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 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!

Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 168: Atlas/Marvel Horror & Science Fiction Comics!

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 153

August 1957 Part II

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Mystery Tales #54

Cover by Fred Kida

"The Last Lap" (a: Reed Crandall) ★★

"Prisoners of the Valley of Fear!" (a: Jay Scott Pike) ★1/2

"Death of a Gambling Man!" (a: Frank Bolle) ★

"Can of Soup!" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★

"Nobody!" (a: George Klein) ★1/2

"The Labyrinth!" (a: Sid Check) ★★

Race car driver Rex Bilbo will do anything to win and that includes cutting his competitors off at the final lap. This is how Rex wins. Then along comes "The Kid," the fastest racer anyone's ever seen. Rex knows he can't beat the newbie, so he loosens the young man's tires; next day, on "The Last Lap," The Kid hits the wall and... bloooey!

The other racers know what Rex has done but can't prove it. But they'll get him, they promise. One night, when Rex is working on his GTO, The Kid rises from the grave (still wearing his speed racer outfit) and heads for the track. Next thing we see is Rex's new auto, with real human skin upholstery, Rex's eyeballs as headlights, and a tank full of blood. Alas, that's not what happens, but in the early pages it sure seems like we're going to get the first honest-to-gosh EC-style revenge tale in years and the cherry on top is the Reed Crandall art. The CCA wouldn't have okayed my scenario, but the sappy (and inane) climax we're given is safe enough for the 8-year-olds. No nightmares here.

Planes flying through Austria are disappearing from sonar without a trace. Government agent Alfonse Grumet suspects foul play, so he commandeers a dirigible to fly the same path in hopes the truth will unravel. Sure enough, the blimp reaches the same area as the missing planes and is stopped in mid-air by a huge net. The net brings the vehicle to a landing and Grumet and crew are taken prisoner by a group of bald ruffians. Grumet is taken to the wizard of this Valley of Fear, disgraced Professor Kalendru, whose theories of... something... drew waves of laughter from his colleagues.

As his revenge, Kalendru traveled to this deserted valley and created a city of miracles. Kalendru orders his mute slaves to take the dirigible to a populated city and kidnap hundreds of people in order to build Kalendru's army of slaves. But Grumet has an ace up his sleeve and puts the kibosh on the evil emperor's plot. Everything about "Prisoners of the Valley of Fear!" smells like an old cinema serial, with hidden cities, beast-men, and an explosive finale. The elements it's lacking are a good script and excitement. We're never really clued in to what Kalendru's goal is; he builds a "paradise" to get even for all the slights aimed at him through the years. Heck of a revenge.

Larry Hall worked for Matt Trevor, one of the biggest crooks in the city. Trevor is opening a new casino and his biggest enemy is the mayor, whose daughter happens to be in love with Larry. Get all that? Well, when Trevor gets wind of the secret affair, he uses the mayor's daughter as a pawn in his war with her father. Luckily, Larry stumbles on a secret room at the new casino filled with chemicals and stuff. He uses the potions to make the casino disappear, thus preventing any harm to his one true love. Larry has made the ultimate sacrifice. "Death of a Gambling Man!" (hey, spoiler alert!) is cheesy Wessler pulp junk that's good for a couple of chuckles when it changes direction in the final page, but little else.

Starving, a hobo steals a "Can of Soup!" from a truck, unaware that this "soup" is actually nitroglycerine. It's evident right from the get-go what the mystery can is, but what's not clear is why Stan okayed the truly awful Robert Q. Sale art. Yeccch! In the equally brainless "Nobody!," a flight filled to the brim with stinkin' Commies lands in Moscow to find an empty city. Panicked, they jump back onboard and head to the next Red city they can find. Same thing. "Nobody!" In the end, it's all a case of brain manipulation by a stinkin' Commie scientist. They see only what he wants them to see. But the joke's on Ivan when he tries to end the hold on his comrades' brains and the machine goes kaput. So does the plane. 

"The Labyrinth!," the final story in Mystery Tales #54, helps the title go out on a high note (or at least a higher note than the four stories that preceded it). A race of underground men try to make it to the surface world but can't seem to work their way through a maze of tunnels. Turns out the poor chaps are stuck in a subway tunnel. Some nice throwback penciling (meaning it looks like the penciling was done in the 1940s) by Sid Check and a fairly decent twist ending. Quality-wise, the 54-issue run of Mystery Tales was middle of the pack, neither better nor worse than its sister pubs. Two stories from pre-code MT made my Top 50 list: George Tuska's "Marion's Murderer" (from #14) and Bill Benulis's "The Little Monster" (from #15).-Peter

