Rollin' into September with a racially charged tale of timely terror, taunts, and torture, from the May 1953 issue of Menace #3. Some great Romita art on this, and yeah, it's absolutely a Stan Lee script, he was quite open with his feelings concerning crumb-bum characters such as this. Okay, the Atlas Tales site says this story is 7 pages long, but it is in fact obviously only 5, --and say, if you want to see a much cuter mask that is 100% removable, head on over to AEET today HERE and see how Halloween 2022 is officially kickin' off...
The last page of this scared the HELL out of me when I first read it in the 70s! Wonder if they thought it was OK to include this one because it was "anti-bigotry"? I believe that the final caption on page five is one of those added when it was reprinted (just to underline the "moral of the story", in case you'd missed it). I'd still like to know more about the (likely underpaid rookie) staff that prepared the "scary" Marvel reprint titles back in the day...
ReplyDeleteThis story is far more disturbing and scary than any traditional horror story because bigotry is something that still exists to this very day and people like Jim are sadly very real. I especially felt uncomfortable at the part where he mentions the last name of his wife's lawyer as it happens to be a very Jewish one and I myself happen to be Jewish. As for the ending, I think he was hallucinating the extra hoods because the police only see one hood when they find him. Maybe a hidden paranoia or guilt of being discovered? Perhaps.
ReplyDeleteI pretty sure Stan wrote most of Menace up until maybe 8 or 9 or so? It was the best horror mag Atlas did, but it went downhill when Stan was pulled away for something. His wit really elevated anything he touched at Atlas.
ReplyDeleteStan's anti bigotry campaign was well known and probably reached a lot of kids at the time that grew up in households like that. His time in comics and the more progressive issues he pushed was really important.
The art is great, while everybody in the story is kind of dirty and industrial, Romita gives the bigots a real extra helping of ugliness. It's interesting the script goes out of it ways to show the people Jim recruits are just in it for the money, Jim seems to be singular in this story. And it's a very clever and grisly ending.
Menace was, at least for the first 8 or 9 issues, the best thing Atlas published in pre-code horror.
I love Romita, and it's always a treat to see stuff from his early days. I guess it feels rare because I don't follow any precode romance comics blogs. Though somehow I've never seen this story before, either. Every page is great--from stellar splash panel to horrifying finale--but pages three and four are masterpieces. Everything about them is just right.
ReplyDeleteThat's a mighty wild Bill Everett cover on this ish, too.
Those reprint titles that Unknown mentions were such nice addition to the new Marvel stuff, but an odd one.
ReplyDeleteSometimes of course an original cover was used, but other times the cover was given a picture with very trendy early ' 70s people in it.