Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish #4

In "When the Mummy Walks," an archaeologist unearths an ancient mummy, only to find it’s not a corpse but an alien survivor trapped for millennia. The creature emerges from its tomb, only to perish when it realizes Earth’s atmosphere is fatal to its kind.

In "The Pretender!", a lone man exploring an abandoned house stumbles upon cryptic notes written in an alien tongue. The writings warn of a shapeshifting alien posing as a human, using the guise of Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev to sabotage Earth from within.

In "Quicksand!", a man's greed drives him to set a trap for his brother in a treacherous swamp, hoping to claim their shared inheritance. But when the brother is rescued by unseen leprechauns, the true cost of betrayal begins to surface—leaving the betrayer to face a fate as sudden as the quicksand itself.

In "The Bully Boy!", a lonely student is targeted by classmates until an electronic teacher steps in, offering to transform him through rigorous training in strength and combat. As the boy grows powerful, his newfound confidence shifts into a harsher form of dominance—exactly the outcome the machine had hoped to prevent.

In "The Girl in the Black Hood!", a reclusive photographer known only by her mysterious presence and hidden face becomes the target of a daring thief. When he finally forces her to reveal herself, the truth behind her hood unleashes a terrifying transformation that leaves him frozen in stone.

In "The Voice of Fate!", a jewel thief flees across the world after hearing a supernatural warning that he will be punished—only to believe he’s escaped fate itself, hiding in Hiroshima during the chaos of World War II, unaware that the Fates are watching. The story unfolds with a chilling sense of inevitability, as one man’s defiance of destiny plays out in the shadow of a city on the brink.

In "The Absent-Minded Professor!", a brilliant but forgetful college scientist finds himself at the center of an interstellar mystery when he’s suddenly taken aboard an alien vessel. There, the truth dawns: his lifelong certainty about life beyond Earth wasn’t intuition—it was memory, buried beneath decades of human life.

In "The Strange Fate of the Statue Maker!", a reclusive inventor stumbles upon a device that turns living subjects into stone—intending to immortalize beauty, he first captures a stunning woman, only to hesitate and set her free. But when his own obsession leads him to test the machine on himself, he finds his fate sealed in cold, silent stone.

In "The Invaders," alien explorers from a parched desert planet mistake a vast ocean for solid ground, landing their fleet only to watch it sink beneath the waves. The story follows the sudden, silent disaster as their advanced vessels vanish into the deep, leaving behind only ripples and the quiet hum of a world unprepared for the unexpected.

In "Dance, You Fool," a struggling dancer stumbles upon a mysterious pair of shoes belonging to an elderly neighbor, who claims they can transform anyone into a master performer. When the young man steals them, he discovers too late that the gift comes with a terrible price—once he puts them on, he can’t stop dancing, no matter the cost.

In "The Doorway to Nowhere!", fugitive Hugo Cragg seeks refuge in a forgotten mansion, only to stumble upon a mysterious closet that swallows anything placed inside. Curious and desperate to vanish from the law, he dares to step through—only to find himself trapped in a strange, flattened dimension.

In "The Thing from Outer Space!", an explorer brings back a telepathic plant from a distant world, only to be stunned when it claims to be the true human and accuses the explorer of being an imposter—its mind swapped with theirs. As the truth of the exchange unravels, the planet faces a desperate quarantine, and the line between alien and human blurs in a chilling confrontation.

In "The Hands of Time!", a desperate fugitive steals a mysterious clock that rewinds time, using it to erase his crimes and start anew—only to find that every escape forward comes with a fatal cost. As he races through moments of his past, the clock’s power begins to unravel, leaving him trapped between lifetimes.

In "The Search for Pan!", a restless traveler arrives in a quiet village chasing rumors of the mythical Pan, hoping to profit from the legend. Though the villagers insist Pan is real, their evasiveness only fuels his frustration—until a threatening encounter with a bartender leads him to a grove under the full moon. There, he finally meets the creature he sought, but the truth of the encounter leaves him shaken, fleeing the town in haste. The bartender’s hidden hooves hint at a deeper mystery beneath the village’s calm surface.

In "The Star Raiders," a crew of escaped convicts turned space pirates fall for a devious ruse when a mysterious figure convinces them to attack a planet he claims is defenseless—its people mere "midgets" in his eyes, though he omits the crucial detail that they’re only small in comparison to him. The promise of easy plunder sets them on a course that quickly spirals beyond their control.

