Weird Fantasy #21

Credits:
Cover dated September/October 1953
Cover by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta

"My Home..." - Art by Joe Orlando/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
"Saved" - Art by Al Williamson/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
"Planely Possible" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
"The Million Year Picnic" - Art by John Severin & Bill Elder/Ray Bradbury adaption by Al Feldstein




A rare cover collaboration between Williamson and Frazetta starts off this issue of Weird Fantasy.

"My Home..." - A being made up of pure energy is the sole inhabitant of a planet that four astronauts, Steve, Harold, Ken and his wife Helen arrive at. The astronauts plan to mine the planet for uranium, but the alien has different ideas. He inhabits the body of Harold, being able to control him. He then attacks one of the other astronauts until being shot. He then inhabits Ken's body. When Steve brings Harold's body outside to bury it, the alien has the rocket ship take off, stranding him. As the days pass, Helen and Ken grow further apart due to Ken's body decomposing. They stay apart from each other, but the alien/Ken desires to see her one last time. Now a rotting corpse, Helen dies of fright from seeing him and the alien departs his body. It remains in the rocket, which is now its home., This story seems inspired by "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell, which was eventually made into 3 movie versions called "The Thing".

"Saved" - A man named Jargot proclaims that his ship, the Mercury, can transport goods faster than any other ship, guaranteeing that he will break all speed records. While he is successful in doing so, all of his crew dies during the journey except for him. When this happens multiple times, a man named Keston, who works for the Galaxy Bureau of Investigation is assigned to go on the ship and find out what is going on. Because no one will go on the ship, he and Jargot have to knock out several men and bring them onboard while unconscious. Once they are in space, Jargot locks everyone up including Keston. He then takes them away 2 at a time and Keston hear only screams from elsewhere in the ship. When Jargot comes for Keston and the other last remaining man, Sangor, he brings them to the engine room and reveals that the engine uses a catalyst, human blood, to go so quickly. Sangor reveals he is a vampire however and kills Jargot. He tells Keston he saved him, but what he means is he's saving him for another meal later on. A good story for the most part, combining both sci-fi and horror elements, although the pun at the end leaves for a rather lame ending.

"Planely Possible" - A man, Mr. Thurmond and his wife are in a car accident. Thurmond wakes up in a hospital and his wife dies soon afterwards. A technician at the hospital, Warburton, tells Thurmond that he believes that there were 4 divergent possibilities that came from the car accident and that it is possible to send Thurmond to the plane where his wife survived and he died, so he can take his place there as if he hadn't died. Warburton is able to transfer him to another plane, but mistakenly sends him to one where both Thurmond and his wife survived. Thurmond throws his duplicate in the furnace, killing him, and takes his place. He soon wakes up however to find that all of this was a dream, and his wife never died after all. But that night, the version of him from another plane arrives and throws him in the furnace. A new interesting take on the multiple dimensions plot.

"The Million Year Picnic" - A father and mother bring their 3 sons on a boating trip on Mars. While traveling they see a rocket depart to Earth, the last rocket to depart to Earth, as nuclear war ends up destroying the rest of human civilization. The family travels to various abandoned martian cities and eventually decides on one to live in. They expect more people to join them soon and they'll restart human civilization in their own way. The boys are anxious to see Martians, and the father shows them the Martians by having them look in the water at their own reflections. An adaption of a Ray Bradbury story from the end of the Martian Chronicles. Its one of the less interesting ones.

The Vault of Horror #22

Credits:
Cover dated December 1951/January 1952
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Fountains of Youth!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"The Monster in the Ice!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Gone... Fishing!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Al Feldstein
"What the Dog Dragged In!" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines

Quite a strong issue of the Vault of Horror, featuring all better than average stories.

