Thursday, January 3, 2013
Oh, Baby! / The Man Who Meddled!
Well, we've ushered in the Baby New Year, so how about a few more bouncin' brats to kick off 2013? Both Atlas classics today are from the November 1954 issue of Marvel Tales #128. And FYI: this is just the start of a THOIA Double Feature month! Hold onto your bonnets...
I'm trying to figure out how the alien's shoulder joint works on that cover!
ReplyDeleteTwo great ones, the Meddled is a bit short on logic (just growing older quickly doesn't mean you learn how to talk), but fun. The Baby is finely creepy.
That said, I won't do the Stan call, but there's a lot of future marvel in here -- mutants, the next stage of evolution, obviously x-men, and the old big switch/radiation gun which harkens back (forward?) to many origins.
You can see a lot of stuff works as well for horror stories as it would the later super hero stories.
In the first story, won't Jim discover Dr. Hinton's dead body still lying outside? Wouldn't it set him down the path to rediscovering what his son really is?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOh Baby- the real origin of Damien.
ReplyDeleteBrian is oh so right about the future of what Marvel would become, and he has it nailed pat! Well done!
ReplyDeleteI, like Mestiére, had to chuckle at the "old" baby smoking a pipe. But the panel that just about had me rolling on the floor with Big Turok was the middle right panel of p. 2. The expressions on the faces of the three mice are priceless, especially the one in the rear with the big grin.
Fantastic stories and I love them. I too, however, am wondering what happened to Emily and who the big green masher is with the strange hand and shoulder.
I like Dr. Hartwick's methodology here. Just toss those mice into random machines, inject them with mysterious sera--you know, science! Bound to work eventually!
ReplyDeleteYou have to love sinister babies.
ReplyDeleteIssue #128 of MARVEL TALES was unusual in that all five of its illustrated stories were exceptionally good.
ReplyDeleteKarswell, have you noticed that virtually all of the Atlas/Marvel horror comics of the early fifties had a larger than average number of stories per issue, because the stories were shorter (often only four pages) than in most of Atlas' competing mags?
It would be impossible at this point to have not noticed, Drew! Some of you were asking about Emily, we'll see what she's up to in our next double sci-fi post coming ASAP. Thanks for the always entertaining comments!
ReplyDeleteIf I were writing a sequel to “Oh, Baby!” then I'd want to explain both how the discovery of the doctor's body were handled and why the baby hadn't just mind-wiped him as well. As to the former, I'd either have the baby keep anyone from noticing the body, or have him make everyone accept an transparently dumb explanation for its presence. I'd explain the killing as something that the baby had wanted to try, or as somehow less costly than a mind-wipe. (The baby had good reason to keep the father alive.)
ReplyDeleteThe pipe in “The Man Who Meddled” just couldn't be made plausible, but must be accepted for its awesomeness.