Friday, October 13, 2023

See, this is why you don't set up autopay!

If slackassery could save the earth from an alien invader, rest assured I'm there for you like that. From 1976, Weird Wonder Tales #17, which opens with "I Was Captured by the Creature from Krogarr!" Reprinted from 1961's Tales to Astonish #25, written by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Dick Ayers.
This was a fairly standard monster number: a lazy sod of a new husband isn't adapting well to married life, when he's contacted by an alien from the planet Krogarr, through his television set. The alien gives the hubby instructions to rewire his set as a transmitter, so he could come to earth, but his intentions were less than friendly: the creature captures the hubby, and brings him back to Krogarr, as proof of his teleportation technology, which his people had scoffed at. Krogarr isn't the most hospitable planet, with gladitorial fights and slavery; but the hubby is saved when he mysteriously fades away back to earth. The Krogarrians kill the creature and smash his stupid machine, while the hubby is scolded by his wife, for not paying the power bill: when the power went out, he was brought home. Which...is kind of dumb.
Also this issue: "First Moon-walk," retitled and reprinted from 1954's Men's Adventures #26, with art by Gene Colan! Two childhood rivals spend their entire lives striving and exceeding, to beat each other, eventually taking their competition into space: both privately fund a rocket, to be the first to get to the moon, then both sabotage the other's rocket when they get there. And, another Venus story: "The Mad Mountain!" from 1952's Venus #18, story and art by Bill Everett. Venus is in a passenger plane crash, which all the passengers survive, but they find themselves in a weird valley, with creepy plant-men. The other passengers are all killed in a landslide, but Venus survives and makes it back to civilization, but is then told that plane disappeared twenty years ago, and she wasn't on it! What--but--so....Venus's guy-pal mansplains, weird crap like that always happens to her, no point in worrying her pretty little head about it. Actually, that's probably more on the page count than mansplaining, but same end result.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid said...

Funny bc I kinda do have autopay set up for certain bills of mine but wind up just skipping ahead to directly paying them anyways. *Shrugs*

I’m legit curious why Joe’s wife decided to marry the guy if he’s so damn lazy. Maybe she thought she could fix him. If anything, this story feels like it just further justified to Joe that being lazy pays off.

Kind of a bit of meta-splaining to me bc in that particular era of Venus comics, weird shit like that REALLY did happen all the time.
No wonder she eventually joined Agents of Atlas.