WC: STRANGE TALES #122

The more time went on, the more that the Human Torch series appearing in STRANGE TALES had become something of an afterthought. There was a distinct feeling that neither editor/scripter Stan Lee nor any of the artists who drew it were really putting a lot of energy or imagination into it. It was a bit of a stinker, and it must be down to just the visceral appeal of the character (plus his importance as a legacy headliner from the 1940s and 1950s) that accounts for the strip having lasted as long as it did. The adventure in this particular issue is pretty tired. It is worth chuckling at the blurb above the Doctor Doom vignette on the cover, though. It clearly made an impact on John Byrne, who would use variations on this gag a couple of times years later.

This issue features the comeback of a group of second-string baddies from an issue of FANTASTIC FOUR published five months earlier. The Terrible Trio were given power enough to challenge the fantastic Four by Doctor Doom, and then exiled by Doom to another dimension after they had completed their assignment. With Doom now apparently dead, the trio are pulled back into our world–where they decide that they should continue to carry out Doom’s last orders and to serve him despite the fact that his last act was to exile them to another dimension for what was intended to be a permanent vacation. These are not the sharpest crayons in the box. But, hey, the Torch had to fight somebody.

The Trio figures that they can whomp on the Torch easily, as they outnumber him three to one. Accordingly, they set out to ambush the flaming teenager in his Glenville home, with Handsome Harry Phillips posing as a reporter for Auto Age magazine that wants to interview Johnny Storm about his sports car. Between Yogi Dakor’s imperviousness to fire, Bull Brogan’s colossal strength and Harry Phillips’, um…enhanced hearing, they’re able to get the jump on the Torch, trapping him inside a fireproof rug.

The Trio carries the Torch off for some reason, taking him to a trailer they’ve prepared at the edge of town that’s been made totally fireproof with an asbestos lining–asbestos was akin to the Torch’s kryptonite in a lot of these early stories. They tell the captive Johnny that they’re now going to head back to his house and wait for Sue to show up so that they can jump her as well. Unable to burn his way out of his ropes, Johnny instead creates plumes of flame, which attract the attention of the local fire department. When they respond to what they think is a blaze, they find the Torch and release him. Then Johnny rockets back to Glenville for a showdown with the three villains.

The Torch gets there before Sue arrives. And after a brief scuffle, and a pursuit of Handsome Harry as he attempts to flee in Johnny’s own sports car, the Terrible Trio are all rounded up and ready to be handed over to the authorities. Sue, of course, is furious when she does arrive home, as the Torch’s battle has trashed their house something fierce–but a final panel that feels like an after-the-fact add-in assures readers that Sue was singing another tune when she found out what had really happened here. So it’s another dumb, thin story for the Torch without a whole lot to recommend it.

Fortunately, the real draw of STRANGE TALES at this point was still to come in the issue. For just as the Torch feature grew weaker and weaker, the Doctor Strange back-up strip got better and better, and continued to increase its page count accordingly. This issue’s story is only 9 pages in length, but given that the strip began with only 5 pages, that’s a bit of an improvement. This is one of a number of Doctor Strange stories in this time period that were inked not by Ditko but rather George Roussos. So the final work isn’t quite as pristine and polished as sol Ditko pages would be. But Roussos doesn’t entirely bury the effectiveness of Ditko’s creepy otherworldly atmospherics either.

And a pause here for the one and only House Ad that ran in this issue, presenting the latest issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, the company’s two biggest hits at the time. The Spidey issue guest-starred the Hulk, who had become something of a nomadic guest-star since losing his own title several months previous. And the FF issue was a big promotional opportunity for the new X-MEN series, as the mutant heroes guest-starred. This manner of cross-pollination was a real hallmark of the early Marvel and something that other companies simply didn’t engage in with such clockwork regularity.

The plot in the Doctor Strange story is a bit of a shaggy dog story in which Strange falls asleep while studying some ancient scrolls and winds up trapped in the realm of his recurring enemy Nightmare. Because he didn’t put up his mystic safeguards, Strange is now Nightmare’s powerless captive, and is forced to use his wits to escape. He does this by hypnotizing his foe into believing that Nightmare’s unsleeping nemesis, the Gulgol, is about to attack and destroy him. Nightmare restores Strange’s magic so that he can banish this threat, little realizing that it only existed within his own mind. Thus restored, Doctor Strange withdraws, waking up to find himself back in his Sanctum where he was when the episode began.

And just to be complete, this issue ends with the first half of a text story that was a requirement for securing second-class postage for shipping subscription copies. This particular story had been written in 1956 and appeared in a bunch of different books over the years. I don’t know that anybody read these stories in particular, which is why an eight-year-old one could be dropped into this issue without any blowback. The title, more than any other reason, is why I bother to include it here.