Weird Science #7

Credits:
Cover dated May/June 1951
Cover by Al Feldstein

"Monster From the Fourth Dimension" - Art by Al Feldstein/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
"Something Missing!" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
"...Gregory Had a Model-T!" - Art by Harvey Kurtzman/Story by Harvey Kurtzman
"The Aliens!" - Art by Wally Wood/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines

"Monster From the Fourth Dimension" - A man named Hank encounters a bizarre meat-colored blob that floats in midair, changing shape constantly. The creature kills his cow then dissappears, only to reappear soon afterwards and comes after him. Hank flees from the creature and goes to see his brother Willy, a scientist. Upon seeing the creature, Willy believes it is from a fourth dimension which explains its constantly changing shape and ability to dissappear then reappear. The two of them shoot through the creature with a harpoon and tie it up. Willy then uses a device he was creating to go to the fourth dimension so he can blow it up with dynamite. A few minutes pass and Willy's machine appears back in our dimension, shattered into a bunch of pieces. Willy's dead body appears soon afterwards, a look of sheer horror on his face. The creature stops moving and dies, and Hank buries it. A fairly good story to start off the issue, with some interesting concepts in it. The story was redone in 1954 in the first issue of Three Dimensional EC Classics, drawn by Bernie Krigstein.

"Something Missing!" - A University professor named Roger is married to a nagging shrew of a wife, Hannah. Hannah is constantly complaining over Roger spending too much time on his experiments rather than teaching more and making more money. Roger hires one of his female students Sally, to be his assistant, enraging Hannah even further. Roger and Sally fall in love as they work on a device that can transmit matter and cause any transported creature to turn into what they are thinking about. After further nagging, Roger admits to his wife that he's in love with Sally. One night when Roger and Sally are in the lab, Hannah storms in. Roger puts Sally in the machine and turns it on, causing her to turn into a small statue of herself. Seeing it, Hannah smashes it. Roger picks up the pieces and puts it back in the machine so as to turn Sally back to normal, but misses a large piece, causing Sally to reform with a large part of her body (exactly what, not revealed) missing. The similarly themed Jack Kamen stories continue! This one's a bit similar to "The Trip" which I covered in Weird Fantasy #13, although not as good as that story.

"...Gregory Had a Model-T!" - This story is about an old man named Gregory Gearshift who loves his Model-T car, acting like it was another person. One day Henry passes out, but the car drives him home on its own. Having become very ill, Gregory's sister takes care of him and has to sell his possessions including his Model-T. His Model-T is sold to a young man who treats it as a joke and the Model-T, acting on its own drives after him, scaring him into climbing up a tree. When Gregory dies soon afterwards, the model-T drives itself into a cliff, essentially committing suicide. Kurtzman did a number of stories in the early EC science fiction comics but eventually his work was exclusively in his war comics and Mad. This was actually his final sci-fi story for EC and was probably the weakest of such stories. Kurtzman's sci-fi stories were often a bit more lighthearted, but a number of them were pretty good. Unfortunately this was not one of them.

"The Aliens" - This story features the first rocket ship to head into space. Our protagonists head towards the nearest planet, looking to see if there is intelligent life there. They initially land in the desert and find a cloud off in the distance which they follow, leading them to a group of the planet's inhabitants. It takes a while to converse with them due to the language difference. Suddenly the planet's inhabitants grow angry when the word "peace" is used and they attack. Multiple men are killed and both groups flee. The protagonists return to their rocket, but unbeknownst to them, the planet's inhabitants head to their own rocket ship, as they were visiting the planet as well. As the story ends, it turns out that both groups of people were from other planets, one from Venus and the other from Mars. Both, thinking they were talking with Earthlings plan to launch an attack on Earth. My favorite story of the issue, with an interesting twist ending.