Mystic #61

Cover by Bill Everett

"Someday It Will Open" (a: Richard Doxsee) ★

"The Thirteenth Floor!" (a: Bernard Baily & Gene Fawcette (?)) ★

"Mister Backwards!" (a: Frank Bolle) ★★

"Too Dangerous to Live" (a: Carl Burgos (?)) ★

"The Strange Sea!" (a: Alfonso Greene) ★

"The Face in the Mirror!" (a: Joe Orlando) ★1/2

Professor Klauser returns from the jungles of South America with a souvenir, an odd, stone-like object he dubs a "thought pod." Kaluser is convinced that if he concentrates on something hard enough, that thought will materialize from out of the pod. His colleagues all think he's daft, but Klauser sits in his chair staring at the pod, certain that "Someday It Will Open." And it does. It just doesn't produce anything interesting, unfortunately. Not even the Doxsee art can elevate this one above the basement floor.

Brand is convinced the partying people on "The Thirteenth Floor!" are wearing priceless jewels and he's intent on robbing them. His friends tell him he's nuts since the hotel has no 13th floor, but he's convinced it isn't a mirage. When one of the hotel employees tells him that the hotel used to have a 13th floor but it was destroyed by a fire and never rebuilt, it gives him an idea. He sets a fire and watches as all the "shadow people" run into the elevator. He heads for their jewelry but fate has other ideas. What a dumb story! How can an entire floor of a hotel building be destroyed and removed without affecting the floors above and below? 

Ralph Paval buys a wonderful hourglass at an auction house and quickly learns it has the remarkable power of turning back time. All Ralph has to do is turn the hourglass over and... ta-da!... it's the past. Of course, since Ralph is living in the Atlas Universe, the first thing he does is rob a bank. Then he turns the hourglass over several times and it's ten years before. Ralph takes the money he made from the robbery and invests it in a sure thing in the stock market. Ralph's not as smart as thinks, though, as evidenced by the G-Men who come to arrest him for counterfeiting. The dope used 1957 currency in 1947! You'd think that would be the end of "Mister Backwards!" but, as with Mr. Brand in the previous story, Ralph finds fate has a way of evening things up for time travelers. I thought this one was semi-clever, but my only question would be, if Ralph is going back in time, why does he get to keep the dough he robbed in 1957, a heist he hasn't even committed yet? Am I thinking too much?

Really smart genius Professor Rajec is forced by the stinkin' Commies to build the perfect weapon, an explosive device they plan to use on the enemy. The Reds test three ounces of Rajec's formula and it destroys a square mile of land, but it also gives Rajec a bad case of amnesia; he can't remember the formula. After interrogating and torturing him for weeks, the Commies leave him be, hoping his brain will come around. At last, Rajec tells his bosses he's okay and ready to build another, bigger gizmo. But Rajec has a better idea and a better device to build: an air purifier that will suck up all the radioactivity caused by his first bomb. When last we see the professor, he's driving away with a U.N. escort, and the Commie colonel who once led his interrogation is giving him a thumbs-up. Bar none, "Too Dangerous to Live" contains the fastest (and funniest) transformation from bloodthirsty sadist to peacenik ever portrayed in a funny book strip. 

In the three-page, "The Strange Sea!," Jeff Marlowe yearns to be a seafaring lad like his ancestors, so he signs up to be a sailor. On his maiden voyage, he's swept overboard by a giant wave but, luckily, he's saved... by his great-grandfather. I know just how Jeff feels, swirling around in a whirlpool of bad comic stories. The finale, the last story ever to appear in Mystic, stars a pair of thieves, one of whom has become something of an animal, brutalizing everyone he comes in contact with. "The Face in the Mirror!" has yet another predictable, inane twist ending and uninspired Joe Orlando art. Four Mystic stories placed in my Pre-Code Top 50 list: Sol Brodsky's "The Devil Birds" (from #4, which landed smack dab in the number one spot), Mort Lawrence's "Help Wanted" (from #19), "The Living and the Dead" (from #26), and Russ Heath's "Who Walks with a Zombie" (from #27).-Peter

Mystical Tales #8

Cover by Fred Kida

"Stone Walls Can't Stop Him!" (a: Doug Wildey) ★★

"The Dream People!" (a: Ruben Moreira) ★1/2

"The Lair of the Thunder Lizard!" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★1/2

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

"Try-Out!" (a: Sid Check) ★★

"The Island of No Return" (a: Sam Kweskin) ★

A convicted killer named Carl Brent walks right through the bars of his prison cell as if they were not there! Even "Stone Walls Can't Stop Him!" and he walks through one of those as well on his way to freedom. Roy Anders, the prison guard, doesn't tell anyone because he thinks he'd be ridiculed. He goes home and his wife encourages him to consult his "scrapbook case histories of all the men who have been executed on Death Row." (Roy is clearly a little off.)

