As usual, if there's a title where I've got something from my dad's collection to post, I'm gonna post it. Got another one coming up in a few weeks, in fact. Grand Comics Database doesn't know who the colorist was, and Stan Lee is just their best guess for writer, just to be upfront about it.
This issue, and most of the first nine issues, are reprints of earlier short stories from Strange Tales or Journey Into Mystery from the 1950s. So a lot of "monster of the week" stuff, with the occasional sci-fi story with an ironic twist. The one that tends to stick with me is "Save Me, Save Me!", drawn by Paul Reinman, probably written by Lee and Larry Lieber. About a scientist who alters his molecules so he can walk on water, all so he can steal secret defense plans kept in a ship off-shore (because radar would detect a plane of heli, and sonar would get a boat or sub).
Spoiler alert: If you can walk on water, you will sink on land. The Bible leaves that out of when they talk about Peter losing faith and falling below the waves. That notion dawned on him and he freaked out. All his favorite stuff is on land!
A lot of cautionary tales like that. "A Monster Waits Outside!" looks at both the potential danger of psychological isolation in space travel, and the notion there could be all sorts of shit out in space we aren't prepared for, no matter how psychologically healthy we are. Or stories where someone cruel gets their comeuppance ("The Gentle Old Man" and "I Must Find Korumbu!")
A few of the monsters in here - Zzutak, The Thing That Shouldn't Exist, and Rorgg, King of the Spider Men - show up occasional in Marvel comics to this day. Anytime a creative team decides that want the heroes to fight a giant monster that isn't Fin Fang Foom.
The real point of interest is probably in seeing some of the earlier work of some pretty big artists. Mostly Jack Kirby and Ditko, but Joe Sinnott pencils and inks "Journey Into Nowhere!". The Zzutak story might be the first time I've seen Kirby's pencils with Ditko's inks. The monsters feel very Kirby-like, with their elaborate spines and head ornamentation, but the faces of the human characters more closely resemble Ditko's. Even the main character, comic artist Frank Johnson, duped into using living paints to create monsters, starts out closer to a square-jawed, broad-shouldered Kirby protagonist, then gradually gains more lines on his face and around his eyes as he's pulled more and more into this nightmare.
Fear eventually settled on Man-Thing as a recurring lead, and then later, Morbius. I only own one other issue, #19, because it's the first appearance of Howard the Duck and was included in the collections of his comic I bought a few years back.
2 comments:
They used some of these weird scifi twist-in-the-tale stories as filler in Star Wars Weekly, because they were short, and were vaguely in the same genre as the lead strip.
(There were usually three strips, and sandwiched in the middle was some other science fiction and/or space opera thing from the Marvel vaults, like Star-Lord.)
The one I remember most to this day is about a crook finding the Fountain of Youth on Venus or some planet like that, but it turns him into a screaming baby, just as the space-cops arrive.
That's interesting. I'd have figured they'd go with the monster of the week stories as filler, since that seems closer to Star Wars style sci-fi. But I never read any of the Star Wars comics, so maybe it's not.
I can't decide what's a worse place to have to go to find the Fountain of Youth, Venus or Florida. It's a tough call.
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