those guys who waved the flag if it meant more profits for the company. "The Unsolid Man" reads like something whipped up for a Joe McCarthy tribute.

George and Ed know Twin Mountain is packed full of delicious uranium and all they have to do is convince the old man who owns the real estate to sell to them. The old man agrees, with one proviso: George and Ed must remain bosom buddies the entire time they own the peaks and, if one of the men becomes greedy and evil, his share will disappear. Well, the contract gets signed, but halfway up the mountain, Ed gets guilt pangs and wants to cut the old man in on the fortune. George snickers and his thought balloon tells the real story: he aims to kill Ed and keep the uranium for himself. Bad mistake. There's nothing remotely original in the plot of "What Happened on the Mountain!," but I dig Richard Bassford's retro art. This looks like it might have been written and shoved into the vault in 1949. Highly unlikely, since Bassford was still just a pup in his early 20s when this hit the stands in 1958. "What Happened..." was the artist's one and only sale to the Atlas sf/f titles.

Joe Ryzik works at the university of a small European (read that as Commie) country, servicing the school's Cyclotron. One day, a mishap leads to Joe entering the Cyclotron and being bombarded by a whole lot of radiation. This changes Joe dramatically, making his brain ten times the size it was pre-accident and enabling him to create weapons that would not be created until 2056! But his wife, Rena, doesn't like the change in her hubby and asks Joe to change back to his old self again. Joe complies and enters the Cyclotron a second time, where he is again bombarded by a whole lot of bad stuff. But I assure you, there's a happy ending. Joe gets his regular forehead back and all those nasty ray guns and nuclear whizbangs head back to the future. "The Man in the Cyclotron" is more cautionary anti-Russkie material from Carl Wessler and contains some interesting scientific factoids I'd not have known otherwise.

Fleming is the president and CEO of the "biggest cereal manufacturer in the world," but he just can't get happy thanks to the daily headlines about juvenile delinquency, bank robbery, and the rising price of milk. Can the man not find peace in all his success? So, he's out walking in the woods when he's approached by a group of strangely dressed men who introduce themselves as ambassadors from the United Galaxy. Their mission is to change the American way of "combativeness, intolerance, and suspicion" to that of a calm, trusting people. If this could be accomplished, then Earth would be allowed to enter the United Galaxy Union. Would Fleming help the aliens reach their goal?

Believing it the right thing to do, Fleming agrees to let the visitors dump a special chemical into the Fleming line of breakfast foods, a potion that will guarantee a more peaceful, gentle race. The chemical does the trick and humanity is reduced to blubbering, cheerful idiots. As the flying saucers show up, Earth smiles as one but Fleming, who never ingested any of the chemical himself, wonders if this is a great new age or if the aliens used him to pave the way for an invasion. And "The Chance I Took" leaves us hanging there, never answering Fleming's fearful, cynical question, to the delight of this old comics fan. Too many of the 1958 Atlas tales close out with a ray of sunshine and hope for a better day, so it's nice to read a tale that makes you pause.

Jack Holten attends the reading of his uncle's will, only to be shocked by the news that Uncle Jim left him nothing. Bewildered by "The Mysterious Inheritance," Jack does what any Atlas Universe citizen might do: he travels the world, researching his ancestors. What he finds will rock his world and help him realize that Uncle Jim left him the greatest inheritance of all. Zzzzz. Last and possibly least is the dreadful "When Marty Moves" about an old maid who accidentally gives life to a plastic doll and finds happiness for the first time in her life. Then her next door neighbor finds out about the doll and takes him for a little ride to a local bank for an unauthorized withdrawal. Maudlin script and dull graphics.-Peter

Strange Tales #65 (October)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"Afraid to Open the Door!" (a: Dan Loprino) ★★1/2

"The House That Cried!" (a: Christopher Rule) ★

"The Ragged Man" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★★

"The Terrible Tree!" (a: John Forte) ★★★

"The Perfectly Frightened Man" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"When the Curtain Falls!" (a: Bernard Baily) ★1/2

A crook named Morse bursts into a strange room, looking for enough money to guarantee that he can avoid the cops and a stint in prison. In the room sits a bearded old man, who welcomes the crook and identifies himself as John Hayes. To the crook's surprise, Hayes explains that he's a scientist who invented a room that serves as an entranceway to a frightening world that is inhabited by scary creatures.

Hayes points out that there are two doors in the room--one leads to the normal world and the other to the scary world. The problem is, he doesn't know which is which and he is "Afraid to Open the Door!" because picking the wrong one would be disastrous. Hayes has been trapped in the room for a decade, afraid to make the wrong choice, and now shares his predicament with the crook. I enjoyed this story! The highlight for me is the panel I've reproduced here, where the scientist peers into the other world and sees one of the scary creatures. There's only one problem: if the scientist was able to open the door, see the other world, and run back to safety, why can't he do it again?

A hobo named Smitty happens on a shack and asks Elvira Lanson, who lives there, for a meal. She's happy for the company, but when he's finished eating, Smitty pulls a gun and demands she hand over all her money. He begins to hear a strange sound and she explains that it's coming from "The House That Cried!" Elvira tells Smitty that she and her husband were dispossessed when he got sick and couldn't make the payments. After that, everyone who moved in discovered that it was impossible to fix up the house, since it would return to its decrepit condition overnight. Smitty listens patiently, but when Elvira tells him that her husband's ghost emerged from a mirror and chased off a gambler, that's just too much. The hobo changes his mind when she walks through a closet door and he realizes she's a ghost! He runs out of the house in terror. I just can't get excited about Christopher Rule's art and this story is a three-page shaggy dog tale that doesn't go anywhere.

Otis Larr is rich, obese, and cruel; he laughs when his ex-partner, John Norwood, requests money to pay for an operation for his wife. Larr relaxes on his yacht, instructing his brother Hubert to swab the deck. Suddenly, Larr's Geiger counter begins to click like crazy and the businessman decides to buy up the rights to a nearby island and the water around it. On the island, he meets "The Ragged Man" who owns it and agrees to pay $1,000,000 for the rights. Larr goes on to buy up rights for all the land nearby, since his Geiger counter keeps going off. Finally, a surveyor breaks the news that there is no uranium anywhere in the area. Hubert reveals that the Geiger counter was set off by a nuclear powered submarine prowling the waters underneath the yacht!

