Journey into Mystery #71
In "I Brought the Roc to Life!", a greedy art dealer’s obsession with a gypsy’s enchanted painting leads to a chilling twist when the artwork’s magic turns the thief into a permanent part of the canvas. Written by Stan Lee and brought to life with eerie precision by Steve Ditko—both on pencils and inks, with Stan Goldberg’s colors and Artie Simek’s lettering—this 1961 issue delivers a haunting tale of greed and consequence. The cover, also by Ditko, captures the painting’s unsettling presence with sharp, surreal detail.
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An art dealer who buys quality paintings at rock-bottom insulting prices from poverty stricken artists and then sells them for thousands attempts to steal a beautiful painting from a gypsy who refuses to sell it. The dealer has the gypsy arrested on a trumped up charge and burgles the man's wagon to remove the painting. When the gypsy is released because the man cannot be found he knows why and goes to the art dealer's apartment to retrieve his enchanted painting, finding the art dealer now a part of the picture.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).