Weird Fantasy #22
In "The Silent Towns," Captain Kaye and his crew stumble upon the derelict Y-75, a long-abandoned rocket drifting through space for over two decades. Inside, they find the skeletal remains of countless passengers and uncover a chilling log revealing the ship’s dark past: a desperate attempt to return exiled prisoners to Earth, met with a captain’s grim refusal. Written by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein and illustrated with haunting precision by Bernie Krigstein, this story from EC’s Weird Fantasy #22 (1953) blends cold space dread with moral weight, its stark visuals enhanced by Marie Severin’s colors and Jim Wroten’s tight lettering. The cover, by Joe Orlando, captures the eerie stillness of the silent ship.
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Captain Kaye and his crew spot a derelict rocket ship, the Y-75, and close in to investigate, and discover it has been floating out in space for over 20 years. Going aboard, they discover to their surprise that this 2-man vessel had skeletons of many people on board, so they begin reading the ship's log to determine why. The log tells that the ship needed repairs and set down unknowingly on Elba-II: an exile planet full of prisoners. The prisoners had taken over the ship and forced the crew to take them back to Earth. The captain refused and jettisoned the fuel leaving them to die in space.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).