A pretty good twist helps this story end on a satisfying note, as the main character is highly reminiscent of a certain current U.S. president. Doxsee isn't given much to work with but still gives it the old college try.

Every night, Ross Evans sneaks out and cuts a bit more across the vast expanse of a giant redwood named Goliath. Why? One day, it topples over and crushes his house, allowing him to collect a bundle on his home insurance policy. But "The Terrible Tree!" gets its revenge, as Ross soon finds out. A wooden elevator he's in crashes to the bottom of the shaft, the wooden ladder of a fire truck attacks him, 

a wooden picture frame on the wall above him falls off and nearly hits him. Realizing all of the objects must have been fashioned from wood taken from Goliath, Ross buys a motorboat and tries to escape on the water, only to discover that the vessel is also fashioned from redwood.

I don't know what's come over me, but I enjoyed this story, perhaps because of the absurdity of it all. The idea of cutting down a redwood so it will fall on your house and you can collect insurance is goofy enough, but the series of events that subsequently befall Ross made me smile. You'd think the dope would check to see if the boat were made of wood before he bought it! John Forte seems to have been having fun, and the last panel provides no escape for Ross. I like that there was no happy ending!

Bob was thrilled when the gang at the office bought him a special birthday present: an ancient book on wizardry from 1596 that they ordered by mail from England. A paper in the book shows that Bob is descended from a witch who could doom people with her words and he has inherited her power. Bob tried it out and it worked; he told one co-worker to go to blazes, and the man was surrounded with flames; he told the rest to get lost, and they disappeared! Now Bob is "The Perfectly Frightened Man" as he relates his day at work to his wife, Helen. She insists it's all a practical joke and that the book says it was printed in the U.S.A. in 1596, which is impossible. Bob responds, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," and guess what he turns into!

Robert Sale's art always turns me off, and this weird tale is no exception. I do like the idea of the gang at the office writing to a bookseller in England for a centuries-old book on witchcraft to give Bob as a birthday gift, and I like his sassy wife, but the end, where he's a monkey, is silly. Why does the book say it was printed in the U.S.?

Chief stagehand Otto Groat watches from backstage as Dick, the leading man in a play, romances lovely Carlotta Delys before plunging a dagger into his own heart. When Otto observes the pair's romance becoming real offstage, he substitutes a real dagger for the fake one and Dick nearly kills himself during a performance. Backstage, Otto is trapped in a room when a teapot boils over and extinguishes the flame of a gas jet. Too bad the only thing he has to force open the door is the rubber dagger that should have been onstage!

There's nothing strange about "When the Curtain Falls!," a story that would fit better in a romance comic. I'm a fan of Baily's art but his heart wasn't in this one.-Jack

World of Fantasy #14 (October)

Cover by Joe Maneely

"The Three Dead Flies!" (a: Jim Infantino) ★★

"The Strange Escape" (a: Don Perlin) ★1/2

"Lost in the City That Doesn't Exist!" (a: Howard O'Donnell) ★1/2

"The Mole Mystery!" (a: Jim Mooney) ★1/2

"Deadlock!" (a: Joe Orlando) ★★

"The Yogi's Secret" (a: Dick Giordano) ★★1/2

Chet Harron forces a scientist named John Eager to sign over the rights to his miraculous serum to Chet, ignoring John's pleas that he needs the serum to save his sick son. Years pass, and Harron builds a big, successful drug company. One day, the old man tells his scientists to create a youth serum to make him young again. John Eager turns up, looking not a day over thirty and telling Harron that he has invented the exact youth serum Harron craves.

Eager gives Harron a jar containing three flies whose lives have been prolonged by the serum, and Harron signs over the rights to his company to Eager. After he signs, Harron sees "The Three Dead Flies!" and angrily smashes the vial of serum. Eager explains that the flies just needed another dose and Harron has destroyed the only sample of the youth serum. Later, Eager visits the grave of his father, revealing that he is really the son of the man Harron swindled.

Am I nuts? Are the Atlas stories starting to improve? This was is pretty good. Jim Infantino will never be among my favorite artists, but the tale of Harron and Eager held my interest and had a decent, if predictable, twist ending.

Ivan Krull started a war against the United Countries of the World and lost, so he was sentenced to life in prison. He kept inciting riots in jail, so he was sent to the sub-basement to serve out his time in isolation. After years of solitude, he hears a sound of rushing water and digs down to attempt "The Strange Escape" on an underground river. Emerging into the light, Ivan discovers that he is alone on Earth, since everyone else emigrated to a new planet!

Krull's story is straightforward and over quickly, in a mere three pages. We've seen the bit about everyone leaving Earth before and Perlin's art is as expected, with one panel that looks so much like the work of Jack Davis that it could be a swipe.

Two tycoons named Carl Mason and Earl Borden are flying to Rio de Janeiro, planning a coup that will allow them to take over most of the world's industry. A storm causes the plane to crash in the jungle, where the duo encounter bald giants who take them to a futuristic city made of plastic. The locals reveal that they are mutants who control everything by brain power, so when Mason and Borden hold them at gunpoint and demand that they come back to civilization with them, the mutants wipe every memory of the encounter from the men's brains. The duo find themselves back in the plane, no longer desiring world domination.

A dull story is not enlivened by Howard O'Donnell's art. When I see big, bald heads on mutants, I always think of Curt Swan's big, bald heads from various issues of Superman comics, and O'Donnell's baldies can't compare.

Cook and Moore use a giant drill-car to drill down 1000 miles below the Earth's surface. They find a city of gold, but their greed makes them lie to the professor, who invented the drill-car, and say they found nothing. The professor dies of a broken heart and Cook and Moore buy the drill-car for a cheap price and head back down to the golden city. After loading the car full of gold, they discover that every metal in the area turns to gold. Unfortunately, that means their drill-car is now gold and thus too soft to drill back to the surface. They resolve to wait till the effects wear off, having learned a lesson about greed.

