The cover of MARVEL TALES #93-- which was the first issue of that title, taking over its numbering from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS, one of Timely Comics' major superhero mags-- seems to introduce a standard horror story. But the story inside anticipates the vogue for titanic monsters mutated in some way by radiation, which for most pop culture mavens started with 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. That film in turn spawned the far more consequential figure of Godzilla within the next year. I'm not sure how unique the Gool was in 1949. It's quite possible that there were many titan-sized critters bustling around horror comics prior to 1953, since so few stories from this period have been collected. I'm aware of a story from the 1950s incarnation of Timely's Human Torch (not published by Marvel until 1968) in which the hero encountered a colossal alien called "the Un-Human." But this beastie was not said to be the result of an atomic mutation.
Though the titular creature's name on the cover bears the familiar spelling "ghoul," all through the story inside the monster is called "the Gool." No writer is billed, and GCD theorizes that the pencil artist may have been Ed Winiarski.
The story opens on a conversation between an American scientist, Professor Clark Dane, and the commander of a detachment of soldiers on a Pacific island, apparently assisting the doctor in some unnamed research project. The light-orange humanoid figure of the Gool-- so named by the caption-maker-- steps onto the beach, and is immediately attacked by army gunfire, with no effect on the monster. Dane then belatedly reveals to his confidante that his whole purpose in being here was to investigate consequences of the atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll, beginning in 1946. On barely any evidence, Dane insists that the spongy-looking being must have emerged from "the inner core of the earth," and then he takes time out for a long flashback. This segue mixes Dane's reminiscences with the narrator's observations as to how the Gool was awakened by the atomic testing. However, it's suggested that the Gool may be intelligent, or else that he had intelligence and lost it, for he doesn't just push his way to the surface like Godzilla and his fellow beasties. Instead, the Gool has a drill-machine with which he ascends to the surface, despite the fact that the captions just told us that the being "possessed no sense or intelligence." Possibly the idea was that the Gool was, like his possible model the 1933 King Kong, the last survivor of a species.
As it happens, the subterranean denizen, dimly thirsting for some sort of "conquest," emerges just in time to be struck by an atom bomb test on the Atoll. Dane makes the scene afterward and remarks that if anything survived blast, it would be "supercharged with electro-rays"-- a gobbledygook way of saying that the radiation would mutate said survivor.
Then, the story jumps back to the present, showing again that no modern arms can stop the juggernaut. But the writer, realizing that he has no more pages to spare, delivers a deus ex machina by having the Gool encounter Professor Dane. The Gool sends a telepathic message to Dane, but all he communicates is, "I am the Gool" (making him only slightly more locquatious than Groot of the Galaxy Guardians). The Gool makes no demands and issues no explanations, and then just wanders back into the sea (again, like Godzilla), though a final caption warns that he will re-appear "in the next issue of Marvel Mystery." (Guess the editors didn't inform the writer of the title-change in advance.) However, there were no sequels to the Gool's rampage. The story definitely fits the pattern of "atomic hubris" stories of the time and actually catches that doomsday mood better than BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.
Oddly, the only other named person in the story is an older scientist who exists merely for Dane to talk with, and by an amusing bit of luck, the older fellow is named "Doctor Kirby." Since Jack Kirby had been absent from proto-Marvel for about seven years prior to this story's publication, the use of the name is probably coincidence. But it's amusing because the first popular works Kirby produced for almost-but-not-quite Marvel in the late 1950s were numerous giant monster-stories, most strongly indebted to the Godzilla template.
Oh, and just because I looked it up, here's the Torch's slightly later foe The Un-Human, who unlike The Gool gets the chance to tear up some city-property, possibly written (though not published) a little before Godzilla got to ravage Japanese real estate.
ADDENDUM: And as long as I'm mentioning gigantic comic-book characters who tear up real estate, I would be remiss not to mention Jack Cole's size-shifting villain The Claw from the late thirties and early forties, discussed here.
1 comment:
Hi gene, I'm sorry to post this here, but I was only able to post the first part of my comment on your previous post as the second part kept disappearing. Here it is (hope you don't mind):
Yesterday night I got to watch BLACK WIDOW. As I said in my previous comment, I don't recall much of plot details from previous films (they are all mixed-up in my brain almost as if they were a long film of unbroken sameness), but I can't recall one that I fell so uninterested in while watching it. It tries to have a message - although a gyno-fascist one - but the message is shoved down your throat without any sugar. ANd maybe I'm reading to much int it, but the message seemed to be Harvey Weinstein is a monster (the scene where the Black Widow (Scarlett Johanssonn, looking like Rachel Weisz) meets with Dreykov in his wood-panneled office in the Red Room is made to look like what a #metoo drone would imagine one of his casting couch sessions to look like. Then we get the usual "all men are inept, villans or buffoons" except for the POC-c.u.n.t. (caring, understanding, nineties type), whilw all females are geniuses, kick-assers, assertive power-girls.
Obviously, none of the above turns any film into a bad film - the seventies blaxploitation movies had the same framing device (all white people are inept, villains, or buffoons, while every black people are geniuses, kick-assers, smart-mouthed adlibers) but most of them were GREAT movies. But BLACK WIDOW is saddled with an asinine plot that is clearly thought-of in function of the movie-message instead of bearing such message as an organic part of it. And I'll never understand how can a film that stars Scarlett Johansson, Rachel Wisz and Olga Kurylenko be so damn sexless, so de-eroticizes, so sensually bland. Its proposed gynocracy is ugly, grey and joyless.
The SFX were the costumary mix of impressive imagery with unreality (people running and fighting al over free-falling debries, with no dust or smoke or savage altitude winds incumbering the visual-field or their movements; fire and smoke from explosions happening below the characters that do not come up, etc...), the original score was somewhat bland, and the soundtrack was only redeemed by a nice cover for Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit; and the only genuinely fun character was David Harbour's Alexei/The Red Guardian. Harbour knew his character was meant to be a buffoon, but was able to extract a modicum of humanity from his nihilist-ruthlessness.
Well, I guess, once again, I let myself go on a tangent to your post or comment, not adding anything useful, but I felt like ranting a little bit.
Now, onto Shang-Chi.
Cheers.
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