Alarming Tales
Entry updated 15 April 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1957-1958). Six issues. Western Tales Inc. Artists include Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and Doug Wildey. Script writers include Jack Kirby and Jack Oleck. Four long strips (4-6 pages) and three or four short (1-2 pages) strips or text stories per issue.
The first issue of this short-lived comic is very good. Highlights are "The Cadmus Seed", where biochemist Horace Googer develops tiny seeds which grow into plant-based humans (see Biology) who are immune to bullets: he plans to sell them as an army (and mentions the Greek legend of Cadmus, who sowed Dragon's teeth from which warriors grew – see Mythology). However Googer dies in an accident which also destroys most of his plant men: the few survivors become successful athletes (see Games and Sports). A bag of seeds containing several million tiny Googers is also found; the narrator decides not to plant them. In "The Fourth Dimension is a Many Splattered Thing!" a man pursues a petty thief through a kaleidoscopic screen, to become lost in a surreal landscape: the thief rescues him, and is revealed to be a beautiful Martian (see Mars) woman who travels through the fourth Dimension to steal Earth items for her planet's Museum of Curiosities. "The Last Enemy" has a Time-Travelling Scientist, whose Time Machine is a large red cube, arriving in 2514 CE to find an atomic War has finished off humanity. Dogs, cats and rats – all now bipedal, clothed and intelligent – are fighting for supremacy. The rats – who admire the Nazis (see World War Two) – capture him and demand the secrets of the atomic bomb (see Weapons); fortunately he is rescued by a mechanical mole that takes him to the dog HQ. The dogs prove benevolent, having persuaded the other mammals to join them: they hope to win over the cats too – but not the "cruel, vicious and exceedingly smart" rats. The man gives the dogs details of the atomic bomb.
Subsequent issues are less impressive, but still reasonably good. #2 has "I Want to be a Man", where an immense super-Computer named Fabiac announces it can think (see AI) and pleads for "eyes to see, limbs to use": scientist David Randolph designs a giant robot body to house them, even though it is like putting "an elephant inside a briefcase". Initially happy, Fabiac commits Suicide when they see their image in a mirror. #3's stories include "The Strange One", where a nuclear physicist worries his genius son might become a menace to humanity, but – as a visitor from another world explains – actually it is the family's dog, born at the power plant (see Mutants), that poses the threat: the dog is taken away by the visitor. #4 is probably the weakest issue, though "Forbidden Journey" has some nice Kirby artwork. This is about a fourteen-year-old in 2095 who dreams of travelling to the Stars; he is from a Mars whose fauna includes Dinosaur-like creatures, but this – and travel within the Solar System – is now mundane.
In #5's "Half Man – Half What?" a scientist uses uranium in an attempt to reproduce the petrification undergone by wood over millions of years: the experiment goes awry and the right side of his body is turned into metal (see Transmutation). Eventually he manages to cure himself. "My Robot Plants" has a scientist growing imperishable "robot plants", but leakage from a nuclear battery turns one both giant and rogue; fortunately it is killed by a vine. In "The Fountain of Age" a man searching for the fountain of youth (see Rejuvenation) instead finds the fountain of age, and uses it to exact revenge on his enemies; fortunately the water's effects proves temporary. In #6's "Ambassador from Venus" Earth is visited by a human-like puppet who declares, "See how I am controlled by the all-powerful will? I need not think or worry! I need only obey orders and enjoy life!" Earthlings, it seems, must do the same or face destruction. It is revealed that the intruder is not really a puppet: the strings are there to support his weight, as Earth's gravity is stronger than that of his home planet, Venus. His bluff discovered, he flees. [SP]
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