That drill-car looks awfully familiar doesn't it? I wonder if Stan and Jack had "The Mole Mystery!" handy when they created the Mole Man story a few years later in Fantastic Four. The ending is sappy. Also, if they drilled down, wouldn't they have left a big hole that they could return to the surface through?

Fred Palmer invents a machine that can control men's thoughts. He sells it to the rich and powerful Hubert Winslow, who uses the machine to force others to sell their assets to him at a steep discount. Fred falls in love with Winslow's pretty daughter, Joyce, and soon realizes what Hubert is doing, but when the inventor confronts the wealthy man, Winslow uses the machine to control Fred's thoughts so that the inventor lies to Joyce and claims he was trying to extort her father. Joyce visits her Pop and knocks the machine off his desk, smashing it and ending his ability to control men's minds. In the end everyone apologizes, shakes hands, and promises to be better.

Joe Orlando's panels are solid and the story does veer into the realm of fantasy, in that it involves a thought control machine, but the title "Deadlock!" is an odd choice. The introductory caption suggests that Joyce breaks a deadlock between Winslow and Palmer, but that's stretching a point.

An Englishman named Clyde Lipton is kind to a yogi named Yama Nuri who turns up at his door, offering to work for food. Clyde invites the man in, feeds him, and they enjoy playing chess together. The yogi accepts Clyde's offer to stay as long as he likes and promises to teach Clyde how to project an image of himself that is indistinguishable from the real person. One evening, Nuri accompanies Clyde to work at the patent office and they are playing chess when Communist agents steal a valise of secret plans. The agents kidnap Clyde and Yama and fly them to a country behind the iron curtain, but multiple images of Lipton and Nuri exit the airplane and scatter, leaving the agents confused as to where the plans went. Back at home, Clyde knows nothing of the adventure his image shared with the yogi's image.

I enjoyed "The Yogi's Secret." Dick Giordano is one of my favorite inkers of all time and, while his pencils aren't as impressive as his inks, he does a nice job with this story. I like that Clyde has white hair, smokes a pipe, loves chess, and works as a security guard.-Jack

Next Week...
Could Strange Worlds #1 Be the 
Dawn of Atlas Phase III?

Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 170: Atlas/Marvel Science Fiction & Fantasy Comics!

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 155

September 1957-February 1958

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Uncanny Tales #56 (September 1957)

Cover by Fred Kida (?)

"The Glass Man" (a: Bob Powell) ★★

"The Thing in the Sky!" (a: Ruben Moreira) ★

"False Face!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"A Cry for Help!" (a: Sol Brodsky) ★

"Out of This World" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★

"Confession of Murder!" (a: Frank Bolle) ★

As you can tell, the Atlas Implosion of 1957 resulted in the axing of most of the sf/fantasy titles and several months of empty comic racks (except for Millie the Model and Love Romances, of course). We aren't complaining, mind you.

Herman Buhler's wife has been nagging him to re-silver the mirror in their dingy flat, so Herman buys the material to do so. Unfortunately, Herman is inadvertently given a can of paint that's been exposed to a high level of radiation. When he gets home and starts the refinishing job, the mirror spits out an evil twin of Herman. He and his wife are horrified and flee the apartment in search of the police.

Herman's evil twin goes forward and launches a spree of (admittedly non-violent) crimes across the city. The police at first scoff at Herman's story, but reports of the evil twin begin flooding in and they are forced to admit the possibility of extra-normal activities. Fortunately, Herman and the cops are able to track down "The Glass Man" and destroy him on a city rooftop. All breathe a sigh of relief. About as milquetoast as it gets, with little to no action and a heck of a lot of wordy captions explaining what's going on in the art below. That art, by the way, is the only reason to be patient through the script.

Really smart and brilliant genius, Professor Kebler, has invented a new gizmo that allows you to look back in time and observe what was going on in, say, the streets of ancient Rome (in one eye-opening panel, we see Napoleon Bonaparte taking a leak in a dark alley). Unfortunately, during a ceremony accompanied by two of his smartest colleagues, Kebler tests his theory that his machine can also jump forward in time and watches in horror as his cat, Mephisto, hops into the machine and is magnified into gigantic proportions above the city... I'm just going to stop right there and admit I can't make heads or tails of the climax, where dear Mephisto becomes "The Thing in the Sky!," a dirigible-sized floater that causes panic in the land. How any of this ties in to Kleber's time machine is anyone's guess. Science hokum.

After his vaudeville act goes belly up, impersonator Claude Barnes (a/k/a "False Face!") turns to crime to make ends meet. He arranges his "putty-like" face to resemble the most powerful men in the city and goes on a robbery rampage, terrorizing the population and befuddling the police before stumbling over his own coattails and landing in a cell. These things never cease to make me smile when an otherwise respectable citizen faces hardship and decides he should become a hardened criminal just like that.

A quartet of street hoods don't have but thirty-five cents between them, so they rough up an organ grinder for his pennies. That's when the man's gorilla steps around the corner and takes care of business. "A Cry for Help!" is three pages of drivel with a purely pedestrian art job by "Jolly" Solly Brodsky. In "Out of This World," two knuckleheads break into a lab and interrupt an experiment, making off with a case of uranium. The cops chase them to a nearby cave, where the men disappear. That's because the scientists were testing a machine that breaks into other dimensions and these two clods are now somewhere on a cliff overlooking Saturn. There's no sense in the (uncredited) writer's script and Bernie looks like he took ten minutes to whip this one out. Still, a rush job by Krigstein is something to enjoy.

Hugh Janssen is out of work and desperate. That's what brings him to the mansion on the hill just outside of town one dark and dreary night. Peering through the window, Hugh sees an old man sitting at a table, counting gold coins. Mad with greed, Hugh breaks in, kills the old man, and flees. Wracked with guilt (and a little hungry), he stops at a police station to give them his "Confession of Murder!" After Hugh finishes his emotionally stirring recount, the cops tell him that he broke into the abandoned Craine house, where its owner, Jeffry Craine, was murdered by a prowler a decade before. The cops tell him to show up back at a construction site in the morning and he'll get work as a carpenter. A happy ending for everyone except the pitiful, bored reader.

