Reprinted from STRANGE TALES #94 (1962) is this 6-page Kirby/Ayers story. Some leakage from an atomic experiment winds up in the garden of millionaire Lucius Farnsworth, which is tended by George, a talented if somewhat tame gardener, who’s happy to stay as a gardener rather than open up his own landscaping business, as Fansworth urges. The radiation cause one plant to mutate into an intelligent weed.

Now that’s a great transformation scene. Anyway, the Weed develops mental powers and a desire to rule the world, so it makes Farnsworth sleep while it rests to build its powers. Fortunately George comes by and chops down the Weed, not realizing that he’s saving the world. Farnsworth comes to the realization that everyone has their place in the grand scheme, or something like that. It closes with another one of those “world balloons” with a shot of the Earth with some dialogue coming out if it.

This is a really attractive story, with some nice background artwork, and a nice looking creative monster. One of my favourite of the monster stories of the era.

Published 1975

Max Collins and Terry Beatty finished up the first run of their detective series in this issue, including several dozen illustrations of congratulations on their “fiftieth issue” from various artists. Kirby was among them, sending in a note featuring Captain Victory.

I think Terry Beatty inked the drawing. At least it looks like his style, and I vaguely remember hearing that he did.

Published 1989

A 13-page Kirby/Ayers reprint from AMAZING ADVENTURES #5 (1961) leads off this issue. In this one, the owner of a failing circus hears about a report of a space-ship crashing in Africa (with some rather racist comments from the news announcer mentioning it). He decides to go down and see if he can find a lead attraction for his circus out there, and finds a giant monster, apparently dead, which he ships to New York to sell to a museum, using all his showman talents to come up with the name “Monsteroso” (now we know why his circus was failing). In the museum, Monsteroso suddenly comes to life and goes through New York, including a trip through Central Park, digging from the lake to the zoo, where he examines (and puts down unharmed) several animals.

(I love those weird panels Kirby would throw in, where he had the word balloons coming out of a shot of the Earth, which in his world-view apparently had many other planets, including ringed giants, in close proximity)

As the police use try to use gas on him, he climbs the UN building and sits up there, until they manage to shoot him down with a drugged harpoon and he falls into the river. They’re quite proud of their ability to defeat the alien menace. Then, in an “ironic twist” (as the caption calls it), a giant space-ship comes down and out emerge mountain sized aliens, revealing Monsteroso to be a lost curious infant.

Decent story, the plot works a lot better here than it did when it was re-cycled for one of the weakest issues of FF a few years later.

The cover is also taken from AMAZING ADVENTURES #5, a modified version of the splash page, with the added art on the right side being done by Steve Ditko.

Published 1974

Two Kirby reprints from 1960 in this issue. “The Return of Taboo” is from STRANGE TALES #77, a sequel to the original Taboo story of two issue earlier. This 7-pager is inked by Dick Ayers. In the previous story, the would-be world conqueror from the Amazon swamp was fooled into going out into space with an H-bomb and blown up. Now his pieces return to earth, and eventually piles of mud from all over the world begin to merge in Central Park, where Taboo finally reconstitutes himself. Following a short reign of terror, Taboo issues an ultimatum to a defiant humanity.

Suddenly, a giant ship descends with more of Taboo’s race. The future looks bleak for humanity when suddenly… well, I won’t spoil it, but it’s probably the most common stock ending for the giant monster stories.

Despite the cliche ending, it’s a fun story. I rather like the defiant humans and brave cop panels on the page above.

The cover is also reprinted from STRANGE TALES #77, which is mostly the splash page to the story, with numerous small modifications. Further modifications were made for the reprint.

Following a Ditko solo story there’s a 5-page Kirby/Ditko collaboration, “We Met in the Swamp” from TALES TO ASTONISH #7. A reporter goes out to see if there’s a story in the old hermit out in a swamp who keeps staring at the sky. Slow news day, I guess. Anyway, the hermit tells his story of his youth, when he stumbled across an alien ship trapped in the swamp. He helped them out, in return for a promise of treasure, only to find out when they were leaving they were the advance scouts for an invasion force that will someday return. He vows not to open their treasure, and to wait for their return to warn humanity. The reporter opens the treasure and sees it is empty, and assumes the hermit was making everything up, but the hermit realizes that to beings travelling between galaxies, air would be a valuable treasure. Yeah, I don’t buy it either. But presumably he’s still out there in the swamp, waiting for the aliens to return.

The Kirby/Ditko art is always nice to see, especially with the swamp setting that they both did so well, plus the rather cute looking aliens.

Published 1970

Following his first adventure, where Buddy Black was changed to OMAC by Brother Eye, OMAC went to Electric City to meet the designer of Project OMAC, Professor Forest. He found the city closed, rented for the night by criminal mastermind Mister Big for a party, actually a cover to kill Forest and destroy Project OMAC. OMAC manages to fail in a spectacular fashion, and Forest is killed by agents of Mister Big in costume.

You’d have to wonder about why criminals would be so afraid of Project OMAC when guys in those get-ups can carry out an assassination right under his nose. Anyway, OMAC continues into the city, and after a few more fights winds up dead and brought to Mister Big, only to reveal that his death was a ruse to allow Brother Eye to gather evidence.

OMAC was one of those books where it felt Kirby never quite managed to get all the ideas in his head down on paper, which is a shame. I’m sure he had some interesting things to do with the whole Buddy Blank identity, which were never realized. What was published was still fun.

Inked by D. Bruce Berry, one of his first inking jobs over Kirby (so early that Royer was still the letterer at this point).

Presumably DC at some point intended for this to be the first of a series of matching collections of their various genre series of days gone by. Didn’t work out that way, so just this lonely collection, MYSTERY IN SPACE, of 33 science-fiction stories from the 1940s to the early 1980s alone in what has to be the saddest library in the world.

First up was “Rocket Lanes of Tomorrow”, a 2-page Simon&Kirby feature from REAL FACT COMICS #1 (1946). A nice little filler about the wondrous future of jet-packs, space exploration and trans-world tunnels. Very nice artwork, showing the influence of pulp sci-fi illustrations on Kirby’s early style.

Later in the book is a sample of Kirby’s 1950s work at DC, the 8-page “I Found the City Under the Sea” from MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #15 (1957). In this story, the crew of a fishing boat find a strange tube with a note inside from an oceanographer, Ellery Jones. He detected signs of a civilization under the ocean, and went to explore, finding a massive city.

That panel of the city is nice, very much like a rough form of the odd perspective cityscapes he’d perfect in the 1960s with some of the views of Atlantis or Asgard, and later with New Genesis.

As it turns out, the city is filled with aliens, planning to conquer the surface world, once they can get their hands on an experimental new chemical, aqua-ulium, without which the aliens and their materials vapourize in the atmosphere. They’re just waiting to sink a shipment of the chemical to proceed. With the help of a peaceful alien scientist, Jones is able to escape, finds a way to send out his note in case he fails and then prepares to blow up the alien city.

Back on the fishing ship, they think the note is just fantasy, until suddenly an underwater explosion jolts the ship, and then the note and container dissolve. They check and find out that an approaching ship is in fact carrying a shipment of aqua-ulium.

Very fun story, with some nice Kirby artwork. In particular I liked the alien city, both the cityscape views and some of the interior views, with odd bits of alien sculpture.

Published 1999