Creepy Worlds #152

J. L. Standish, an absent-minded clerk, accidentally boards a bus that flies through the sky, leading him to a strange city where buses from different centuries converge. As he tries to understand where he is and why he’s there, he learns the bus system transports humans from various eras to serve a highly advanced, automated society that still relies on human labor for its own survival.

Capt. Earl Muntz survives a plane crash in the African desert, where dehydration triggers vivid hallucinations of a lush, vibrant city and a kind healer named Shema. As he grows more entangled in this dreamlike world, he begins to question reality—only to be pulled back when U.S. searchers finally locate his wreckage. Though he returns to the real world, the experience leaves him forever changed, vanishing once more into the desert haze, seemingly reunited with Shema in a realm where life is easy and wonder endures.

Stanley Moss, desperate to connect with his beatnik girlfriend Gigi, tries to embrace her world by learning to appreciate bongo drums and countercultural chaos—only to discover that his alien friends from the sky have other plans. When he finally embraces the scene, his Martian buddy Harold arrives in Greenwich Village, turning the beatnik party into a surreal, mind-bending experience that leaves everyone, including Gigi, stunned.

The young wanderers Frankie and Joey find themselves swept through a series of surreal, fantastical landscapes—glittering infernos, icy caverns, flying saucers, and alien cities—each more impossible than the last, all while wondering if they’re dreaming or truly traveling through space. Though frightened and disoriented, they marvel at the wonders around them, only to suddenly awaken back at home, realizing the strange worlds they saw were actually glimpses of real, advanced technology and inventions that already exist—or soon will.

In "Who's Crazy?", a young man named Baxter Bibbs finds himself at odds with the world when no one else can see his mysterious companion—though she’s very real to him. As his neighbors grow increasingly skeptical, Baxter must decide whether to stay in their world or follow her back to the one she truly belongs to.

In a chilling twist of power and deception, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition confronts a rival by unveiling a mysterious machine meant to expose demonic collusion. As he steps inside to uncover its secrets, he realizes too late that the device was designed not to judge, but to enact every known torment—automatically, without mercy.

In a quiet moment of creative frustration, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko face a stubborn blank page—until a mysterious stranger interrupts their brainstorming, only to vanish in a shower of sparkles, leaving them to wonder if the real magic was in the mundane. As they head out for lunch, the ordinary feels just a little more extraordinary.