A truly wretched end to a gawdawful final issue of Uncanny Tales. In the grand scheme of things, Uncanny proved to be one of the better pre-code titles (and just as mediocre as the rest of its brothers and sisters once the CCA came sniffin' around), placing five stories on my Top Fifty list: Fred Kida's "Skin Deep" (from #2), Ross Andru's "Phooey on Phoonga" (#15), Vinnie Colletta's "The Machine Age" (#18), "Proof Positive" (#20), and "Don't Count Your Chickens" (#26). Marvel would resurrect the title for a 12-issue reprint comic from 1973-75.-Peter

Strange Tales #60 (December 1957)

Cover by Bill Everett

"With Just One Stroke" (a: John Forte) ★★

"Rude Awakening!" (a: George Woodbridge) ★★

"The Final Shot!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Child's Play!" (a: Christopher Rule (?) & Ed Winiarski) ★★

"The Puppet Man" (a: Dan Loprino) ★

"The Abyss!" (a: Jim Mooney) ★★

Criminal mastermind John Durston ducks into an antique shop, the cops in hot pursuit, and asks the proprietor if there's anything small he can buy. Unaware he's talking to a big-time heister/murderer/ extortioner/whatever, the shopkeeper shows Durston a really nice writing pen. When the cops show up at the door, Durston scribbles "I wish I was a thousand miles away" on scratch paper and "With Just One Stroke," the evil genius is whisked away to a remote plantation. 

Absolutely shocked, Durston has the wherewithal to scribble down his wish to be in a Spanish castle and... sure enough... he magically arrives in Spain. This rigamarole continues for at least twenty more panels until John wishes something very stupid and gets his just desserts. Silly but harmless. Another go-to plot device in the late 1950s seems to have been the mysterious gift/antique shop. It's lucky John had the foresight to bring paper with him everywhere he zone-hopped.

Parks dreams he's arrested for embezzlement. That's not a big deal except that he has embezzled from his business and once he wakes up he realizes he has to kill the only person who might suspect him of his crime. Parks pushes the man in front of a subway train and awakens in a courtroom, talking to his attorney. Realizing he's going to go to jail for embezzlement, he sighs, knowing he'll serve ten years for robbery. Parks has a "Rude Awakening!" when his lawyer tells him he's been convicted of murder. A bit confusing at times (that's the point, though, ain't it?), but it's one of those Atlas tales where I can discard quibbles since the writer (Jack Oleck) at least feigns interest.

Mike Dillon spends ten long years in the pokey, his revenge simmering inside his fetid brain. Not your average jailbird, Mike spends the decade brushing up on chemistry and becomes probably the most brilliant chemist in Sing-Sing. Once out, Dillon applies his newfound scientific prowess to a complicated chemical mixture he dubs Compound #41™ (#40™ worked okay but Mike decided to add 10% more sodium pentothal and... voila... #41™!) and hits the streets to locate the five men who put him into prison.

Mike has good luck finding these guys randomly (well, he has a couple of addresses) and shoots them with his tricked-up pistol, filled with bullets of ice made of Compound #41™. The men respond only to Mike's voice and he commands them to do awful, illegal things, thus opening themselves to incarceration. Unfortunately, Mike is as dopey as his Compound #41™ in the end and the police snap the cuffs on him one more time. Our protagonist sighs and proclaims that this time he'll use his sentence to learn how to fix washing machines. This one is uber-stupid from frame one and only gets dopier as it progresses. Mike's slip-up occurs when he accidentally shoots the mirror reflection of one of his targets instead of the real thing!

Zillionaire Rod Manning gets what he wants and so does his spoiled rotten brat kid, so when Manning gets wind of a scientist in his company building a robot, the egocentric rich jerk demands that the egghead hand the bucket of bolts over to him so he can keep his monster son happy. Unfortunately, it seems the robot has a mind of its own and, after killing the family dog (well, Manning says it's only fainted with fright but we pre-coders know better) and lighting the house on fire, Manning admits he's made a mistake and returns the mechanical demon to its maker. 

Professor Lang smiles, sighs, and admits that if a creep like Manning could change his stripes and become a softy then maybe it wasn't such a bad experience after all. "Child's Play!" is good for a few giggles (Mrs. Manning is the only one who seems to have any sense in the household and continually berates her inane hubby) and the art doesn't stink. 

The three-pager, "The Puppet Man!," is about a man accused of a murder he can't remember committing. In the final panel, we learn he's a stage actor and this has all been a role he's playing. Lazy writing, dreadful graphics. In the final tale, "The Abyss!," five refugees are chased into a treacherous mountain region by a band of stinkin' Commies (you can tell the difference between the two groups by the red stars on the ball caps of the bad guys!) and are helped by guardian angels to reach the promised land. The reveal (they were climbing Mt. Olympus the whole time) doesn't make much sense and our male heroes are dressed in three-piece office suits rather than winter wear, but I smiled a couple times. Can't complain much when that's the case.-Peter

World of Fantasy #9 (December 1957)

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Girl Who Fell" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★1/2

"It's Harmless... I Think" (a: Mac L. Pakula) ★

"Spare Me, Please!" (a: Al Eadah) ★

"Quarantine!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Handsome Harry's Wife!" (a: Christopher Rule) ★1/2

"The Phantom of the Farm!" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★

After having a knock down drag out fight with his old lady, a young adventurer finds himself stuck on an archaeological dig deep in the jungle. Knowing he'll not see his gal again for two years, our hero resigns himself to finding another squeeze. Fortunately, while wandering through the jungle, he comes across a heretofore unknown temple and the comely maiden who lives there. Little does he know, this babe will help him patch things up with Gloria back home. Obviously, the romance comic titles were all filled that month, so "The Girl Who Fell" was dropped into World of Fantasy #9 instead. The Doxsee art is great but, land sake's alive, it's lucky Dr. Wertham never saw this strip. The young lads in the splash look like they're hanging out at a bathhouse.

In "It's Harmless... I Think," a scientist studying the Mogimpo tribe in deepest darkest Africa, stumbles across a trinket the natives refer to as a "Ju-Ju," a small idol purported to have magical powers. The drawback is the owner of said curio sooner or later takes on the personality of the previous owner. And the last guy killed his wife! Ends with the obligatory "oh, it was just a tall tale" exclamation as the next owner down the line heads home to his wife.

