The Comics Rack

Weird Wonder Tales

Sid Greene from issue #14.
A bit of DC?

by Bob Gay

Part 3

After the quality of issues 10-13, issue 14 is a major disappointment and, if you were to just pick this issue up at random, you probably wouldn't bother with any of the others. The opening story is by Don Heck from Tower of Shadows #4 and had appeared only six years before it was reprinted in WWT. Heck is known for his early horror work, but by this point in his career he had drawn too many super heroes and the story suffers as a result. The rest of the issue is fairly non-descript, although the last story, "Man in the Dark!", has a nice twist to it. There is also the odd looking story pictured at right, which looks like a DC SF story. Not any wonder, as it was done by Sid Greene, who is best known as an inker at DC in the 50s and 60s. Issue 15 is also forgettable, with another recent reprint by Tom Sutton from Chamber of Darkness #4 (again from six years previous), a Don Heck story, and a passable Kirby story. Fortunately, the editorial direction changed once again with issue 16 and, except for a few bumps in the road, issues 16-22 return to the quality of the earlier issues.

Joe Sinnott from issue #16.

Issue 16 opens with a story drawn by Joe Sinnott. Sinnott is best known as inker, particularly of Kirby, but he also was a very talented penciller, who contributed many stories to a variety of publishers throughout his career, particularly to Treasure Chest Magazine. Outside of a couple of reprinted stories, the only other examples of his pencilling can be found in a couple of issues of Fantastic Four and in various fanzines. Kirby is also featured in this issue, in a nearly autobiographical tale of an artist and the pencil that makes all his drawings real. The real treat of the issue, however, is the appearance of the first of three Venus stories by Bill Everett (continuing through issue 18).

As I have mentioned before, I feel that Everett is vastly underrated as an artist who is practically ignored by current comic fans. Compare the sequence on the right with the example on the left. The panels on the right are not only anatomically correct,

Everett from issue #16.

Everett from issue #9.

but show a range of emotion. The example on the left is in a totally different style, yet again, the figures, buildings, jeep and backgrounds are all drawn correctly and give the feel of the location. This is what makes Everett (along with Kirby, Ditko, et al.) a great artist: the ability to draw to fit the story, rather than make the story fit his drawing style; a concept that most comic artists of today can only dream about. It is a shame that Marvel has never seen fit to do a large scale retrospective of Everett's work. Readers are left to dig through the various reprint titles and the various Masterwork titles, while much of his output remains unseen and, in some cases, uncredited.

Issues 17 and 18 both are up to the quality of issue 16. Issue 17 features a Kirby story, another Venus story by Everett and a very early story by Gene Colan. Issue 18 is odd in that it only has two stories. The first, "Krang!", is by Kirby and is a comic book version of a 50s giant monster film (see "Addendum" below). Briefly, a scientist invents a formula that will enlarge insects. His disgruntled assistant gives the serum to an ant, which not only increases that ant's size, but also makes it intelligent. Needless to say, chaos reigns.

Everett from issue #18.

The story may have also have been the beginning of an idea that became a part of Marvel history, since it was only a year later that the enlarging formula featured in the tale became a shrinking formula for the story, "The Man in the Ant Hill", which starred a character named Dr. Hank Pymm (see "Addendum" below) and was the springboard for the character of Ant-Man (DC had primates, but Marvel had insects). The last WWT appearance of Venus rounds out the issue and the splash page is pictured at the right. Like the Kirby story in 16, this story seems to be semi-autobiographical. A cartoonist being harangued by his creations is interesting on its own, but takes on a deeper meaning because Everett was an alcoholic and eventually died from complications caused by his drinking. Just how creativity works has always been a mystery and one has to wonder if some of the images in this particular story were inspired by some outside stimulus.

Starting with issue 19, the editorial direction of WWT changes once again and features some of the best, and worst, that the series has to offer. Marvel, and the fan press at the time, trumpeted the fact that WWT would begin to reprint the adventures of Doctor Droom (renamed Dr. Druid to avoid confusion with Dr. Doom). Dr. Droom originally appeared in five of the six issues of the 1961 run of Amazing Adventures and has the distinction of being Marvel's first continuing character of the Silver Age. What was unknown to most fans of the time, was that the Dr. Droom stories were heavily re-drawn to change the character's physical appearance. The stories were also re-lettered and edited to make "new" stories that kept the basic plots intact, but changed the page layouts and characters to affect a more "modern" look and feel.

