Miscreants who messed around with the supernatural rarely ended up well in Marvel Comics’ spooky five- or six-pagers.
For example, let’s look at Beware!! The Ghosts Surround Me!! (Strange Tales 76, Aug. 1960).
Tucked away behind Jack Kirby’s I Am Dragoom! The Flaming Invader! Our morality tale has a Twilight Zone-ish feel (Rod Serling’s popular CBS show had been on the air for less than a year when this story was published).
A melodramatic speech reminiscent of Serling introduces the story: “The human mind can endure much, but it has its limits! There are things beyond understanding… Things that belong to a dark and forbidden world which might exist beyond ours! This is the story of an ill-fated mortal who learned the secrets of… That world!”
The tale is narrated by Gustav, a Transylvanian armed robber who’s running from police with his partner, Hans. When Hans trips in the forest and breaks his leg, he runs out of luck.
“That’s too bad, Hans!” Gustav says, “You can’t come with me, and I can’t leave you here to give the police my identity! Therefore…”
The pursuing police hear shots, and find Hans dead.
Hiding out in a bleak, abandoned old house, Gustav is unnerved by strange noises.
“Then, across the musty room, I saw them! Vague and shadowy forms coming through the wall…”
The figures are not ghosts, but vaguely reptilian extra-dimensional aliens who cannot be harmed by Gustav’s bullets.
“At certain points along the dimensional barrier, our world and yours meet!” the golden aliens explain. “That is why you can see and hear us now!”
Gustav is relieved to learn that these beings cannot touch him — but just as he wanted to keep Hans quiet, the aliens want the same from him. And they need not touch him to get what they want.
Gustav faints and awakens to find the police searching the house. Expecting capture, Gustav is shocked when the police officer walks through him.
“It might have been a month ago, or perhaps a year!” Gustav thinks. “Time has lost its meaning to me! But since that ghastly day, I have roamed the lonely place between your dimension and that other … finding no life, finding no world to call my own … paying the most terrible penalty for the loathsome life I’ve led! And — paying it … for how long?”
So Marvel’s Twilight Zone tale ended up in the company’s own version of the Phantom Zone.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Marvel’s spooky supply came largely from three artists — Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby and, as here, Don Heck.
Speaking to Comics Interview in 1991, Heck recalled how he began working for the company that would become Marvel. “I finally went up to see Stan Lee, and he went outside to look at my work and looked at two pages, and he said, ‘I know what the hell you can do for me, I’ve got a job for you.’ And that was Sept. 1, 1954.”
“In most cases … you would pick it up, take it home, work it up and then take it in for Stan to look over and take another one home with you. Very casual; this was in the ’50s.
“In April of 1957, that was when Marvel stopped giving out work. They were called Magazine Management at the time. They were cutting back and just going to use inventory, and almost all of the artists were let go … I got a call a year later from Stan, and he asked if I would be interested in doing more work.”
“When you went in, then, Stan was in one little room back in the corner. It’s amazing when you go in there now, and see what they have — against what they had, way back then.”
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