Professor Weston is hired by the government to work on a super secret... something, and his lab pals are all envious. Weston gets his own lab, special equipment, gorgeous lab assistants--the point is, no expense has been spared. But just what is the egghead working on? Well, it turns out that aliens from the fourth dimension are itching to get this information as well and they kidnap Weston and threaten him with bodily harm if he doesn't cough up the goods. Weston sighs calmly and rips the mask off one of the aliens. Holy cow! This ain't no alien; it's a stinkin' Commie!!! When did the Reds get so smart? Anyway, Weston wasn't buying the charade in the first place because... ta-da, he's from the fourth dimension, on loan to America to solve their problems. "Spare Me, Please!" indeed!

Inventor Horace Roarke has been sponging off his brother and sister-in-law while putting the final touches on his brand new one-of-a-kind time machine (which, according to 1200 other Atlas tales of the time, isn't that unique). Pressured to finish early, Horace gives Muriel and Ted a demonstration of his machine's power and travels to the year 2000. Back in the "present," Horace regales his audience with tales of factories displaying the Roarke Industry logo, a world where disease and reality shows no longer exist. "It's a wonderland!," Horace raves.

But then big mouth Muriel tells one of her knitting buddies about the journey and that old hen tells another and another and, very soon, Horace has the Feds knocking at the door. As her brother-in-law is hauled away for questioning, Muriel tells her husband they must go to the future and bring back some proof that Horace is telling the truth. What they find will change the lives of the trio forever. With "Quarantine!," Carl Wessler reaches to the bottom of his bag of surprises and realizes it's empty. No matter, he could just patch together bits of previous nonsense and hand them over to Stan for embellishment.

Harry and Helen have just become a married couple and Helen couldn't be happier now that she's "Handsome Harry's Wife!" Harry can't wait to get the little Mrs. on their honeymoon to Rio where he's got a special surprise planned. But before Harry can deliver his poisonous drink, Helen hands her new hubby a surprise of her own. The Christopher Rule art isn't bad, but the climactic twist can be seen coming long before its delivery. 

Leave it to Harvey Krigstein to save an otherwise crappy issue of World of Fantasy with "The Phantom of the Farm!," a humorous tale of two nitwit criminals trying to separate a farmer from his five thousand in cash. Whenever they get close to the loot, an ominous shadow appears behind them. Turns out it's the farmer's scarecrow, who's usually shooing away the lousy birds in the fields. Blissfully free from descriptive word boxes, "The Phantom" is like a macabre Looney Tunes short. More Krigstein, I say! Whole issues of him, I demand!-Peter

Strange Tales #61 (February 1958)

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Laundry Machines!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★★

"The Spectre" (a: Dick Giordano) ★1/2

"The Disappearing Man!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"Menace of the Mirror" (a: Bernard Baily) ★1/2

"Fear Walks on Four Feet!" (a: Al Eadah) ★1/2

"The Eyes That Never Close!" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★1/2

A shady real estate man named Donald Trump Nicholas Flood rents a filthy tenement store to a (white) immigrant woman from Haiti so she can open a laundromat. He says he trusts her, so no lease is needed. Soon, her business is thriving, so he jacks up the rent by $50 a month, since she has no lease. Soon, Flood is troubled by insomnia and headaches. The doctor can't find anything wrong, so Flood visits the laundromat, where the woman digs up a box of pills from the dirt cellar floor and Flood returns the extra $50 a month he took from her.

The pills work, but Flood thinks he's clever and sneaks down to the cellar, where he digs up the box of pills and hides it elsewhere. He finds a lawyer and has the woman deported, but before you know it, he's suffering again. This time, when Flood goes to the cellar for the box of pills, he finds endless boxes and has no idea which one holds the cure. I didn't expect much from a story called "The Laundry Machines!" and Paul Reinman's art has that same, tired look we've grown used to, yet the story intrigued me right up to the disappointing conclusion. Too bad the scene on Bill Everett's cover doesn't happen in the story!

He may be the top race car driver in the country, but Burt Malone is shaken up when he sees "The Spectre," a large, ghostly figure, looming over the racetrack two times in a row, right before another driver's car crashes. Burt swears off racing, but his boss won't have it and visits a mystic at a county fair for help. The swami imprisons the spectre in a crystal ball and hands it to the boss, telling him that, as long as the glass orb remains intact, the spectre can't harm anyone. Malone resumes racing and, in the biggest race of the year, he suddenly sees the spectre and his car crashes. He's okay, but his mechanic finds that the glass ball fell off a shelf and smashed. We all saw that one coming a mile away. I never cared for racing stories, but Dick Giordano's art is always professionally done.

A year after a scientist named Farrell disappeared, a pair of his friends break into his house and find that he had built an unusual machine. One of the pair, Ellis, flips a switch and suddenly "The Disappearing Man! returns, wearing a golden crown! Farrell explains that the machine sent him to another dimension, where he made peace among warring tribes and was crowned king. That night, Ellis sneaks in, intending to travel to the other dimension and become a king himself. Farrell discovers him; they fight and Ellis is catapulted into the other dimension. Farrell explains to Clay, the other friend, that he passed a law that requires any stranger who suddenly appears to be arrested and jailed until Farrell returns. He'll fix the machine and head off to rescue Ellis, but it took him a decade to build it the first time! Ed Winiarski's art is pedestrian and, as is so often the case, the twist ending isn't much of a shock. The fact that this and "The Laundry Machine!" are both credited to Jack Oleck in the GCD suggests that his tales weren't any better than Wessler's.

Raynor has a theory that each reflection of his in a room of mirrors has a life of its own. He invents a machine to make one of the reflections come to life, which he'll prove by watching it move differently than he does. He flips the switch but, instead of one of the mirror images changing, he changes! Raynor realizes that the "Menace of the Mirror" must have built an identical machine and used it on him, so now he moves but none of the reflections follow his motions. Bernard Baily seems to be trying harder than Paul Reinman at this point, but this three-pager makes little sense.