Dr. Droom by Kirby/Ditko
Amazing Adventures #1

Dr. Druid
by Kirby/Ditko and ?
from issue #19.

As originally introduced in Amazing Adventures #1, Dr. Droom was a sort of Dr. Strange prototype: a doctor who travels to the Orient, meets an aged master, is tested and transformed into a "nemesis of all occult powers...." His major change is his physical appearance which adds the heavy stylistic eyebrows and imbues him with the skin color of a banana, the standard color for Asians in early comics (see enlarged splash on left). The origin for Dr. Druid, introduced in WWT #19 keeps all the elements intact from the original appearance, except that, in an odd twist, the aged master states that Druid has "the power of the ancient Britons" within himself. His physical appearance remains pretty much unchanged, except for the addition of the heavy eyebrows, as seen in the splash on the right.

When comparing the two opening pages, one can see some major differences, mainly that the opening panel of the original story has been transformed into a full page splash with much of the copy dropped and a new title inserted.

Kirby/Ditko and ?
from issue #19.

Changing the layout in this way necessitated other changes to the story. The two panels that are below the original splash were carried over into the next story page, changing the layout of that page and so on throughout the story. In order to even out the page count, some panels were re-drawn in order to fill up space, as shown in the page to the right. This re-drawing of pages caused me no end of confusion for a number of years, since the origin of Dr. Droom has always been credited to Kirby pencils and Ditko inks, yet the art in the origin story from WWT didn't look like Kirby's style. For quite some time, in fact, I even assumed (wrongly) that Kirby may have only provided layouts for the stories, or that Ditko had free reign to follow his own muse in the stories. Again, referring to the page at the right, the third panel does not look like Kirby's layout and once this page is compared to the panels reproduced in the enlarged view (from the original Amazing Adventures appearance, courtesy of the Amazing Fantasy Omnibus) , it becomes obvious that Kirby had a hand in the original, but that the figures were moved, reversed and then placed in an expanded panel.

The rest of the issue contains another Kirby story and a rare post-EC story by Bernie Krigstein, that is, for the most part, forgettable.

Issue 20 presents a bit of a mystery, in that all the stories have reprint credits, except for the Dr. Druid (Droom) story. The splash panel has the Kiryb/Ayers signature and the throughout the art looks to be retouched.

Drucker from issue #20.

A comparison to the original story from Amazing Adventures shows that the reprinted tale comes from Amazing Adventures #3 and, in a really odd bit of editorial whim, the name of the main character has been changed from "Zemu" to "Zamu" throughout. It is preceded by an excellent time travel story by Kirby and followed by a passable Ditko story. Lastly is a small gem: another pre-Mad Mort Drucker story. Drucker worked for a couple of companies before going to Mad (some of his stories were for the DC war books), and his art style, like this example, is immediately recognizable.

With issue 21, the letter's page reveals that the introduction of Dr. Druid into WWT would not be limited to just reprints of his early stories.

Re-drawn Kirby from
issue 21.

Rather, someone decided that the good doctor should serve as the host and continuing character of the book. Credit on the letters page is also given to John Tartaglione for bringing Dr. Druid to the comic (Tartaglione worked for many years at Marvel doing art corrections and touch-ups, besides being a very talented penciller and inker in his own right), so it may have been his hand that is evident in all the art changes to the Dr. Droom stories.

While that may not seem like a bad idea on the surface, the way that Marvel went about implementing it pretty atrocious. The first story in issue 21 has a new Gene Colan splash page featuring Dr. Druid and then a single panel on the second page with a head re-drawn to look like Dr. Druid. Not a great problem, but the story that follows has nothing to do with the good doctor, he makes no further appearances in the tale and the art looks to be by someone other than Colan (although the GCD confirms Colan as the artist). A Kirby story, "I Discovered Gorgilla!", is next and has been transformed into a Dr. Druid story by having some of the text changed and the face of the main scientist redrawn throughout the story to look like Dr. Druid (see right). Oddly, the final story of the issue, drawn by Steve Ditko has no re-drawing or reference to Dr. Druid at all.

Granted, the concept of a "host" in comic books was not new when Marvel used it in WWT, but the hosts usually didn't appear in the stories they were "hosting"—their involvement was generally limited to the beginning and end of each story. These hosts were also consistent, popping up in all of the stories for their title.

