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This will be the only volume of Menace because this collects the only 11 issues of the series’ run. This is all pre-code horror stuff and spans from March 1953 to May 1954. There was a gap of a few months between #’s 8 and 9 and the last three issues were bi-monthly which explains why it was over a year for 11 issues to hit the stands. There’s a huge collection of talent in this volume. Stan Lee has writing credits for all the stories in the first seven issues and a pair in issue #8 before scripts are left of the byline and the author is unknown. I couldn’t possibly name all the artists here but some of the big names are: Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, George Tuska, Russ Heath, John Romita, Joe Sinnott, and Gene Colan. Doc Vassallo writes another epic introduction with a run-down on all the talent included in these pages as well as his critiques of the stories written and even Stan Lee’s name possibly disappearing from the byline in later issues. He always writes good stuff that set up the volume well.
Spoilers Ahead
-Menace #1- These are anthology type stories meaning you have four comics (usually two 7-pagers and 2 three to four pagers) and a text tale. The cover has a great two-headed zombie that is frightening. Of course, the interior story has nothing to do with the cover as the two-headed monster is really an alien in disguise and it’s a zany invasion plot where the kidnapped human is not who he appears to be (he’s an alien, too). The text story featured a shunned pharaoh making his return to stop a man from digging up his grave. It was really predictable. The second story was a funny one of come-uppance with a wife’s unmoving husband and how karma can come around and bite you in the ass. A bully bites off more than he can chew in the third story. He picks on the wrong man but only discovers his mistake when the guy he’s picking on is really a werewolf. We end with a good story of a warden who rules by fear meeting his end thanks to his own vicious ways. I love the little twists at the end of these stories.
-Menace #2- We meet a Commie spy sent to the US and ultimately failing in his mission (killing the double-agent by mistake). I get it, Communism is bad! The text story finds a man in jail ready to be hanged. So he comes across a genie to grant a wish of his. So he wishes to be the nephew of the man he killed but guess what, that man was about to hang himself anyway. Karma strikes again! A Vampire sleeps his way well into the future and reawakens hungry. Unfortunately, the world he wakes up to has no humans and only robots. A mean scientist steals the rocket of his assistant and rockets to the moon, not realizing he’s on a one-way ship. We end with a woman wanting to be a famous dancer and even trying to kill the woman ahead of her to do it. Of course, that woman is a witch and she makes the murdering girl dance until she’s wasted away to nothing.
-Menace #3- A racist wearing a black mask goes mad and rips his own face off. That’s the perils of racism for ya! The text story was a confusing one of a man who has the urge to kill but must relive killing his best friend over and over. The second story is a werewolf story that doesn’t add too much to anything. Basically a guy looks for werewolves, becomes one, and kills his wife as he is shot and killed by her. We meet a rodeo clown who tries to kill his competition for a woman only to meet the cruel hand of fate and get gored by the bull instead. Finally, a man drinks a serum that makes him live forever! He goes to Florida and ends up in quicksand! These guys always get what is coming to them.
-Menace #4- The first story was really stretching things by saying Fidel Castro is a Vampire. A loser crook tries to escape to the moon on a new rocket only to find the rocket is a small remote-controlled one. The text story is a highly predictable story of a man’s wife being the zombie that is terrorizing a town. A boy genius (not Amadeus) is too smart for everyone and leaves Earth for the moon and a beautiful woman only to be fooled by the really hideous woman. Guess he’s not too smart after all. We end with a nurse working at a psych castle and hearing a man complain of four-armed people. If you can’t tell the ending you haven’t been reading any of these. The woman is four-armed (GORO!) and kills the crazy guy and the doctor.
-Menace #5- The first issue features the highlight of the book. It’s a silent zombie who doesn’t do what his commander tells him to do. It gets worse when the man tries to get the Zombie to kidnap a girl, only to realize that girl is his daughter! So the man gets killed and the Zombie goes back to sleep in his grave. This Zombie would end up being Simon Garth and he’s had quite the career at Marvel as Vassallo documents in the introduction. The text story was a silly one about Martians invading and using a mind-control trick that was way too contrived. We head forward from here with some really predictable stories, a criminal who says he won’t commit any crimes but manages to attack a senator who was trying to crack down on crime. A guy suffers from nightmares that become all too real and a rocket ship to Venus that doesn’t go too well. There was a great intro story but the rest was just terrible.