Jim Andrews has invented a ray gun that, when used on a jungle beast, renders the beast docile so it can safely be captured and brought back to be exhibited in a circus or a zoo. If the ray gun works, Jim will have enough money to marry Ruth, but Jim's partner, Lester Morse, has other plans. In the African jungle, Lester aims the ray gun at a lion and turns the dial way up. Lester is knocked out and awakens to see a T-Rex! Assuming he's been sent into the past, he hides out for a year until the radiation wears off and he returns to the twentieth century. He finds that Jim and Ruth wed a year ago and Jim explains that the ray gun blast hit a dinosaur egg. The dino grew to full size in two hours, which means that Lester wasn't really in the past--he was hiding in a cave in the present for a year while Jim got rich and famous with his dinosaur exhibit. Hang on--did I write that Jack Oleck's scripts were as bad as Carl Wessler's? This story proves me wrong. Wessler could write bizarre scripts like no one else. Al Eadeh's art is nothing to write home about, either. I gave "Fear Walks on Four Feet!" a charity extra half-star because I like dinos.

Big Jeff Corley shares a cell at Alcatraz with Leo Hutten, who holds an idol that he stole from an Indian mystic and stares into "The Eyes That Never Close!" until he disappears! When Leo returns, he warns Jeff not to mess with the idol, but Jeff will do anything to get out of the cell, so he stares at the idol and disappears. Jeff finds himself on the Titanic, just after it hits the iceberg, and zips back to his cell, where Leo explains that the one who holds the idol gets three voyages. The problem is that those voyages are evil if the person holding it is evil. Jeff tries again and finds himself on the Hindenburg, just as it bursts into flames. Back to the cell! The third and final try lands Jeff in a prison cell in a Japanese city known as...wait for it...Hiroshima, and the air raid siren just sounded. Leave it to Bernie Krigstein to save the issue, even if his art is even sketchier than usual.-Jack

World of Fantasy #10 (February 1958)

Cover by Carl Burgos

"I Went Through the Veil!" (a: Paul Reinman) ★1/2

(r: Journey Into Mystery #11)

"The Silent Street" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

(r: Uncanny Tales #10)

"The Secret Men" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★1/2

(r: Journey Into Mystery #11)

"The Last Stop" (a: Gene Colan) ★1/2

(r: Fear #23)

"The Mystery of the Smiling Man!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"The Books That Were Alive" (a: Mort Meskin) ★1/2

(r: Journey Into Mystery #11)

A funny thing happens when Ralph is hiking near a sheer cliff: he sees a pretty, young woman drive a sports car right off the edge and disappear through a veil! Ralph is compelled to buy a sports car and drive through the veil himself; when he does, the young woman appears and tells him that he's the one for her. A wise old man appears and tells her that she can't do that, at which point Ralph wakes up in bed at home. He thinks it was all a dream, but in the future, the wise old man tells the young woman that Ralph looked just like the man she'll marry and, coincidentally, she's a dead ringer for Ralph's wife. Paul Reinman does a decent job on "I Went Through the Veil!" but, once again, a reasonably intriguing story falls flat at the end. I suspect these stories were written backwards, with Wessler or Oleck coming up with a twist and then figuring out how to get there. It's a shame the journey so often is better than the destination.

Officer Greene walks his beat on "The Silent Street" one evening, unaware that a Martian named Nargak lands and is prevented from destroying the Earth by a Martian policeman who follows him. To Greene, it's just another dull night. Ed Winiarski was the perfect choice for this forgettable three-pager, since both story and art are dreadful.

A party of soldiers climb a snowy mountain with one purpose: to determine whether a hidden city exists on the peak. The clouds part and they see the city, but it is quickly hidden by clouds again and the men are convinced it was just a hallucination. One man tries to leap across a crevasse and falls to his doom, so the rest head off, confident that no city exists. The fallen man arises from the crevasse after his companions have left and announces that he is one of "The Secret Men" from the hidden city, whose inhabitants possess the secret of levitation! Richard Doxsee's art is serviceable here but, again, the story goes nowhere.

Nick Taras is a truck driver transporting stolen goods when he runs into a pedestrian and leaves the scene of the accident. The man is not badly hurt, but Nick's conscience trouble him, and every time he goes on a delivery run his truck heads straight for the cemetery. Nick can't take it anymore and confesses to the cops, who learn that his truck's engine used to be in a hearse. The usually reliable Gene Colan didn't waste much time on this one and it's so bland that the hit and run victim isn't even badly hurt.

A prisoner named Mallin has served just a week of a ninety-nine year sentence, yet he's always smiling! What is "The Mystery of the Smiling Man!"? A doctor thinks Mallin replaced himself with a robot! The doc enters Mallin's cell at night to test his theory, only to have Mallin knock him out and take his place. Mallin explains that he smiled all the time so that others would be receptive to the placement of a post-hypnotic suggestion, one he stuck in the doc's mind because the doc looks like him. Mallin switches places with the doc and heads for the exit but is caught, unaware that the doc was also an inmate. Good lord, this has to be the bottom of the barrel! The art by Sales makes Winiarski's work look like that of Neal Adams, and the plot is idiotic.

Even the usually reliable Mort Meskin falls victim to the case of the shrinking paycheck, delivering scratchy, unfinished art to "The Books That Were Alive." A book-loving dreamer named Bert Wells discovers a pile of books on a hillside. When he opens them, he is transported into the exciting adventures they describe! In the end, it turns out the books came from the Stellar Space Traveling Library, whose alien pilot apologizes for crashing his ship into the hillside. I like the concept, but the execution is lacking.-Jack

Next Week...
A Man Enters a Mysterious Fog
and Begins to Shrink...
Who Thinks Up These Unique Ideas?

Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 169: Atlas/Marvel Fantasy & Science Fiction Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 154

August 1957 Part III

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Strange Stories of Suspense #16

Cover by Fred Kida

"The Eighth Wonder of the World" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

"Only One Returned!" (a: John Forte) ★★

"The Swami's Secret!" (a: Bob Bean) ★1/2

(r: Crypt of Shadows #15)

"The Second-Hand Man!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★

"The Morning Sun" (a: Matt Fox) ★★1/2

"Bewitched!" (a: Bob Powell) ★★

Four con men buy up a worthless piece of property in the country in hopes that they can create a gold mine with "The Eighth Wonder of the World," a giant robot one of these morons has created in his "lab." They bury the thing, make a very public dig, and announce to the world that they've discovered the "Denbow Dell Giant!" That night, after the big announcement, the camp is attacked by the real Denbow Dell GIant. Luckily, the bozos rigged up explosive charges around the camp and the behemoth stumbles into one. Bloooey! These swindlers look at each other and vow to walk the straight and narrow from here on out. They've learned a lesson. I love how no one in the media comments on the sharp red shorts the giant is wearing when they dig him up. Again, we have an obviously brilliant individual who turns to crime instead of patenting this giant robot and making millions legitimately.

