Customer Reviews

Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales of Suspense - Volume 2

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This is a generic review for all the Masterworks _Tales to Astonish_ and _Tales of Suspense_ 1 & 2.
Some of us entered elementary school in the mid-50's and came of age then. In the late 50's and early 60's, between the movies "Forbidden Planet," "The Blob," "I Married a Monster from Outer Space," _and_ TV's "Star Trek," there existed an entertainment gap for early Sci-fi buffs. We were transitioning away from Dick & Jane and were way too green and inexperienced to be captivated by the vocabulary dense Wells, Verne, Cyril Kornbluth, Pohl, et al., so the thirst for speculative and science fiction and monsters was quenched by these easier to read comics.
We would read them and trade them and read them again. TV drama was geared for adults, so the nerdier kiddies settled for Atlas and Marvel to feed our need to probe into the dark, scarier side of life.
We enjoyed the ironic "O'Henry endings" before we had even heard of O'Henry. We thrilled to read about the encounters between ordinary humans and monsters from swamps, space, time, dimensions, etc. And the encounters left us all sadder but wiser. These stories introduced 9 to 12 year olds to certain darker aspects of the human condition: racism, greed, revenge, pride, envy, lust for power, etc.
Some of those stories, the conflicts, and their resolutions haunted me for decades. Powerful stuff for a pre-pubescent.
These collections are truly a nostalgia trip. The stories take me back to a pre-Twilight Zone, Cold War era where things were not always what they seemed. Read them and pass them along to your favorite 10 year-old relative. S/He will not only get a kick out of them, you just might see him/her grow up to be a wonderful and imaginative adult.
For the younger set this is a five star book, for me, today, it's three and half, so I split the difference.