-Menace #6- It seems that Menace has taken a turn into sheer predictability. There’s a guy who buys relics only to become a cursed ghost, a text story of some trapped human which leads nowhere, a chess master who is a murderer who tries to hide but eventually finds himself in his own checkmate of death, a ghost story with an ending you could see a mile away, and a flying saucer story that I read recently in the Marvel 70th Anniversary Trade. I liked the flying saucer story with the twist being that the flying saucers were the thing that was alive.
-Menace #7- Robots have taken over in the first story and only a man with his special gun can destroy them all. He’s got all the robots except one and I think you can figure out the ending (hint, he’s the last robot). The text story was one of the best parts of this issue, with a tale of a man dreaming of his eventual doom and it coming true. We hit a string of other underwhelming stories, with a man selling out his fellow astronauts on a death planet and suffering from his own misstep in words and a Frankenstein story that just shows that we are the real monsters. I’d say the subtle jab at Wertram was the best story here, with comics paling in comparison to some fairy tales that we know and love. That story saved this issue.
-Menace #8- A lizard comes out of the ground to seek land for his people. Of course, he’s met with shock, rage and misunderstanding. So he and his people will not stop what they normally do (volcanoes) and guess what? We humans are screwed. A hunter who tries to incite what he hunts finds a werewolf who won’t play his game. So the hunter attacks first and is eaten. The Collector appears in the text tale and ends up dying thanks to his greed. A very ugly dude tries to steal money for a surgery that will help him but unwittingly kills the only man who could perform the surgery. A criminal falls under his own hypnotism spell in the short three-page story and finally a man builds a wooden woman and goes to a witch to become wooden just as the woman becomes real. The title took a bit of change here, adding another story (a three-pager) at the expense of the other stories and as a result it lost a bit of story-telling that was needed in the issues. It is tough to have a twist ending in a 3-page story!
-Menace #9- The first story was a lackluster alien invasion story, the text story was interesting (a man agrees to marry a man’s daughter but not realizing she’s dead), a vampire curse is passed down through a family, a man who shoots dogs becomes a werewolf and is killed, a fat music critic steals someone’s music and is killed by the one he stole it from, and a zombie stalks a man who was just about to cremate his wife. The Zombie gets put up in flames, much like this issue should’ve been.
-Menace #10- A cobalt bomb has created terrible side-effects (mutated people) and the scientist tries killing them all, even himself by mistake (thanks to his son who didn’t intend to any malice to fall from it). The text story was a simple haunted lake story that did have some interesting build-up. A guy is too interested in worms than his wife so he kills his wife when she wants to leave but the wife gets the last laugh. A horribly ugly woman makes herself up to steal from men but picks the wrong guy (he’s a robot). We see some serious plotting from someone or something (it was the ants all along!) and end with a crippled mute who is actually a killer. This was another dud and you can see why the book was on its way out. After the Wertram trials this one just totally fell off the tracks.
-Menace #11- A man tries to get a robot to kill its master but doesn’t understand that the robot obeys too well and is off to kill all men. Well, that guy learned his lesson. Two gamblers fall victim to their haunted room in the text story, a man spurns his ugly alien suitor and poisons himself but not before seeing the woman transform to a beautiful woman. We see a crotchety old man use mind control on his beastly assistant to kill but the guy is upset he killed his love and ends up killing his master. A man’s conscience gets the better of him and the last story of a hermit hunting reporter takes a strange twist (strange as in not making sense) before ending the volume altogether.
-The Bottom Line- Wow, this was a tale of two books here. The first half featured some really interesting stories and was fun to read. the second half (after Lee stopped writing) was almost too hard to get through. There was a spoof of the Zombie story included (from Crazy #4, dated March 1954) that was a nice bonus. I don’t know if I can recommend this book based on how disjointed it was but when you take into account this is the ONLY volume of Menace it does hold historical significance. I’ll call it a thumbs in the middle for Menace.
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