"Fountains of Youth!" - Despite warnings from her older brother, 19 year old Eileen interviews for and gets a job as a personal assistant for Madam Dubois, a famous socialite who wears a heavy veil over her face. Eileen heads with Dubois on a cruise ship to Europe but quickly becomes sick. Dubois stays by her bedside as Eileen rapidly ages and passes away. Eileen's brother Kenneth heads to Europe and confronts Dubois, being shocked at how young she is. Believing something fishy is going on, Kenneth stays nearby and spies on another young woman who becomes Dubois's next assistant. Kenneth follows Dubois and the woman as they go on another cruise ship voyage. When the young woman becomes ill, Kenneth convinces the doctor to seperate Dubois from her and lock her up. The young woman soon becomes better, but Dubois, who the doctor explains is some kind of youth-sucking vampire ages to death and crumbles to dust. A decent story to start off the issue, aside from the fact that the doctor at the end seems to know all about what is truly going on with Madam Dubois out of nowhere.

"The Monster in the Ice!" - A couple of Americans, Dawson and Campbell are in charge of a geological expedition in the arctic. The local eskimo Lomo refuses to bring them near a place where they hope to do some geological readings, fearing a monster in the ice. Dawson and Campbell head there and find a frozen body with its face obscured in the ice. They take it back them to their cabin and Lobo claims it is the monster. Campbell, refusing to believe him, orders Lomo to cop the ice off the body and show that it is just a dead human being so he will stop being so afraid. While Lomo works on chopping the ice, Dawson tells Campbell of the original Frankenstein novel where the monster was lost in the Arctic at the end. Dawson wonders if the novel was true. Suddenly there is a scream. Dawson and Campbell rush to see Lomo, who has gone insane and find that the monster has escaped. The two decide to trap it by digging a hole in the ice and acting as bait. Eventually the monster arrives. Upon seeing its horrific face, they lose their minds and are dragged into the water by it, with all three being frozen. A year later a couple of Air Force officers discover the frozen bodies and decide to dig them out. An excellent story inspired obviously by Frankenstein, but with a new twist on things. The monster, whose face is only revealed in a couple of panels on the final page is one of Ingel's scariest monsters.

"Gone... Fishing!" - An expert fisherman, Max, brings his friend Steven to the beach where he starts fishing. Steven is opposed to fishing on moral grounds, but stays for a little while as Max explains the various fishing gear he has to him. Eventually Max catches a giant bass, and Steve, not wanting to watch him cut it up, leaves. Max fishes some more with no success. He pauses for lunch, but realizes that it was in the car that Steven drove off in. Suddenly he finds a candy bar on the ground. Max bites into it, but the candy bar has a hook in it that goes into his mouth, and Max is dragged into the sea as if he was being fished. A strong story featuring one of EC's most common house plots. Feldstein came up with the story himself, making it one of the few stories during this timeframe in EC's history where the story wasn't based on a springboard provided by Gaines. The story would later be adapted into a French film called The Fisherman. It was also used for an episode of the Tales from the Cryptkeeper cartoon. This is one of the rare instances where the main horror host for the comic didn't host the third story, instead it was hosted by the Crypt Keeper and the Vault Keeper hosted the final story of the issue instead.

"What the Dog Dragged In!" - A young blind woman named Betty is dependent on her dog Jerry, who usually goes out with notes from her to get groceries and run other errands. One day Jerry is hit by a car driven by a wealthy philanthropist named Roger. Roger nurses Jerry back to health then returns him to Betty. Roger and Betty quickly become close and Roger proposes to her. As he's leaving however he is hit by a car and is killed. Betty sends Jerry out to find him, with no success for over a month. Eventually however Jerry digs up Roger's corpse, and he returns to Betty. This story was an unauthorized adaption of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Emissary". Gaines/Feldstein made one major change in that the main character of that story was a young boy, changed here into the adult woman Betty. Oddly enough this unauthorized adaption wasn't found by Bradbury, although he quickly noticed some unauthorized adaptions appearing in Weird Fantasy 13 a number of months later.

