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I must’ve missed Vol. 1 of this somewhere along the line but that’s alright, E-bay can help me out with that one of these days. Strange Tales was Marvel’s (at this time Atlas) take at the whole sci-fi/horror genre that EC was so good at. Dr. Michael Vassallo writes this introduction and he has just a wealth of knowledge of Atlas Era Marvel comics. What I really love about his writing is that not only does he mention the artists and people who worked on the stories, but he doesn’t go crazy with the hyperbole and claim every tale is a lost classic. He’s very truthful with the stories and if the twist was silly, he’d call them out on it, and reviewed very fairly. Usually you don’t see people say Stan didn’t write a good tale in the introduction of a Masterworks Collection, but the doc did it.
These stories had cover dates starting in October of 1952 heading up to July of 1953 and if you know your comic book history, this was before Werthram’s, “Seduction of the Innocent,” book turned the comic industry on its head, initiating the Comics Code and basically ending the horror genre and putting EC out of business. So the stories are a little darker than the ones we’d see later on in the 50’s. So there are ten issues here, with each issues containing 6 stories (except #11, which has only 5). One of those 6 is a written story with no illustrations, harkening back to a time when people could read not only comics but things with no pictures, either.
Spoilers Ahead
-Strange Tales #11- Donald Webster makes a deal with the devil to kill his wife, only to end up in hell with his wife. He deserved it. The prose story features an ocean monster that I immediately forgot about some hours later. It’s something with aliens not liking our TV. A radio station mythbuster goes into an alleged haunted house and turns into Skeletor! Yeah, the twist is that this guy has a skeleton face now. At least it won’t affect his work since he’s on radio and not a TV personality. A criminal stows away on a ship that gets blown up and he ends up inside a whale. I saw that ending coming from a mile away. Finally, a man named O’Malley tells how he basically got himself banned from heaven and hell and now wanders bars telling his story. Of course the Irish guy goes to the bar, he can’t be telling his stories at laundromats or something. This was a pretty bad issue, with 5 stories that were both boring with poor twists at the end.
-Strange Tales #12- A man develops a love potion but it backfires and he falls in love with the lab rats. A criminal kills people but is accused of a murder he didn’t commit. His alibi is that he was with his girlfriend that night it happened so he rushes to her house, running over some poor soul in the process. I think you can figure out the ending and who he actually ran over. The prose story is an interesting one about the curse of a pharaoh’s finger and how the curse lives on in members of some long-lasting cabal, sort of like the Illuminati. A boy gets a message from his dead brother in a short two-pager, a dumb slob is not as dumb as he seems, and finally a master of disguise ends up getting what he deserves in the end. This was a lot stronger than #11, but still, the two longer stories didn’t deliver.
-Strange Tales #13- The first story sees a man trying to save a woman from a witch, but the witch turns out to be the woman’s mother. It’s scary because it is usually true. The prose story is a good one about a wife’s revenge and the power of hatred. Death makes a deal with a failing newspaper reporter and faces some terrible consequences. Three criminals hide some money they’ve stolen in the water and all drown when they try to double-cross each other. Finally, space explorers find some bugs on a planet and plan to wipe out the planet since they are useless. The twist at the ending is very Twilight Zone-ish, as the bugs on the planet are in fact humans. The final story is of an actor who is really a hideous person. The illustration of his natural face was quite gruesome, actually. This was a very strong issue, with all the stories being enjoyable and featuring a relatively unique twist. Sure, some of it is clichéd now, but they were good enough to not make me roll my eyes when the twist did arrive.
-Strange Tales #14- Horrible Herman starts this story and Herman is really ugly. The picture of him borders on stereotypical racist, depending on the coloring, and he wants to destroy the world and flies off before it is destroyed. Well, the plans backfire and he ends up dead. The Grinning Skulls is our second story, with a scientist looking at some skull totems. One of his assistants wants to steal them, but he just ends up as another head on the collection of skulls. The prose story features a man making a deal for eternal life, but basically being paralyzed while he lives to eternity. That’s a really Twilight Zone twist, too, though this predated TZ by a few years. A scientist tries an experiment to super-evolve a gorilla and ends up switching brains with the gorilla instead. Next up is a man who raises Midas from the dead to get his powers of turning things to gold. See, he’ll have his right hand be the golden hand and the left one be okay so he can still eat and function. Of course, he’s in an accident and his left arm is amputated. Well, he had it coming. Finally, a man can talk to ghosts but wants a wife to keep him company during the day when the ghosts are away and he gets hitched. The wife kills him to steal his money and he becomes a ghost now. I guess he’ll haunt her now? This was a strong issue, with some really interesting stories,
-Strange Tales #15- A woman meets a man’s mother and she’s actually a witch! This is too close to real life, people! Anyway, the twist at the end is the woman impersonates the mother only to get burned at the stake. Just to really hammer home that she is a witch, she lives in Salem, Massachusetts. In another issue of marital problems, a man has a wealthy wife but cheats on her, loses the money, kills his mistress who wanted him for his money, and ends up with a dead wife who really did get the last word (the title of the issue). The written story was interesting in that we have a phantom car being chased, though it ended too abruptly and could’ve used another page. A man has a paralyzing fear of heights, even though the height is but a few inches, but it proves the end of him anyway. Next is a story showing that anyone, even monster, can get scared. Finally a criminal gets a potion that can enable him to walk through walls and he goes on a stealing spree. Unfortunately, he finds out the hard way that the potion wears off. I thought the last half of this issue was really strong, with the last three stories being top-quality stuff.
