Journey into Mystery #52
"Menace from Mars!" delivers a clever twist on time-travel tropes in a standout 1959 entry from Journey into Mystery, where a screenwriter’s pitch about haunted houses as portals for future time travelers takes a personal turn—only to reveal the writer himself is one. With art by Carl Burgos and inks by the same, the story blends sci-fi intrigue with a quiet, knowing tension, all rendered in Stan Goldberg’s vibrant colors and Artie Simek’s crisp lettering. The cover by Jack Kirby and Christopher Rule captures the eerie, otherworldly vibe with striking, dynamic visuals.
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A screenwriter pitches a director a movie theorizing that haunted houses are the arrival points for time travelers from the future, but the director thinks the story is too far-fetched. The writer is relieved, since he is such a traveler, and his secret is therefore safe.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).