Weird Science #17

Credits:
Cover dated January/February 1953
Cover by Wally Wood

"Plucked" - Art by Wally Wood/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"The Island Monster" - Art by Al Williamson/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Off Day!" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"The Long Years!" - Art by Joe Orlando/Story by Al Feldstein (Ray Bradbury adaption)

"Plucked" - Professor Sidney Hunton gets together with his publisher, James Farnsworth for Thanksgiving along with their wives as they do each year. Sidney discusses his research and the fact that every 200 years it appears that the population of certain parts of Earth decline tremendously despite birth and death rates remaining the same. James comes up with a theory that perhaps Earth is being used as a sort of turkey farm for alien creatures, that come to Earth every 200 years, snatch up a large number of people from the most powerful part of human society in order to eat them, and use techniques to both cover their appearance and make it seem as though those who were taken were never missing. While Sidney thinks the theory is ridiculous, the aliens do infact come to Earth and seize numerous people, including both their wives. A strong story to start off the issue, with arguably the scariest looking alien creatures to appear in an EC sci-fi comic.

"The Island Monster" - A group of men head to a remote island in order to capture a monster rumored to live on the island. The men come across the monster, which is of a gigantic size and are able to knock it out with Anesthetic bombs. The creature knocked out; the men bring it to the United States and plan to show it off at Madison Square Garden in New York. The first time they do so however, the crowd and the flash photography taking place scare the creature, which bursts out of its chains and crashes through much of New York City, eventually being killed by many jets following it. Months later, an investigative team discovers a large rocket on the island and a log which reveals that the creature had come to Earth as a peaceful ambassador. This story is pretty much a sci-fi retelling of King Kong, with the alien twist thrown in at the end.

"Off Day!" - Professor Stanley Dingle steps into his lecture hall one day and is shocked to find only one out of the approximate four hundred students in his class. Dingle thinks that the law of averages has broken down, and that this could lead to the destruction of the human race. The student gets up and says he is simply the janitor, and that the professor came in on Sunday. The Professor from this story was used as a letter page host, "Dr. deRange" in the EC comic reprints that came out in the 1990s. Much of the story is the Professor explaining the law of averages (which leads to the short summary here), and as a result this is not the most interesting story, although it is a funny ending.

"The Long Years!" - An old man, Hathaway, lives on Mars with his wife and three grown children, all that remain on the planet after war broke out and everyone else on the planet departed. One night Hathaway spots a rocket in the sky. He lights the nearby New New York on fire as a beacon and the rocket lands nearby. Out come some crewmembers who were familiar with him from 20 years ago including Captain Wilder and Williams, a crewmember. They eat dinner with Hathaway and his family and soon realize that something is odd, as Hathaway's family has not aged at all in the past 20 years. Williams finds a graveyard nearby containing grave markers for all of Hathaway's family, meaning that those living with him are artificial creations. Hathaway soon dies of a heart attack and is buried with the rest of his family. Wilder and Williams find themselves unable to shoot Hathaway's artificial family since they are so much like real people and depart, leaving them there. This story is the first of many authorized Ray Bradbury adaptions that appeared in EC's science-fiction comics. The story came from the Martian Chronicles and as a result was one of many such adaptions that took place on Mars.

Weird Fantasy #13 (1952)

Credits:
Cover dated May/June 1952
Cover by Al Feldstein

"The End" - Art by Wally Wood/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"The Trip!" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Home to Stay!" - Art by Wally Wood/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Don't Count Your Chickens..." - Art by Joe Orlando/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines

Our first entry covers my personal favorite issue of Weird Fantasy, which is also one of the more historically significant single issues that the company produced.

"The End" - The story begins with a massive comet approaching Earth but it miraculously burns up shortly before reaching the point of return. While humanity is saved, it is soon discovered that all mammals on Earth have become sterile due to the radiation from the comet. The second half of the story focuses in particular on Adam Akly, the last man ever born. As Adam grows older he focuses on trying to save humanity by creating a massive time machine which he plans to use to bring people from the past so as to repopulate the Earth in the present. The massive time machine is constructed in Grand Central Station due to its population density and placed in a location where it can draw people from the past and transport them directly to the future. A problem soon arises as only men are being transported from the past. Switching the years from which it draws them makes no difference, so Adam makes a last ditch attempt to solve things by going back in time himself to discover whats going on. Once he arrives he realizes that he's made a major mistake; the time machine's been placed in the men's bathroom. This story's origins can be traced to Miriam de al Ford's "The Last Generation" which inspired the sterilization part of the storyline and Damon Knight's "Not With a Bang", which inspired the ending. A very strong story to start off the issue.

