My copy of the original printing of the book.
Wouldn't it be great to have all of life's mysteries wrapped up in the end with irrefutable proof that they occurred? That's how “The Many Lives of Mark Martin” ends. Even as fiction it stretched its finish to absurd lengths. But it's a comic book, and unlike real life (or even a fantasy life), mysteries of the paranormal in comic books are easily resolved.
From Adventures Into the Unknown #67 (1955):
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I found this editorial page from the same issue interesting. Are the letters real? If they are then I suspect Herman Kornbluth, asking for ghost, vampire and werewolf stories, must've been living in some sort of bubble, having not heard about controversies over horror comics or the Comics Code. To answer my own question, neither of the letters by “Kornbluth” or “Conrad Haas,” sound real. They read more like editor Hughes composed them to make a point about the superiority of the new stories over the old. We found out years ago that Hughes used a variety of pen-names to fool readers into thinking there was more than one writer on staff. It's not impossible to believe he'd do the same thing with letters to the editor.I don't know about Kornbluth or Haas, but I know I'm real. A few years later some letters I sent to ACG comics were published in various issues. So those letter pages were legitimate, at least.
3 comments:
This was also the inspiration for Roger Corman's "The Undead", with the beautiful Allison Hayes as an evil witch. This was probably right in Pappy's formative years, so if he saw it, I'm sure he'll remember her :)
That movie was much better with MST3K involved!
This story has some editing problems. Are they trying to say the dinosaur (wrong type) died with the caveman, and people only *thought* it's preserved body was attacking (how did it get back into the tar?) Or that it survived all that time and feel into the tar? Either scenario is silly!
Brian, I've missed out; I haven't seen Corman's The Undead, not even on Mystery Science Theater, but thanks for making the connection.
As far as silly scenarios, well, of course the whole thing is silly, which makes it all the more fun.
Here ya go, Pappy, enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRLaBzTLXw8
As for the Bridey Murphy book, Cecil Adams debunked it years ago in one of his Straight Dope columns, and he received a rather angry reply from Morey Bernstein himself: "Someone was good enough to send me your piece of bovine excrement (a euphemism for plain old bulls--t) on Bridey Murphy. Straight Dope, eh? Dopey, yes. Straight? Like a corkscrew. How the hell could you be such an idiot (or so badly informed)?"
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/522/is-it-possible-to-recall-past-lives-through-hypnosis
Anyway, on a weird tangent, I saw the name Mark Martin in the story and thought of the NASCAR driver of that name; similarly, when I see ACG's later "Magic Agent" stories with their hero John Force, I think of the drag racer.
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