Friday, November 25, 2022

NEAR-MYTHS: "THE GOOL STRIKES" (MARVEL TALES #93, 1949)




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.


No comments:

Post a Comment