Marvel’s monsters frequently moved with moral force.
The giant monsters that lumbered through Marvel’s titles in the late 1950s and early 1960s didn’t always menace humanity. Sometimes they proved to be instruments of rough justice.
One such appeared in The Scarecrow Walks! (Strange Tales 81, Feb. 1961).
“A cold, heartless man forecloses on an elderly farming couple, selling their land to the government for atomic testing,” noted Steve Anadell. “The tests go off, but a scarecrow the couple left behind grows and gains self-awareness. It marches to town in search of the forecloser and menaces him, crushing buildings and cars, promising him that he can’t hide or escape.”
Lifting the New Mexican landlord high in the air, the Scarecrow demands the money he made from cheating the farm couple. The Scarecrow secretly returns the cash to his elderly friends, whom he finds living in a crude lean-to in the fields.
Knowing they’ll have enough to buy another farm, the Scarecrow slumps back into lifelessness with a smile now stitched on his face.
Scarecrows are, after all, crude simulations of human beings intended to frighten, so it’s not surprising that they would come to life in fantasy, from The Wizard of Oz to a Batman villain to an Iron Man villain to a costumed alias for a colorful smuggler in Russell Thorndike’s 1915 novel Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh.
Over at DC, space explorers were investigating The Secret of the Scarecrow World, which was Saturn’s moon Titan (Mystery in Space 48, Dec. 1958).
Other such helpful Marvel monsters include Klagg, a giant alien robot who attempts to teach humanity to give up its warlike ways (Tales of Suspense 21, Sept. 1961), a giant computer named R.O.E. (Ruler of Earth) who proves incapable of harming humanity (Journey into Mystery 81, June 1962), another giant computerized robot called Colossus which is destroyed by the paranoid humans it is trying to help (Strange Tales 72, Dec. 1959) and Kraa, a mutated human being who dies saving an explorer from a giant python (Tales of Suspense 18, June 1961).
While vacationing in the Florida Everglades, a retired couple encounters a reptilian giant that is sinking in a swamp (The Creature from the Black Bog, Tales of Suspense 23, Nov. 1961). Swallowing their fears, they help the alien giant reach vines he can use to pull himself free. Leaving Earth in his space ship, he rewards the couple by restoring their youth.
And then there was the giant ape Gorgilla, who appeared twice (Tales to Astonish 12, Oct. 1960, and 18, April 1961). His good deeds didn’t go unpunished. He was finally killed by the military.
So even before the Thing and the Hulk arrived, the publisher’s readers were already pretty familiar with the concept of “protective menaces.”
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