Tales To Astonish #25- Nov 61
"Where lurks the ghost!" - Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Marvel Tales #113 - Apr 53
"Bat's tale!" - Stan Lee & Russ Heath
Adventures Into Terror #28 - Feb 54
"The men in the morgue" - Gene Colan (writer unknown)
Men's Adventures #26 - Mar 54
"Gorilla Man" - Robert Q. Sale (writer unknown)
Review/plot:
Another collection of horror reprints. You've got two cliched (Let's call them "classic") stories: 'dude stays at a haunted house to prove ghosts aren't real and doesn't see any ghosts, only the kindly caretaker, but it turns out the caretaker has been dead for a hundred years'...
...and 'vampire goes after a guy but he turns out to be a werewolf'.
Both are plenty of fun despite the familiarity - the vampire/werewolf one especially is told from an interesting perspective.
And there's also a crime story with a twist.
And lastly (and the reason i bought this issue) is a reprint of the first appearance of Gorilla Man.
Gorilla Man would go on to be a member of the alternate-reality 1950s Avengers, and then the Agents of Atlas, but this story is a bizarro horror story about a guy who is haunted by dreams of a pair of fighting Gorilla Man.
Eventually he travels to Kenya to seek the source of his dreams. He is attacked by a Gorilla Man and kills it in a hand-to-hand battle, becoming a Gorilla Man himself.
The man who becomes Gorilla Man in this story is definitely referred to as Ken Hale, which is the name of the Atlas character (there was a back-up story from Avengers vs. Atlas #4 that seemed a little ambiguous to me, almost as if someone killed Ken Hale to become the Gorilla Man on the Agents of Atlas team, but looking at that issue again, i think i over-interpreted it).
Quality Rating: C+
Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first Gorilla Man
Chronological Placement Considerations: Despite it feeling more like a Monster Age story, this should go at publication date in the late Golden Age around the time of the other Agents of Atlas characters' stories.
References: N/A
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: Chamber of Chills #23
Hey Super Mega Monkey,
Good stuff here. Just one question, since I'm a huge fan of Agents of Atlas. When was it implied that the current Gorilla Man killed Ken Hale and took over from him? I don't remember that at all...
Thanks Zeus.
I'm thinking of a back-up story from Avengers vs. Atlas #4. There's a Gorilla Man in a diner and then another man comes in and shoots him so that he'll get the curse.
My copy is currently in a pile somewhere awaiting filing. It's possible i misinterpreted it at the time. If so let me know and i'll retract the above.