BHOC: TALES TO ASTONISH #54

Not being satisfied with my haul from Ed’s Coins and Stamps and still having a bit of grade school graduation in my pocket, later on that week I embarked on a long bike ride into Ronkonkoma, to Bush’s Hobbies, another back issue outlet that was within riding distance from my home. As it turned out, this visit caused problems as, later on in the week, my father flipped out at how I’d spent most of the money I’d been gifted. He was, historically, terrible at saving money, but having seen my grandmother having to struggle to make ends meet after my grandfather suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, he tried mightily to instill good saving instincts into his kids. Which pretty much worked–I’ve saved well over the years. But at that particular moment, it meant that I got botched out pretty thoroughly and even grounded as I recall for simply spending money that was mine in the exact same way that he would have. Childhood, am I right?

Anyway, Bush’s Hobbies was located in a little strip mall and was devoted to all sorts of collectibles, primarily coins, stamps and sports cards. But comics were a part of the mix–back issues only, at this point the Direct Market was only beginning to form, and so stores such as this one didn’t bother handling new books. But they did have a wall’s worth of back issues, most of which were reasonably priced. I can remember seeing books such as FANTASTIC FOUR #6, FIGHTING AMERICAN #3 and AVENGERS #93 on the wall above the boxes, all priced well beyond my spending range. But it was tantalizing simply to see them. Anyway, I was very much interested in the age of the comics i bought, often trying to find the oldest comics that I could afford to pick up. Which is what led me to this issue of TALES TO ASTONISH. This was a genuine formative Marvel Comic from the very beginning, so it was like catnip to me. There was then limited interest in Ant-Man/Giant-Man, so these back issues went for cut-rate prices, which put them squarely into my cost range.

Giant-Man, and Ant-Man before it, was a troubled series, one that was a favorite of Marvel’s publisher Martin Goodman but which never quite caught on with the reading public at large. Consequently, editor Stan Lee retooled it constantly, giving Hank Pym new partners and new powers and new costumes until eventually accepting reality and wrapping up the strip in favor of the more popular Namor. But to me, there was something mysterious and compelling about these Giant-Man stories. I knew Hank Pym as Yellowjacket and had seen him as Goliath in reprints, and even as Ant-Man in one notable AVENGERS story. But there was something about Giant-Man’s design that I liked. By the time of issue #54, Stan had stopped jobbing out the writing of the strip and taken over the scripting chores himself, so this outing feels a bit more typically Marvel than a lot of the previous stories. The artwork was by Don Heck, an underappreciated artist who here got to ink his own pencils, which usually resulted in a good final product.

The story itself is a piece of period doggerel. In it, Giant-Man and the Wasp are summoned to Washington DC by the Feds, who want the Master of Many Sizes’ help concerning the nation of Santo Rico. They feel that the recently-held elections were rigged, resulting in the Communist-sympathized El Toro becoming El Presidente and instituting marshal law. Hank and Jan are to sneak into Santo Rico, determine if there is a Communist plot behind it, and then either report back or break it up themselves. Being an idiot, Hank gives the pair’s supply of size-changing pills to Jan to carry across the boarder, saying that “In case I’m searched, I wouldn’t want them to be found on me.” Yeah, Hank–but what if they search Jan, too, you’re good with her being caught red-handed? In any case, the bad guys are on to the American spies straight away, and capture Jan–but not before she’s able to throw Hank a single size-changing capsule. Hank becomes Giant-Man, but he’s stuck at a single size of about 15 feet.

One of the factors that may have held back the Giant-Man strip is how often the hero is presented as an absolute klutz. And that’s what happens here. Giant-Man is large and clumsy, getting himself tripped up by the environment and swiftly finding himself on the run, his increased strength only a so-so weapon against soldiers who can shoot at his massive frame. Eventually, though, the oversized Avenger is able to locate his captive partner, retrieve their size-changing gear and then kick El Toro’s ass, proving that El Toro bought his election and restoring freedom and democracy to the region. And all in only 13 pages, too! It wasn’t a great story, but for this series it was among the more fun adventures the character had in recent months. So I didn’t regret picking it up (especially because it only cost me in the neighborhood of $3.00) years later, Kurt Busiek and I would use Santo Rico in a couple different stories beginning in an issue of NIGHT THRASHER. So viva the gigantic one!

The Marvel super hero stories hadn’t entirely taken over the whole of the assorted mystery/suspense titles, and so the back half of this issue was dedicated to a pair of short stories of this type. The first one was the work of writer/artist Larry Lieber, with inking provided by Paul Reinman. The art on this story is a bit stiff and workmanlike, but this splash page is pretty terrific. The story is about an art thief who steals a particular painting depicting five frightened men from a mysterious gallery. But of course, it’s a magic painting that winds up swallowing him whole–so when the piece is returned to the gallery, it now shows six frightened men. Twist!

There weren’t many house ads in this issue of TALES TO ASTONISH, and it wasn’t yet running a letters page. There was only this one, which doubled as a place to run that year’s Statement of Ownership. According to the text, TALES TO ASTONISH had been selling 187,995 copies on a print run of 318,339, giving it an efficiency of 59%, which seems pretty good–especially considering that this was among the weaker-selling Marvel titles of the era. Also, you can see that DAREDEVIL was still in a bit of a state, and here Stan works to promote the new title despite the fact that he still doesn’t have a completed first issue cover to showcase. The eventual DAREDEVIL #1 cover would be a bit of a patchwork job, with contributions from an assortment of different artists. Also, the dark coloring on that FANTASTIC FOUR #25 blunts the impact of what must have been one of the most exciting comic book releases of that year, the first full-on Hulk vs Thing battle.

The final story in the issue was a bit of a hybrid; Stan has started doing this in the mystery titles as a way of perhaps generating a bit more interest among the super hero audience for them. So the bit here is that the story is being told by the Wasp to a sick child that she’s babysitting for a friend. It too was both written and drawn by Larry Lieber, with Sol Brodsky supplying the inking. It’s about the vainglorious ruler of an alien civilization who wants his people to idolize him, so he leads them in a successful war of conquest against a nearby planet. But in doing so, his existing citizens wind up having to subsidize the conquered planet, and they consequently blame the king for the downturn in their circumstances. So having conquered a world, the King has lost the respect and admiration of his people, the very thing he was attempting to increase–Twist! The kind in this story wasn’t any more interested in this tale than I was. Still, it was perfectly fine formulaic fluff.