Milt and Bob were lowered into the deep fissure, but "Only One Returned!" That's because Milt covets Bob's girl, Gladys, and cuts the rope once they get to the bottom, leaving Bob to wander aimlessly until he falls into an underground stream. Milt is pulled back up to the surface, where he has a sob story to tell and insists that he be the one to break the news to Gladys. Unfortunately, that won't happen since Milt has been exposed to high levels of uranium and must be quarantined for several years. But, a week later, the doctor has good news for his patient: Bob was carried up to the surface by the underground stream and is safe. In fact, he'll be married that very day! More lessons learned: find your own babe and never trust an underground stream, no matter how deep it is. Bob has one hell of a set of lungs, I wager.

"The Swami's Secret!" is not that he can converse with the spirit world but that he can read men's minds. That power has gained him some good coin over the years, but he's impatient and wants more. He wants to do something monumental (stop a war, prevent an assassination, lower the cost of eggs, etc.) so that "the world" will give him anything he wants. One day, on the train, he reads the mind of a man sitting in front of him and learns that the stranger is an alien sent to scope out an invasion. The swami heads to the nearest police precinct, convinced this will be his golden Wonka ticket. Nope. A pretty dopey script that ignores the obvious: mind-reading seems to be a swell gift, but this guy chooses to live in relative poverty for years, masquerading as a fortune teller. When he's arrested for fraud at the conclusion of the story, I was disappointed that the particular ordinance he violated was not cited. 

Peter Malley buys a second-hand 1958 Plymouth Fury off a lot and immediately feels a change in his attitude from mild, meek mouse to rip-roaring rapscallion, taking corners on two wheels and shouting profanities at the hookers on 42nd St. Then Peter opens the glove compartment and sees the gun. Things are gonna get a little interesting around town... but not in "The Second-Hand Man!," which oddly shows Peter having a wingding of a day (and landing in the hospital) for three pages and then provides a clunky, full page explanation for his behavior. 

The three-page "The Morning Sun" is "hard" science fiction about a green mist enveloping the world and shutting off the oxygen. Three scientists put their big brains together to try to work out a solution. I nodded off shortly after When Professor Alfred Whitby and his colleagues came from the sea and beheld the calamity... and awoke in time for the cliched, twist climax (the green-misted world is actually a tiny speck under a microscope) that we all saw coming. Truthfully, the captions and word balloons could have been filled with emojis and I wouldn't have cared, since the three pages were artfully crafted by Matt Fox, a truly distinct visionary who always made the most abysmal scripts tolerable.

Last up is "Bewitched!," the story of  Jim Hollis, the only man in town who isn't frozen like a statue. Jim does a bit of amateur sleuthing and discovers the trouble originated from a cursed tome titled The Book of Genda. Once the volume is destroyed, peace returns to the sleepy country village. Though the script is unremarkable, the Powell art is pleasing. So ends the 12-issue run of Strange Stories of Suspense (the first four issues were titled Rugged Action and featured mostly war and intrigue tales), comprised of 69 fairly mediocre tales of fantasy and science fiction that never stepped outside the safety box (though we did hand out the elusive three-star review to three of the tales over the run). What must have the dedicated Atlas fantasy fan have made of their disappearing choices? There was no Comic Reader, no internet, certainly no house ads trumpeting the ongoing devastation; you simply showed up at the newsstand and hoped for the best.-Peter

Strange Tales of the Unusual #11

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Perfect Hide-Out" (a: Frank Bolle) ★

(r: Vault of Evil #18)

"The Rag Doll!" (a: George Roussos (?) & Joe Giella (?)) ★1/2

(r: Journey Into Mystery #16)

"Twenty Long Years" (a: Al Eadah) ★

"Untouched by Human Hands!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★★

"Isolation" (a: Sol Brodsky) ★

"The Five Sinister Statues" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★★

Pierre, the murderous masked bandit who has been terrorizing the residents of Paris's Montmartre, stumbles upon "The Perfect Hide-Out" when he bursts into the flat of an elderly, wheelchair-ridden woman who can neither hear nor speak. Devilish egocentric that he is, Pierre begins "confessing" his crimes to the meek Ms. Gault. Not a smart move. I had to read the last two pages over again, since the climax is more than a bit confusing. Take my word for it and don't make the same mistake.

Fred Miller and his family must move to a poorer part of town because he's filed for bankruptcy. Why? Because Fred's father (for whom Fred toiled away for years in the factory) made a bundle of cash and then hid it away. Well, good riddance to bad memories. Little Clarabelle Miller only wants to bring along "The Rag Doll!" her grammy gave her, but her pop won't have it, so he tosses it to the side and the family hops in their station wagon and heads to the new house. Fred opens the door and almost stumbles over the rag doll on the floor. After berating his wife and daughter, he tosses the mangy toy in the trash and demands his dinner.

Later that day, sure enough, the rag doll reappears in the house. Hell bent on destroying this evil souvenir of a rotten childhood, Fred picks up the doll by its neck, and suddenly its midriff explodes, ejecting thousands of dollars in cash. Fred scoops up all the cash, hands the disemboweled doll to Clarabelle, and heads to the nearest tavern, his troubles behind him. Never saw that twist coming, did we? Of course, in the pre-code days, it would have been Fred who had the stuffing knocked out of him in the end.

Reliable Dave Frome has never been late for work a day in his life, but what's he got to show for it? Nada! So Dave begins a daily routine of practicing an out of body experience, perfecting it at last after "Twenty Long Years." The first thing Dave does after looking over his body sleeping peacefully is to rob the company safe but, alas, old habits die hard and the cops come calling after they find that Dave's spirit clocked out after his robbery. Dave perfected the art of projection so well that his spirit was able to turn the dial on the office safe! Ya gotta give the guy credit for working on a plan for two decades that hinges on performing a heretofore impossible act.

