Sharkey

My name is Victor J. Avewy, Millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht and a serum that lets you live fowever but turns you into a howwible cweature!

OK, Pre-Hero Fans, here's the Synopsis: ***SPOILER WARNING*****SPOILER WARNING**** Victor Avery is a rich, handsome, successful scientist, who always gets what he wants. He invents a serum that will allow plants to live forever (how he knows this, we'll never know....) but transforms them into hideous, monstrous versions of themselves. Of course, he moves on to test it on animals and so he gives the serum to his unsuspecting housecat (where's the SPCA when you need 'em) which again, gives it eternal life (sez him), but turns it into a hideous cat creature. Well, being the quintessential scientist, Victor knows the only thing to do now is to find a human to test it on! But as he laments, "Now the final test would be to give it to a human. But how? Nobody would allow themselves to be turned into a monster, not even to live forever!" Ah, but Victor wil soon prove himself wrong. He is smitten by a local debutante who then rebuffs him to marry "a penniless engineer!" However, Hell hath no fury like a rich, handsome, successful scientist scorned and so Victor decides to use the serum on himself (gasp!) in order to carry out his revenge on the woman who rejected him! After all, he reasons, after he has his revenge, he'll have eternity to work on a serum that will reverse the process (hmm, you'd think maybe he'd want to have that done first....). So Victor consumes his serum, which turns him into a hulking monster (hmm, perhaps this is closer to a Hulk Prototype story than its given credit for!!) who searches across the country for this penniless engineer (at first Victor said he was going to take revenge on his girlie because "if I can't have her, no one will!" but later decides that "if not for the other man, she woudl have been mine! So I will remove the other man!"). Apparently the serum also turns you into a murderous stalker! Victor searches the country for Engineer Bill and his new wife (no Google back then), and soon the world hears of this hideous, unstoppable monster that travels only at night, thus dubbed "The Midnight Monster". As word travels, people try to stop him. His super strength allows him to uproot trees, withstand bullets and even shrug off bazookas from the local army! He even destroys their tanks with his bare hands! Wow, that's some serum!!!! So the army issues a challenge to him, saying they have a ray gun that can defeat him and dare him to pit his power against theirs in a showdown in the outskirts of Los Alamos! But our monsterous protagonist shows up and when he stands in front of the vaunted ray gun, the ground beneath him gives way and he falls into "the world's deepest hole". As our story closes out, the army battalion comments that "If he really is immortal, he'll be Alive when he hits bottom." "But he'll be so far down, it'll take AGES for him to crawl to the surface again". They give their thanks to a man, saying "not many men could engineer the world's deepest hole in so short a time! You're a fine techinician, son." And of course, this brilliant hole-engineer turns out to be none other than Bill! We close to see our former protagonists gal standing with Bill the engineer looking into the hole, saying "You know Bill, I wonder about the monster, I mean, I wonder who he really was?" But of course, wise Bill says "no on knows, honey! And I guess now...nobody will EVER know!" THE END! Interestingly, this is considered a "Mr. Hyde Prototype" and it does mimic the Mr. Hyde concept, but the creature also has a lot in common with the Hulk. In any case, fun stuff!

D'oh, I'm out of town on bizness at the moment but when I get back I'll write up a full synopsis. I'm sure it'll be amazingly original and not at all like any of the OTHER pre-hero stories....

Lost? I paid handsomely for them beyoootiies. And I'd be happy to hear about your less-than-best books! Or see 'em. Start posting!

Keep on postin'.....

Joe Quesada. He has the power to cancel a series....

I love 'em too (can ya tell?? huh? huh? can ya?) But wait, there's MORE!

SWEEEEEEET! KLAGG!! Got to love the name..... Hey, what a great name for a band!

Thanks for the history lesson, FFB! And keeping the cover thread alive:

I'm pushing for the Aluminum Foil Age myself. Seems to work for me, considering all the foil covers and what not! Well, it would have to be the Aluminum Foil Age followed by the Hologram Age followed by the Chromium Age..... Jeez, with all that shiny stuff, no wonder it's drawing comparisons to disco.

It's a GREAT page, but this seller has put it up for sale several times for a price of around $9,000 and nobody has bit on it. I'd be willing to pay $9,000 for a Ditko Spidey splash or a Kirby FF splash, but not sure about a pre-hero splash. I do have a nice Ditko pre-hero ghost story splash but I only paid a few grand for it. Hmmm, I need to scan it and post it up in the original art thread....if only my scanner were that big.

It IS nicer than a 5.0. I had hoped for a 6.0. But so it goes.... I've got other books that are nice except for some chipping and I'm not too keen on sending them in. This book has some minor wear but I really thought it was in the 6 range. But boo hoo, I can whine all I want. It is what it is. Yes, Buscema did some killer work. It's fun to pick up early work by some of these artists and compare it with their later work to see how they changed, as well at what remained the same.

Good point. Here's another classic:

And who can forget, VANDOOM!!! (No relation to Victor VON DOOM....) You gotta love all these stories that featured monsters being "created" by a mad scientist in a castle. And no self-respecting monster-terrorized village is complete without a guy with a pitchfork and a guy with a torch!! Who knew Mary Shelley would be such a muse for cheesy comic books??? Oh, and of course, you have to notice the sexism present here: all the MEN are running to attack the monster, while all the WOMEN are running in fear!

WOW, Jive that is one beautiful book!

The story is exactly like pretty much every story in these pre-hero monster stories: 1. Downtrodden main character is maligned by parents/boss/wife/girlfriend/family/other. 2. Monster appears and looks poised to conquer earth 3. Entire population of Earth gives up. 4. Main character somehow outsmarts the monster. 5. Main character is hero, and admired by previous maligner. I love these things, but they get a little repetetive after a while.... Anyway, here's another one:

Keep it coming! Here's another. Just in case you thought the Glob originated in Hulk 121....

Nice!! The story is that they tried this one as well as "The Man in the Anthill" and which ever one got the better response would be their next super-hero. Later on, this concept was tried in Double Dare Adventures with the B-Man stories. Actually Double Dare Adventures 1 and 2 are pretty good comics!

Strange Tales Annual 1 was already posted earlier, but hey, you can't have too much Pre-Hero Marvel!!!! Here's another, one of my faves:

They're completely goofy, that's what's so endearing. I mean, the guy who's razzing the kid and calling him "Teacher's Pet" is wearing a BOW TIE. Yep, standard issue for most schoolyard bullies! The "East Side Bow Tie-ers" were the most feared gang in the 'hood

And yet another..... So did kids really wear TIES to school in 1961?? You don't see THAT much these days....unless the kid is achin' for a major leage asswhuppin'.

Here's another that's tough to find in higher grades. A pic of this was posted earlier but here's MY raw copy....

I thought he played scarface?? And another! More like, "Beware the Giants' Fashion Sense" I'd say.....

Thanks Jayman and Pov,! I love these old pre-hero books. Pov, I have a raw copy of Annual 1 if you're interested. It's nice, probably a VG/F or so, PM me if you're interested. Say, who can forget Sserpo?!!