Did I miss shark week again? I never know.

We saw a water-damaged copy of Action Comics #456 some time back, yet another example of comics trying to cash in on whatever's popular at the time, in this case, Jaws. And if DC's going to do it, sure as shooting Marvel is too; in this case by dusting off a six-page yarn to reprint with a new cover. But, a minor problem: from 1976, Weird Wonder Tales #16, reprinting "The Shark" from 1954's Men's Adventures #25, art by Joe Sinnott.

Of course, it's a great white on the cover, they were the 'in' sharks of the time; but in the story our hero fights a tiger shark and the final shark boss is a hammerhead. Diamond smugglers try to put their eggs in one basket, by feeding diamonds to little fish, then those fish to the shark, then one of the double-crossing smugglers to the shark. The lunkhead hired to kill the shark was gung-ho to do it before even getting paid, and even though he loses a leg to the shark, he considers it worth it to get the bugger. Oh, and he gets to shoot a smuggler with a spear-gun; that's always fun.

It took me a few to figure out where I had read the next story, "The Box of Doom!" It's a Venus story by Bill Everett from 1952's Venus #19, the last issue of that series; but I would've read it in 1994's Silver Surfer vs. Dracula #1. (I thought we had seen that here at some point, since that issue also has the Howard the Duck/Hellcow story from Giant-Size Man-Thing #5! It's reprints all the way down...) A messenger delivers a creepy box to Venus late at night, and it tries to coax them into opening it to receive great evil powers. The messenger hops on that, and is turned into a vampire, then gets staked by Venus. No tip for you! Well, the tip of the stake, I suppose...crap. It's a good one, but it's also Venus's last appearance for over twenty years!

Lastly, from 1962's Tales to Astonish #31, "It Fell From the Flying Saucer!" another probably Lee/Lieber/Kirby sci-fi number. A somewhat surly artist is glad everybody's gone to the parade and he can finally get some art done, when he sees a flying saucer, which drops...a pencil? A magic pencil, with which the artist makes his surprisingly non-pornographic dreams come true. It's not bad, although the artist goes from zero to tyrant pretty quickly...quicker than some artists would, maybe? That and I liked this plot in Spongebob Squarepants better; that version had Doodlebob! Ain't he a doll?