-Strange Tales #16- This is probably the most gruesome front cover you’ll see in Marvel history and would’ve done EC proud. So, a man is beheaded in the first story but his girlfriend asks her father to save him by sewing his head back on. He does, but he does it backwards since the guy was rotten to begin with. The Hitchhiker is a great prose story about a man who killed a hitchhiking female 10 years ago and faces off with her ghost as a result. A thief steals money so he can enjoy a meal at a restaurant he’s always kicked out of, but fails miserably when he himself is robbed. A boy is a sissy so he gets a magic book and turns his over-protective aunt into a frog so he can play with the other kids. A man wants to commit suicide because he’s unlucky but some lucky circumstances prevent him from dying. He even gets rich! Then he trips down the stairs and dies. Finally, a guy makes a deal with the devil to return to Earth as a ghost after getting the electric chair, and he does, but floats into the infinite realm of space for all eternity. This was a big miss in terms of quality, as the prose story is the one that highlighted this issue which is a rarity.
-Strange Tales #17- A boy builds a rocket that gets rid of all metal but he loses his memory. The rocket is used by the military and peace rules the world now. This was more a Cold War commentary story than anything strange. Stan takes on the Hatfield/McCoy story which is a feud that never ends. The written story was a confusing one about a dog vampire or something. It was a confusing ending. The Big Kill features someone talking about all the death they bring with the twist being it is a car that is causing all the deaths. 5 Years Too Late features a man being released from prison and getting his old cronies to tell him where he buried the stash money. They show up to the address and it is now a police headquarters that is being built. Oh well, best laid plans and all. Finally, a man kills his wife when he learns she’s been written out of the will by dumping her from a cliff. He suffers a similar fate. There was no blow away story here but it was a decent enough issue to make it enjoyable.
-Strange Tales #18- John Doe deals with the much-loved human robot tale which I thought was very cliché, even for 1953. The prose story is about a king wanting the ultimate soldiers from his magician and getting more than he bargained for when he double-crosses him. There’s a UFO story about a farmer warding off an alien invasion (which is almost like the plot to Signs), then a witch-hunt story with the devil leading people astray, and finally a bomb test by the Russians go horribly wrong thanks to a spy in their ranks. There wasn’t anything terribly interesting in this issue, the second dud of the collection.
-Strange Tales #19- An old man makes some coffins for his still living money-grubbing relatives and ends up locking them in their caskets along with the crooked coffin maker. There’s a flight story that shows how paranoia can ruin someone. A tailor is the star of our next story and the crotchety rich man ends up getting his come-uppance in that tale. A rag doll is given to a boy by his evil orphanage headmistress, though the Rag Doll kills the woman at the end. This predated the Twilight Zone episodes by a couple of years I believe. A farmer who like beheading his chickens suffers the same fate thanks to a rooster. Finally, a man fakes blindness to win a lawsuit only to become blind in reality. He definitely had it coming. Some of these stories could still be applicable today which shows it aged well.
-Strange Tales #20- A man figures out a way to defy the rapid-aging machine the calculators use in the far off year of 1990 but ends up as a calculator when they can’t find a punishment for him. I remember 1990 being nothing like that. There’s a sword-swallowing story that was really uninteresting. A prose story has Earth-people landing on a planet where plants run their world. They get saved by the plants and as they leave they show their appreciation by nuking it. How nice. A man leaves his estate to his two nephews and Wilbur. Basically, Wilbur is a lion and he eats the one nephew who murdered the other. A short three-pager sees a youngster pour water on a small train-set that translates into a flood in China. Yes, we are the playthings of little kids. A man builds a time machine and goes to the deep future where the world has been ravaged by nuclear war. This story ends with a to be continued tag as the natives bust his time machine and he’s stuck there.
-The Bottom Line- There’s just a huge array of talent that worked on this collection. Stan Lee was the primary credited writer, but look at the list of talent that threw in their artistic skills: Gene Colan, George Tuska, Bill Everett, Jim Mooney, Joe Maneely, Bernie Krigstein, and Jerry Robinson. Those are some big names in the comic world. Some of the latter names may be a bit more obscure but they were real innovators and the premiere guys of the Atlas era, or the time between the Golden Age and Silver Age. The stories are hit or miss and I’d guess it’s about a 50/50 ratio of good stories to bad. That being said, even some of the bad stories have some redeeming quality. They represent a certain time period where paranoia was high thanks to the Cold War and a time before the Comics Code Authority was around to censor, I mean, protect kids from comics with questionable content. The names of the artists alone makes this worth a look. Another positive about this collection is that the stories are all short and it makes for a very quick and easy read. You can fly through an issue in no time and almost all the issues have something great between its pages. Recommended.
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