"The Trip" - A scientist, Lon, falls in love with his beautiful assistant Edith. Since his wife won't give him a divorce, he plans to run away to a space colony with Edith. Lon is given the
opportunity to head to one of the space colonies to try out a quick-freeze system that he has developed that can instantly freeze animals for transport, and permit for their immediate thawing later on.  Because Edith is forbidden from heading to the colony with him, Lon has her quick frozen then stores her away in the ship. After his arrival Lon sets up his quick-thaw equipment and plans to thaw her that night while everyone is asleep. While carrying her to the quick-thaw equipment however, he trips over a loose wire and drops her, resulting in her body smashing into a million pieces. While this story contains many elements that appear in countless Jack Kamen stories, it's terrific ending makes up for it, making it one of the more memorable Jack Kamen science-fiction stories in my eyes.

"Home to Stay" - This story is about a rocket ship pilot, Dan Fawcett who repeatedly has to leave his wife and young son, Jimmy to head off to space, often several years at a time. Each time he
returns he strongly thinks about retiring so he can stay home with his family, but the urge to return to space overtakes him and he heads back time and time again, missing much of his son's
childhood. Dan finally promises that his latest trip into space will be his last. Returning to Earth however his ship explodes. While Dan is able to get into his spacesuit in time, he is caught in
Earth's gravity and starts burning up as he heads into the atmosphere. His wife and son spot him from the ground below, and thinking its a shooting star, Jimmy wishes upon it for his father to come home to stay. This story was an unauthorized adaption of 2 Ray Bradbury stories, "Rocket Man" from which much of the story comes from, and "Kaleidoscope" which inspired the ending". Upon reading the story, Bradbury sent a letter to EC pointing out that they had "forgotten" to pay him royalties for the 2 stories and asking if they'd be interested in future collaborations. This resulted in numerous future Bradbury adaptions which appeared in particular in the science-fiction comics. Incidently enough EC had swiped multiple stories from Bradbury before (Haunt of Fear #6's "A Strange Undertaking, which was based on "The Handler", and Vault of Horror #22's "What the Dog Dragged In", which was based on "The Emissary" are just a couple of examples), and also drew inspiration from his story "The Earth Men" in the next issue's story titled "Mad Journey". Bill Gaines claimed in a panel at the 1972 EC Convention that Bradbury thought "Home to Stay" ended up better than original stories and I would consider it one of the best stories that EC published.

"Don't Count Your Chickens..." - A young boy finds many eggs on Easter and his favorite is a bizarrely colored egg which his parents don't recall painting. That night, the boy hears the egg calling out to him, and the he follows the egg's directions to bring it to a cave. When he returns the next day, he finds that the egg has hatched, revealing a strange, but small alien creature. The creature used a sort of mind-control on the boy, convincing him to find it meat to eat. This starts with the boy removing food from his plate at dinner but graduates to much larger sources as the creature grows. Eventually, fearing for his health, the boy's parents send him away to summer camp. The creature, now quite large, makes it way out of the cave and starts attacking cows and various other animals to satisfy its hunger. Eventually the military is able to destroy it by burning it with flame throwers. The next Easter however, numerous boys and girls find very similar looking eggs while going on their Easter egg hunt in the areas that the creature had traveled through. Joe Orlando was usually drawn upon to do stories with bizarre looking aliens and this story featured one of the strangest looking ones an EC comic ever had.

The letter column for this issue contains a letter from Arline Grandon Phelan which heavily criticized the content of EC's comics and was discussed in the letter columns for multiple issues afterwards. Bill Gaines would later reveal in an interview that the letter was fake.