Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Beware!! The Ghosts Surround Me!"

"This great yarn, which might have taken place today..."
"...gives concrete evidence to the claim that Dashin' Donnie Heck is perhaps our most sophisticated artist!" --Stan Lee
The odd choice of panels to illustrate the story on the bottom left of the cover...
...does give away a crucial plot point, that the "ghosts" are nothing of the kind!
(I would've used a cropped version of the splash page which gives more of a "ghostly" feel than obviously-alien interdimensional beings.)
Penciled and inked by Don Heck, this appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1 (1965) was the tale's second reprinting since its' debut in Strange Tales #76 (1960)!
The first was in Strange Tales Annual #1 (1962).
It appeared one more time, in Vault of Evil #19 (1975), which still makes it 40 years since the story's last publication, and many readers of this blog have never seen it.
As for who wrote it, the consensus is that Stan Lee plotted it, but his brother Larry Lieber (Stan's real name was "Stanley Lieber"*) wrote the captions and dialogue.
Tomorrow, another sci-fi/fantasy tale by one of the artists who defined the Marvel Age of Comics!

*Stan had his name legally changed to "Stan Lee".

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Thanx for posting!