Journey Into Mystery #73 (October 1961) was still ten issues away from giving us the Mighty Thor. Like many of Marvel's other anthology books before the resurgance of superheroes, it was a mixture of monster and science fiction tales--most of them a lot of fun.
This issue, for instance, includes "Menance from Mars!," with a script tentatively credited to Stan Lee (plot) and Larry Lieber (script) and the imaginative art by Don Heck.
Martians are coming to Earth! But they aren't invaders this time around. Instead, they are coming to learn about humanity. We are, after all, getting close to having interplanetary flight. They need to find out if we are naughty or nice. If we are a threat to them, then by golly, we need to be destroyed in preventative self-defence.
They find a mild-mannered human wandering iun the woods and question him, monitoring him with a machine that can detect truth from lies.
Does the human hate them because they're different? No. Would he steal or cheat if he could become rich by doing so? Of course not! Has he ever gone hunting or fishing? He could never hurt another living creature!
Well, obviously, this guy demonstrates that humanity is harmless. They let the guy go and head back to Mars, deciding NOT to destroy Earth.
The man, in the meantime, is found by the orderlies from the local mental hospital. They humor him when he tells a story about meeting Martians and make sure he gets back to the hospital intact.
Yes, the Earth is saved by a crazy man--whose main delusion seems to involve always being very nice to everyone else.
Don Heck's design for the Martians is very effective--alien and menacing enough to come across as a threat if they decide we need to be destroyed. And the twist at the end if funny and effectively ironic.
It is, therefore, possible to enjoy this story on a superficial level. But does this story also comment rather harshly on humanity? Only a guy who lives in Crazy Town is delusional enough to believe (and thus convince the Martians) that mankind is safe and harmless. Taken at that level, it's a pretty harsh commentary on us, isn't it?
The story reminds me a little of 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which an alien tells us that super-robots will destroy Earth if we bring our warlike tendencies to the stars. I can't help but wonder if the memory of that movie was the jumping-off point for Stan Lee in coming up with this one.
I'm also reminded of the Twilight Zone episode "Hocus Pocus and Frisbee," in which aliens accept the tall tales of an inveterate liar as truth. That episode, though, aired in 1962, so it's wasn't an influence on this story (and there's not enough of a time gap between the comic and the episode's air-date to make it likely the comic was an influence on the TV show).
But, regardless of possible influences, "Menance from Mars!" is still a good story in its own right--fun, layered and maybe a little bit dark.
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