Mister Mystery
Entry updated 23 December 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1951-1954). Stanley P Morse. 19 issues. Artists include Bernard Baily, Eugene Hughes, Tony Mortellaro and Basil Wolverton. Script writers include Bruce Hamilton and Basil Wolverton. 36 pages per issue, usually comprising 4-5 long strips and a short text story.
Most stories are introduced by Mister Mystery, a formally attired gentleman in a domino mask with a fondness for puns. His smugness and tendency to insert himself into the tales is an irritant. Mister Mystery is principally a Horror comic, featuring both the supernatural and mundane strands of the genre: the former tales include ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures), witches, Satan (see Gods and Demons), Vampires and suchlike; however, there are also tales with SF or Fantasy elements. The quality varies, but there are several good stories, the standout being "The Brain Bats of Venus".
In #2's "The Subway Terror" an officer investigating a scream from a subway tunnel finds a clothed skeleton, the body's flesh devoured; later, his lieutenant explains, "We've been fighting them ever since the first subway was built! A hideous race of Monsters live in caverns under the City." (see Underground), and shows him the preserved body of one: green-skinned, red-eyed and with tentacle-like limbs. #3 includes "The Invasion": here suburban children begin playing Invasion, as instructed by "Brecko under the rose bush"; the game largely consists of gardening, centred around the pipes which have appeared by the bushes (with instructions not to look into them). When one girl's parents – concerned but humouring her – ask what will happen to them, she replies Brecko has given assurances that they would "be taken care of". And so they are. In "Now I'll Tell One" a prospector working near an Atomic Energy Plant (see Nuclear Energy) discovers an Underground city inhabited by Shapeshifting giant insects. The radioactivity has changed their appearance, though in lead-lined rooms they revert to what we are told is their original, human form. As part of the continuing war between man and insect they plan to conquer humanity, having Machines tunnelling under our cities and preparing chemicals to Poison our food supply. #5's "The Thirteen Locks!" concerns a British archaeologist excavating a tomb in Roumania [sic]; within is a ten-foot coffin with thirteen locks and on the walls are etched "the thirteen pages of the devil", which he hopes might reveal the secrets of life and death. He spends the next few days translating, unaware that as each page is completed a lock snaps. His face is torn off by what emerges. "Carniverous [sic] Cargo!" has the US navy boarding a derelict ship surrounded by slime; they shoot the Zombie-like sailors that try to warn them off, duly discovering the slime is sentient (see Intelligence) and that its spores eat flesh. Likely influences include "Zero Hour" (Fall 1947 Planet Stories) by Ray Bradbury for "The Invasion", and "Count Magnus" (in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary coll 1904) by M R James for "The Thirteen Locks!".
#7 has Wolverton's "The Brain Bats of Venus". When a Spaceship crashes on Venus one of the two pilots is killed; the survivor, Rod Crenshaw, makes repairs, but the fungal landscape is inhabited by large four-legged spiders mounted by creatures looking more like pink manta-rays than bats, whose heads resemble an exposed brain. One envelops the dead pilot's head to discover it now has "greater mental and physical faculties ... a great improvement over living attached to stupid Venusian creatures". It decides to travel to Earth in the spaceship, carrying a cargo of its species to parasitize humanity (see Parasitism and Symbiosis). Crenshaw, who has stowed away, manages to sabotage the landing; but on regaining consciousness "came the realization that you, Rod Crenshaw, had died in the explosion – and that the thoughts now coursing thru your revived brain are those of a brain-bat that escaped the blast" (see Identity). The issue also has "The Killer!" where forest creatures (including a fawn/elf and a green monster) persuade a gentle man to help them kill a hunter: they succeed and the creatures celebrate for days (Sex between the man and elf might be inferred), but then leave, driving him mad. "Wedding Eve" has a professor finding a new door in his study; passing through he interrupts a Viking sacrifice (see Timeslip) where the victim is upset at being saved; on being chased he returns through the door to find 30 years have passed (see Time Distortion).
#8's "The Man with the Green Thumb" has a horticulturalist accidentally drinking his new "plant reviving formula": his internal organs change – he doesn't bleed and cars buckle when they run into him; worried about what these new powers mean he asks God for guidance, only to be struck by lightning and turned into a tree. The plot of "They Saw the Light" repeats "Carniverous Cargo!", but with a uranium mountain in the Arctic that turns people into monsters, whose attempts to warn new visitors are met with gunshots. In #9's "The Taxi Driver" a Werewolf escapes a town's mob, ending up in a rural community: he decides to prey on a local taxi driver, but she turns out to be a vampire. "The Thin Line" has a Scientist working on a liquid that will dissolve anything, ignoring his assistant, the village idiot, who wonders how it will be stored. #10 has "Capsule", where a man on death row is sent a capsule by his friend "doc": as planned it shrinks him to insect-size (see Great and Small), ideal for escaping, but also meal-sized for the prison's mice. An "Immortality" serum is invented by a scientist, one ingredient being the sap from a tree; he is murdered by his assistant, who is acclaimed for the discovery. However he is killed by a prehensile tree that grew where he buried the body. #11 has "Beauty and the Beast!" about an ugly dress designer who builds a Robot woman: this is a reworked version of "Robot Woman" from Weird Mysteries #2 (1952), where the builder was a scientist; the new version has a more ghoulish ending. "Robot Woman" itself would be reprinted in #18. "Yakity-Yakity-Yak!" also incorporates old material, but closer to home, from "Wedding Eve" (see above); but here it involves an actual Time Machine and a man trying to escape a nagging wife (see Women in SF). In #14's "Terror of the Deep" a man boards a derelict ship to find acid-eaten bodies: a survivor tells him that using dynamite "made it throw us out" then dies. Puzzled, he returns to his boat – whereupon a giant plesiosaur (see Dinosaurs) appears and swallows it; stomach acid begins to seep into the boat, and he has no dynamite. An American inherits a Bavarian castle in #16's "Immortal Brain"; on arriving he is met by a man with the top of his skull removed, exposing a brain – but not his own. He is the Keeper of the Castle, "doomed to a living death by the Immortal Brain", having held the post for 300 years; his predecessor had done so for 600. Holding up an axe, he informs the new arrival it is now his turn to host the brain. #18 and 19 are made up of reprints: the former from Weird Mysteries #2 (1952), the latter from #7 and #8 of Mister Mystery. [SP]
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