Where Monster's Dwell #25: Steve Ditko's "When the Earth Vanished!"

Last Tuesday the New York Times published a story, "Far-Off Planets Like the Earth Dot the Galaxy," spotlighting a Berkeley grad student's calculation, based on data from the NASA's Kepler space probe before it malfunctioned, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-like planets in the galaxy:

Astronomers reported that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy, based on a new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.

One out of every five sunlike stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot, not too cold — where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Mr. Petigura’s analysis represents a major step toward the main goal of the Kepler mission, which was to measure what fraction of sunlike stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets. Sometimes called eta-Earth, it is an important factor in the so-called Drake equation used to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. Mr. Petigura’s paper, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, puts another smiley face on a cosmos that has gotten increasingly friendly and fecund-looking over the last 20 years. 

“It seems that the universe produces plentiful real estate for life that somehow resembles life on Earth,” Mr. Petigura said.

Maybe one of those planets is home to the martial Goloks whose tale is told in Where Monsters Dwell #25.

"When the Earth Vanished!" is unattributed in the online Marvel database. It's obviously Steve Ditko's art. And it is likely a Stan Lee story. Originally appearing in the same issue of Tales of Suspense as "Electro!" (Tales of Suspense #13, January 1961), "When the Earth Vanished!" chronicles an alien invasion of earth by futuristic barbarians eager to test a super-bomb. After their rocket lands they are amazed to discover a barren, white waste. Based on observation, earth had presented itself as a blue-green gem teeming with life. Befuddled, the Goloks decide to detonate their super-bomb immediately. The heat wave of the bomb blast ends up destroying the Goloks, who, as it turns out, are of microscopic size; the barren, white waste they found themselves in, a child's ping-pong ball.

Below are a few scans taken from Where Monsters Dwell #25:

Where Monsters Dwell #25: The Ruler of the Earth!

Where Monsters Dwell #25, with an issue date of November 1973, reprints the cover story, "The Ruler of the Earth!," from Journey Into Mystery #81 (June 1962). To give you an idea where that falls in Marvel's publication history, in this month when Thor: The Dark World is set to earn over a $100 million in movie theaters, The Mighty Thor would debut two months later in Journey Into Mystery #83.

"The Ruler of the Earth!" is a classic Silver Age Lee-Kirby tale. Mankind, convinced that it is headed for destruction due to the escalating Cold War, decides to create a massive supercomputer to make all decisions. The supercomputer known by the acronym R.O.E. (Ruler of the Earth) has built into its underlying code that it is inferior to humans; hence, a fail-safe designed to prevent R.O.E. from wreaking havoc on the human race with its omniscient powers. Hydra, the nefarious secret organization bent on world domination, seeks to corrupt R.O.E. by injecting "greed, deceit and dishonesty!!" via "tubes" into its operating system. Stan Lee, in a nice turnabout, has R.O.E. foil the plot by detaching the corrupting tubes while saying the following words:

They attempted to corrupt me by linking these tubes to my power plant!

But they were fools! The qualities of greed, deceit, and lust for power can never affect ROE!

For I am incapable of any wrong doing! 

It is only man who can be evil!

And I am inferior to man, for I am only . . .

. . . a mere machine . . . 

The idea that the Cold War was fast headed toward a genocidal conflict was the prevailing wisdom at the time. The Cuban Missile Crisis was only a half-year away when "The Ruler of the Earth!" first arrived at drug stores and candy counters. In an interview last week Oliver Stone said that the generals of the Joint Chiefs were convinced that the U.S. would be at war with the Soviets by 1970. They were ready to go hot and heavy on Cuba because they felt they had a nuclear advantage that could take out Russia with a first strike. Thankfully, Kennedy had the stones to stand up to his Joint Chiefs.

Note how Hydra is represented as Russian. In one panel there is even a guy in Soviet military garb. Now, at least in Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, Hydra is represented as Tea Party militia types.

Finally, "The Ruler of the Earth!" turns out to be not too far off the mark. With IT ruling the roost, server farms occupying a critical place in our global capitalist economy and the National Security Agency controlling the equivalent of the R.O.E. supercomputer, we should chalk another one up to the prescience of Lee-Kirby, with the caveat that the present day is far more dystopian than they were allowed to reveal in their comic books.