Data courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under Creative Commons license.

Issue Details

Issue #74
Published November 1961
Frequency monthly
Cover Price 0.10 USD
Pages 36
Editing Stan Lee
Notes Distributed to newstands in August 1961. This issue includes 10 pages of paid advertisements. Distribution date from Joseph Marek's Marvel Comics Group history website.

Cover Details - "Thing in the Black Box!!/Midnight at the Wax Museum!"

Characters Dan Harper; Bob Crane
Genre monsters; science fiction
Pencils Jack Kirby
Inks Dick Ayers
Notes Inking credit from Nick Caputo via the GCD Errors list, December 2008. Original indexer had not credited an inker.

7 page story "The Thing in the Black Box!"

Characters Dan Harper; Pandora
Synopsis A shipwrecked man meets the legendary Pandora, who tricks him into releasing the demons from her box. Humanity is helpless against the demons, but the man forces Pandora to recall them by dispelling her illusory beauty.
Genre monsters
Pencils Jack Kirby
Notes Narrated in the first person. This story is retold in Chamber of Darkness (Marvel, 1969 series) #3 (February 1970) as "Something Lurks on Shadow Mountain" by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. Job number from Tom Lammers and Ger Apeldoorn via the Atlas/Timely discussion group.
Reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell (Marvel, 1970 series) #30 (September 1974)

2 page text story "The Remedy Oil"

Characters Mrs. Gerrity; Tom Gerrity; Officer O'Malley; Logarithm
Synopsis An old-fashioned shopkeeper unwittingly saves the life of a boy from Mechanica when her remedy oil lubricates the gears in his brain.
Genre science fiction
Pencils Marie Severin
Inks Marie Severin
Letters typeset
Notes Text story with illustrations.
Reprinted from Uncanny Tales (Marvel, 1951 series) #54 (April 1957)

6 page story "Midnight in the Wax Museum!"

Characters Bob Crane
Synopsis An artist falls asleep in a wax museum and after midnight he is awoken by a sound. When he investigates, he finds that the wax figures are really aliens who are observing humans. He flees and summons the police, who attack the aliens with tear gas. The entire wax museum begins to shudder and the whole building lifts off into space. They leave behind a book which states that their intent was to pass along beneficial knowledge, but the humans are too dangerous and perhaps they will return in a thousand years.
Genre science fiction
Pencils Jack Kirby
Notes Job number from Tom Lammers and Ger Apeldoorn via the Atlas/Timely discussion group.

5 page story "The Mechanical Men!"

Characters Patrolman Patrick Smith; Z-4
Synopsis An alien plot to infiltrate Earth with robotic dolls is unwittingly foiled by a police officer trying to get rid of peddlers.
Genre science fiction
Script Stan Lee
Pencils Steve Ditko
Inks Steve Ditko
Notes Job number from Tom Lammers and Ger Apeldoorn via the Atlas/Timely discussion group. Lee credit noted by Stephane Petit via the GCD Errors list, February 2010.
Reprinted in X-Men (Marvel, 1963 series) #93 (June 1975)

5 page story "Forever Is a Long Time!"

Characters Luther Kane; Dr. Jonathan Weems
Synopsis A greedy businessman bullies a scientist into giving him a device that can give humans the 1,000-year lifespan of a giant redwood. He ignores the scientist's warnings and uses the ray on himself alone in his mansion, finding to his horror that the ray also renders its subject as immobile as a redwood.
Genre science fiction
Script Stan Lee ?
Pencils Don Heck
Inks Don Heck
Notes Narrated in the first person. This story is a retelling of "I Can Live Forever!" drawn by John Forte, in issue #55 (November 1959). The original has a more sympathetic main character and a happy ending. Stan Lee is tentatively credited as writer on the basis of his plot credit for another version of this story in issue #103 (April 1964).