Reading about Brent, Roy recalls that the criminal seemed to have a heart, never taking all the cash when he robbed a store and begging for forgiveness from a young woman he mistakenly shot during a holdup. When the woman, whose name was Molly Spinner, died, Carl was sentenced to death. Roy has an idea and drives to the cemetery, where he observes Carl kneeling on Molly's grave, asking her to forgive him. Roy hears her voice granting forgiveness and the guard drives back to the prison, where he learns that Brent was found dead of a heart attack on the floor of his cell, a contented smile on his face.

Doug Wildey does a decent job with this rather mournful story and I enjoyed it. The final twist, such as it is, comes from the surprise on the face of the guard on duty when Roy tells him he knows Carl died with a smile. Not much of a twist, but a pretty good story.

After dreaming of standing before an audience, a playwright named Baker is convinced his new play will be a hit. "The Dream People!" can't be wrong! Instead, his play is rejected and one written by his roommate, Philips, is accepted. Baker lies to Philips and takes his place, taking credit for the work and watching the rehearsals. Philips catches on and threatens to go to the cops, so Baker kills him just as the police burst in. He is tried and convicted and finally realizes that the audience he dreamed of was the members of the jury. Once again, Ruben Moreira works hard with a run of the mill idea.

Old Edouard Duval likes to spin yarns about seeing dinosaurs in a nearby cave, describing it as if it were "The Lair of the Thunder Lizard!" Young Jacques Rambeau doesn't believe it and enlists two friends to explore the caves with him to show that the old man is making up stories. The trio descend into the cave and photograph what lies in the darkness, certain it's nothing. To Rambeau's surprise, when the film is developed, it shows the thunder lizard! Duval volunteers to visit the cave and Rambeau agrees to film the outing; the old man shoots into the darkness and the film records the death of the creature. The cave is sealed off and Duval is a hero! Days later, Rambeau finds a small lizard that crawled into his camera and looked big in the pictures. He doesn't have the heart to burst the old man's bubble. Leave it to Krigstein to wring some emotion out of a weak story by Wessler. The artists gets the feeling of the French folk right and Rambeau's kind decision at the end seems genuine.

In the year 1457, Wolfgang Roebling invents a machine but when he shows it to the authorities they throw him out, insisting that it's evil. On his deathbed, Roebling entrusts the machine to his faithful servant, Karl Rieger, who promises not to give up until the world recognizes Roebling's genius. In a secret cellar room, Rieger sleeps for a century and awakens to show the machine to a man in Italy, who calls it a work of darkness. "The Sleeping Man" nods off in the catacombs for another century, wakes up, and tries his luck in Paris, where he is nearly killed when one of the king's ministers doesn't react well to the invention.

He sleeps for another hundred years in a cave in the Pyrenees, but when he wakes up, the king's secretary tries to steal the machine and Karl runs off to another extended nap in a tower castle. He gets the same reception in England in 1857. Finally, it's 1957 (surprise!) and Karl stows away on a ship to America. He arrives, but the perpetual motion machine Roebling invented 500 years before is scoffed at. Karl finds an underground spot to doze off and the robot hopes that, in a hundred years, the machine will be accepted. I kind of liked this story, not for the hideous art by Sale but rather for the plucky robot who keeps thinking that, if he just tries again in 100 years, people will accept his inventor's gizmo. I did not know he was a robot till the last panel, so I guess Wessler got me this time.

A booking agent named Stanton yawns through a presentation by a man named Lund, who narrates a travelogue to Neptune, the Earth's core, and the moon while showing images from a projector on a screen. He then suggests a talk on telepathy and ESP, but Stanton is unmoved. After the "Try-Out!" fails and Lund exits the office, Stanton is shocked to discover that Lund accidentally left the projector behind and there's no film in it! Sid Check's regular panels with people talking are smooth and the panels where he depicts the wonders presented by Lund are impressive, but they're not enough to make the story interesting.

Bruce Marner bullies everyone in Merville, a small town on the coast of Canada, and has one thing on his mind when he sees Hover Island, where there's a safe filled with gold coins in a long-abandoned bank. Marner commandeers a boat and heads out to "The Island of No Return," but when he gets the gold and tries to navigate his way back to the mainland, he discovers that the boat keeps ending up back at the island. Sam Kweskin's art on this forgettable story is a hair better than that of Robert Q. Sale on "The Sleeping Man," but the narrative is much less interesting.

So ends the short run of Mystical Tales, which never rose above the level of ho-hum. My highest-rated story was "Someone Behind Me!" by Reed Crandall, in #3.-Jack

Next Week...
Watch Helplessly as Matt Fox
Tries to Save Atlas From
the Deadly Implosion!