Martian Spies and Giant Babies.

 

cover art tentatively credited to Cresto

Today, we're going be looking at two of the four stories that appeared in Strange Adventures #6 (March 1951). Next week, we'll look at the other two stories.

I love the SF anthologies of the 1950s, because of the variety of tales you would find crammed into any one issue. In this case, for instance, we start out with a Martian spy inhabiting the corpse of a human and then move on to a giant baby unwittingly causing mass destruction.

"The Confessions of a Martian," written by Manly Wade Wellman and drawn by Curt Swan, starts on the planet Mars. The Martians are worried about Earth's attempt to reach the moon. There's been one failed attempt that ended with the ship drifting off into space. What if manking is successful on their next attempt? What if a colonized moon is the first step for invading Mars?

The Martians decide to send a spy to Earth. They recovered the drifting Earth space ship, along with the bodies of the astronauts. The spy's consciousness is transfered into one of the dead guys, then he's teleported to Earth.

He arrives on Earth in the buff, but steals clothes from a scarecrow. He approaches a research facility in time to prevent a communist spy from killing a pretty female scientist.

This gets him a job as a handyman, but he soon demonstrates deep scientific knowledge and is helping to develop a new rocket fuel. When I was reading this story, at this point I thought "I gotta make a snarky comment about no background check being done." But... well, that turns out to be a plot point.

The Martian in a Corpse and the girl scientist fall in love with each other. She also tells him that the moon project is peaceful and there are no plans to invade Mars. The spy passes this on to his bosses on Mars, but they are skeptical.

The spy, by now, has switched sides. But his girlfriend, in the meantime, has become suspicious of him. His fingerprints were checked and he's apparently one of the astronauts lost on the moon mission. She figures he must have ditched the mission because he is a Commie spy. He tells her the truth, but she is a bit skeptical. The poor guy can't get ANYBODY to believe him.

His Martian bosses show up on Earth. The ensuing action scene is pretty nifty.. First, the spy at first lands some solid punches and appears to be winning due to his current body being more used to Earth's higher gravity. But he gets zapped with a paralyzing ray. Fortunately, the Martian-spy-inside-a-human-corpse has a human girlfriend with a pistol. She plugs the Martians and the spy, now thoroughly human in feeling as well as form, begins to warn everyone about the threat from the Red Planet.

It's a strong story, smoothly cramming a lot of story into 10 pages and taking some fun twists and turns.

The next story is "Too Big for This World," written by Manly Rubin using the name Robert Starr and penciled by Bob Oksner. 

Dr. Harwood, his wife and his toddler son are living on an island, where the good doctor is studying animals of different sizes. His goal is to create a growth serum and thus increase the world's food supply.

This would indicate that Dr. Harwood is a genius. But he also leaves the growth serum out where his son can pick it up and drink it, which indicates he's an idiot.  Though, to be fair, his son's name is Magnus. If you live in a Comic Book Universe and name your kid Magnus, then something science fictiony is going to happen to him sooner or later.

Magnus starts growing rapidly. His mom makes new clothes after sail canvas and using the growth serum on cows ensures a supply of milk. Also, Dr. Harwood used a "tortiose element" in the serum, so Magnus is also invulnerable. Finally, when the kid approaches the size of the Empire State Building, his strides are large enough to allow him to move at 300 miles per hour.

Magnus wades across the ocean to the mainland, where he innocently terrorizes a city and then puts out a forest fire before wandering home. That he's able to find his way home after wandering hundreds of miles isn't discussed, but what the hey.

Dr. Harwood, in the meantime, has developed a reverse-growth serum and Magnus returns to normal size. The problem of world hunger is solved and Magnus is taught an important lesson. Actually, he doesn't seem to learn any lesson at all, but what the hey.

"Too Big for This World" is very, very silly. But it's also very, very fun and its inconsistencies really don't matter at all. 

Next week, we look at the side effects of suspended animation and meet a planet with tentacles and a bad attitude.