Where Monsters Dwell #24: Aliens, the National Security State and Stolen Rocketships

With a publication date of October 1973, Where Monsters Dwell #24 continues the title's showcase of Silver Age Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko stories.

"I Was Trapped By the Things on Easter Island!" is a Lee-Kirby reprint from Tales to Astonish #5, September, 1959. It features classic Silver Age Kirby art. The story tells the tale of a crash-landed pilot who stumbles across the Easter Island moai, who are actually space creatures posing as statues, discussing plans for an invasion. The pilot narrowly escapes the moai thanks to a conveniently located native boat. He then hopscotches from one military installation to another trying to convince base commanders that an invasion from another planet is in works and the moai on Easter Island need to be bombed to rubble. He's dismissed as a sci-fi hallucinating mush head. As one general says, "Sorry . . . but I don't buy your story! Even in this age of missiles and Sputniks, what you're saying is too incredible!"

A common theme in Silver Age comics is Cold War anxiety and paranoia reinterpreted as owing to contact with hostile extraterrestrials; in this context, the military is usually cast as dull, authoritarian bureaucrats numb to the existential threat right under their noses. Not an inaccurate characterization of the Cold War. 

One of the middle stories in Where Monsters Dwell #24 reprints "The Ape Man" from Strange Tales #85, June, 1961; it features classic Steve Ditko art -- a clean, etched, vaguely-ominous look that made The Amazing Spider-Man a super-historical success.

The final story of Where Monsters Dwell #24 is "What Will Happen to Mankind if . . . the Monster Escapes?" Though the story has no credits -- originally it appeared in Strange Tales #95, April, 1962 -- it is obviously Lee-Kirby; it even features a stolen space capsule a la Fantastic Four #1 (which appeared a half-year prior).

Lee is riffing on FF #1. Where FF #1 begins with Reed, Ben, Sue and Johnny stealing a rocket and then returning to earth as "monsters" due to exposure to cosmic rays, "What Will Happen to Mankind if . . . the Monster Escapes?" has an alien monster scouting earth for invasion and trying to get back home, after its spaceship crashes, by stealing what it thinks is a rocket on its launch pad. The rocket turns out to be a time capsule to be buried in the earth for future generations. The alien monster suffocates.

I love Silver Age Kirby, particularly the crowd shots. There is such vibrancy; it provides a pictorial portal to the post-war social milieu that, as far as I'm concerned, surpasses photography.