I'm sure that the editorial hands at Marvel saw their inclusion of Dr. Druid as great fun, but why they had to alter the stories to make it work has always been

Byrne from issue #22.

a mystery to me. Even at this late date, I still question why, if Marvel wanted to add Dr. Druid as a regular character, they just didn't reprint his adventures as they originally appeared and just rename the character. A bit of judicious re-coloring would have solved most any problems with Dr. Droom's appearance and it would have been rather nice to be able to read the original stories. After all, it's not like everybody had (or has) the early issues of Amazing Adventures lying about for easy reference.

The final issue of WWT has some real gems in it, along with the insertion (intrusion?) of Dr. Druid as host. The first story is the second appearance of Dr. Droom from Amazing Adventures #2 with all the Dr. Droom figures redrawn to make them into Dr. Druid. What is truly odd, however, is the rather poorly rendered new splash page pictured at left (see "Addendum" below for the original splash page) that was done for the issue. It looks like a rush job on the part of John Byrne and the only reason I can see for the page is to possibly try to convince the reader that they are about to read a brand new story. Since the book was already canceled at this point, there seems to be no real reason for this "fake" splash, unless Marvel was hoping to attract new readers at this late date, or to gauge reaction for similar projects in the future?

Kirby from issue #22.

Kirby cover issue #20.

The second story of issue 22, "When a Planet Dies!", is the finest Kirby story of the entire series. It reads like a pulp SF story, with no giant monsters to clutter up the landscape. I suspect that Kirby wrote the story himself, since it deals with the innate goodness of man in a science fictional way. Kirby was a fan of science fiction stories and the style he uses in this story hearkens back to the earlier years of the genre. What is rather disheartening, however, is the insertion, yet again, of Dr. Druid. In this case, the Dr. Druid figure was taken from the cover of issue 20, reversed, and then inserted onto the splash page. The opening page of the story also has the Dr. Druid head from the upper corner of the cover inserted into the first panel of the page with added dialogue. Again, a bit of editorial intrusion that is not appreciated. The issue closes with a Joe Kubert story that, if not for the Kubert signature credit, I would not recognize as Kubert.

Hopefully, this series of articles has piqued your interest in Weird Wonder Tales and you will take some time to search out some, or all, of the issues. Since this article was originally written, Marvel has reprinted nearly all of the material found in these issues and WWT is no longer the only place to find these stories outside of the original comics. These newer printings are a lot cleaner and don't have any Dr. Druid-style changes to the art. Unfortunately, if you are on a budget, these reprint books are going to set you back a lot of money (around $50 and up for each volume) and you may find that a reprint series like WWT is a viable alternative to satisfy your interest in comics of the 50s and 60s. Although many of the stories are predictable, the art that illustrates them more than makes up for this failing and I think you will find that Weird Wonder Tales is an artists' book that is worth seeking out.

Addendum

In revising this article, I came across a number of reprints of original pages to help illustrate various points of the article. In laying out the pages, however, I found that there just wasn't room for all the art examples to be displayed in the body of the article. Figuring that many may not have access to these pages, I've added them here, in the hopes that the reader will find them of interest.

Kirby and Ayers
from issue #18

Kirby and Ayers
from Tales to Astonish #27

Ever since I saw the movie Them, I've been fascinated by giant ants. The "Krang" story mentioned above fits into my fascination and has an interesting twist ending that, in a way, predicts genetic engineering. In the page seen on the left, Krang outlines his plans for the future once he gets hold of the formula.

I also made mention of story, "The Man in the Ant Hill", which may have had its origins in the "Krang" tale. Seen on the right is the splash page for that story from Tales to Astonish #27.

Kirby and Ayers
Tales to Astonish #27 cover

Just for the fun of it, here is the Tales to Astonish cover for the issue that featured "The Man in the Ant Hill".

Kirby and Ayers
Amazing Adventures #2

Here is the original splash page for the Dr. Druid story that appeared in Weird Wonder Tales #22. As mentioned above, this page originally appeared in Amazing Adventures #2 and the story had a brand new splash page grafted onto it for it's WWT appearance. What is most interesting, is that in the Weird Wonder Tales printing, the title was removed from this page, the balloons re-lettered, two panels added above the large panel (from where, I can't determine) and, sooner than you could say, "excelsior", this became the second page of the story.