In the jungles of South America, 'dozer operator Morgan Tweed learns of the myth of the Mountain of Gold, "Untouched By Human Hands!" and containing a king's ransom of the shiny stuff. Morgan befriends the natives in order to sniff out intel, finally getting them to open up in trade for some bottles of Coke! Our intrepid 'dozer dude breaks into the temple but quickly discovers that the mountain God protects its innards. The dirty American scoundrel who takes advantage of the savages is one of the most overused villains in funny books and Morgan Tweed offers up nothing to set him apart from the pack, but I dug the Robert Sale art--peculiar, I know, since I usually don't have many kind words to say about the artist, but here his work comes off like a rougher version of Matt Fox.

In the three-page "Isolation," a prisoner jumps overboard and swims to a deserted island, where he finds everything he ever wanted. Or so he thinks. Last up is the meandering "The Five Sinister Statues," a morality tale about a man who is willed the titular ornaments by his wealthy uncle. Turns out the statues are alive and grant the man's every wish, turning thought into cold, hard cash, lovely furniture, and lower electricity bills. But, as we all know, there is a price to pay, and our lucky/unlucky protagonist pays that price when the authorities come around looking for receipts for all his new toys. Not a bad little story, though a bit preachy. Time to bid farewell to Strange Tales of the Unusual, a title so forgettable that only one of its 64 stories deserved a three-star rating (Bernie Krigstein's "Mind Reader!" in #9) and certainly none of its third-grade readers noticed it had slipped away into the land of canceled comics.-Peter

World of Fantasy #8

Cover by Fred Kida

"She Lives Again!" (a: Joe Orlando) ★★1/2

"Whose Face Have I?" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

"Cell #35-A" (a: Al Eadah) ★★

"The Mark of X!" (a: Matt Fox) ★

"The Secret of the Black Cloud!" (a: Dave Berg) ★1/2

"The Girl You Must Not See!" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

A shy, homely archaeologist named Henry Fabian reads an ancient Egyptian papyrus that tells of a beautiful seeress (a female seer?) who was sentenced to death by the pharaoh. Before she was killed, she drank a potion that put her into suspended animation. Guards thought her dead, wrapped her in linens, and placed her in a mummy case, but before she drank the potion she wrote that the man who finds and unwraps her will discover that "She Lives Again!"

Unlikely to find such a beautiful mate elsewhere, Fabian quits his job and sails for Egypt, where he searches until he finds the mummy case of the seeress. He unwraps her and she's more gorgeous than he imagined! She reaches out to wrap her arms around him but suddenly crumbles to dust. Good thing, too, because she had clutched a dagger that would have ended up in Henry's back! I'm always happy to see a story involving mummies and Ancient Egypt, and Joe Orlando's art is detailed and impressive. The script must not be by Wessler since it's not overly complicated and wordy.

Mort Grayson looks in the mirror one morning and wonders, "Whose Face Have I?" He looks nothing like he did the night before. Now he is a dead ringer for his old army buddy, Gene Baldwin, who saved Mort in the war. Mort heads to the home of Gene's elderly mother and finds her near death. She thinks her son has returned and dies happily. Mort picks up a telegram and reads of Gene's death in a plane crash; he sees Gene's image, hovering in the air and smiling. Looking in the mirror again, Mort sees that his own face is back! It's a corny, sentimental tale with nary a surprise in it, and the art by Paul Reinman is subpar. But I'm glad the old lady died happy.

While serving a life sentence in prison "Cell #35-A," Leo Judd is surprised when a futuristic looking man appears beside him. The man is from a dimension called Turah and has come to bring an Earthman back with him as a test. Off they go and Leo, true to form, tries to commit a robbery. As punishment, he's sent back to cell #35-A. Why is it that no Atlas protagonist can resist robbery? It gets predictable after a while. What I did not expect is the half-decent art by Al Eedah. Too bad the story's not worth it.

A selfish coward named Lucas takes a lifeboat and escapes from a sinking ship, putting his own needs before those of the other passengers. He rows to a desert island, where he methodically carves "The Mark of X!" each day on a tree to keep track of his solitude. Eventually he is rescued, but he lost track of X's and thinks it's only been three years when it's really been seventy, and he has a long, white beard! The twist ending falls almost as flat as the hideous artwork by Matt Fox, about whom Peter and I appear to disagree.

What is "The Secret of the Black Cloud!"? Scientists in West Germany are working on an important project and a mysterious black cloud seems to be spiriting them away. Is it the work of Communists from behind the Iron Curtain? A scientist named Luther Janning is not willing to help the West German police solve the mystery, but his son, Heinrich, also a scientist, is happy to help. He tries over and over to come up with an agent to dissolve the cloud but meets with no success. Unfortunately, the cloud is gobbling up one scientist after another. Finally, Heinrich invents a spray that works and, to his surprise, it turns out that his father was inside the black cloud, seizing scientists to help him work on his important project. Why? I have absolutely no idea. Nor can I understand why Luther didn't just pull Heinrich aside and fill him in. Dave Berg does a fairly good job with the art, but Wessler (as usual) can't tell a straightforward story.

A young man who has left his home after taking the company car and wrecking it takes the name of Billy Smith and secures a room at a boarding house run by a spinster named Miss Braden. She mentions her only other guest, a sickly young woman named Emmy Lou. When Billy sees Miss Braden visiting Emmy Lou's room after midnight, he begins to wonder about "The Girl You Must Not See!" Eventually, he insists on meeting her and Miss Braden explains that Emmy Lou is just a portrait of her when she was younger, before her fiancée jilted her. Billy decides to go home and face the music, unaware that Miss Braden knew his real identity and that he's the son of the man who left her! If stories like this are what we have to look forward to in future issues of World of Fantasy, it's too bad it didn't suffer the same fate as other Atlas comics during the implosion. I gave it an extra half star for the art by Forte, but's that's pushing it.-Jack

Next Week...
And Then There
Were Two!