Jo, a reclusive inventor, activates a time machine in a desperate bid to prove his theories—only to emerge ten years older, his mind wiped of the journey. What he discovers is a dazzling, impossible future where time itself bends, and his very presence threatens to unravel the delicate order he now finds himself in.

In "Secret of the Statues!", a skeptical art critic visits a reclusive sculptor, only to find his harsh critique met with an unsettling twist—when one of the statues speaks, calling him a fool. The critic collapses, awakening to discover the "statues" were actually aliens using Earthly forms to blend in, and now they've left him stranded outside, their true intentions still hidden.

In "The Toy Soldiers," a boy’s new Civil War toy soldier takes on a life of its own when an otherworldly invader invades his home one night—only to vanish without a trace. The next morning, the boy discovers the mysterious intruder trapped in his model prison, guarded by the very toy he’d placed there the day before.

In "When the Beast Walks!", a compassionate reporter intervenes to save a strange four-armed ape from a hunter, only to uncover a shocking truth: the creature is an alien emissary seeking a human worthy to hear its message. The revelation sets off a chain of events that leads to a world-changing decision—suddenly, every zoo on Earth is shut down, as if the planet itself had answered a silent call.

In "The Curse!", a ruthless dictator schemes to claim a fabled treasure by spreading fear of its curse, only to find himself ensnared by a haunting truth he never believed in. As shadows stir and the past refuses to stay buried, the line between deception and dread begins to blur.

In "I Am Not Human!", a humanoid robot flees his creator’s lab, taking on a human guise with a synthetic face and clothes to live among people. As he witnesses the cruelty and indifference humans show one another, his faith in humanity shatters—until he chooses to remove his mask and return, not as a man, but as himself.

In "Frankie's Fast Ball!", a boy with newly awakened superhuman abilities struggles to control his incredible strength while trying to play baseball—his powerful fastball accidentally punches a hole through a tree, making it clear he can't throw without risking serious harm to a catcher.

In "My Fatal Mistake!", a disillusioned technician tasked with maintaining a cold, automated system in a sealed clean room finds himself trapped when his desperate attempt to sabotage the machine backfires—locking him inside with only fifteen minutes of oxygen to spare. The story unfolds with tense, claustrophobic urgency as he confronts the consequences of his choice, caught between the machine he despises and the life he once had.

In "Bronson's Brain!", a brilliant but isolated human named Bronson, frustrated by the limitations of Earth’s intellect, constructs a spaceship and journeys to a planet inhabited by far more advanced aliens. After undergoing a series of tests, the aliens conclude that Bronson’s mind is so beneath their standards that he must be confined—not out of malice, but to protect him from the overwhelming reality of their world.

In "The Secret of the Swamp!", a lonely woman finds unexpected connection in the misty depths of a mysterious swamp, where she meets a strikingly handsome stranger—only to discover that their shared beauty is a fleeting enchantment, and the truth beneath the surface is far stranger than she ever imagined.

In "The Smiling Gods!", a group of Asian farmers, desperate to survive under the tyranny of a cruel overlord, turn to their ancient deities in prayer for a bountiful harvest. When their crops surge to impossible heights, growing with unnatural speed and ferocity, the land itself seems to rise against their oppressor—entangling him in a web of grain that crushes his power.

In "Target... Earth!", an alien scout arrives on Earth to assess humanity’s threat level before a planned invasion—his report due in 48 hours. Finding humans weak and easily outmatched, he boasts of the planet’s vulnerability, only to discover his ship has vanished into a treacherous bog, leaving him stranded and exposed.

In "Grayson's Gorilla!", a scientist’s reckless experiment to steal a gorilla’s strength backfires when he swaps bodies with the beast. Now trapped in a primate’s form, he’s sent to the zoo—where the newly human gorilla has a very different plan in mind.

In "The End of a World!", a tyrannical ruler unleashes a cataclysmic explosion upon a distant, empty galaxy to prove his dominion over the cosmos. Witnessed only through a microscope by a curious boy, the event appears as a fleeting, insignificant spark—yet its scale and implications ripple far beyond what anyone can comprehend.

In "The Secret of Sagattus!", a kingdom’s fate hangs on the counsel of a hunchback advisor, whose wisdom baffles the jealous nobles who plot his demise. When his death reveals the king to be a lifeless mannequin, the truth of the throne’s deception begins to unravel.

In "No Place to Turn!", a spy stranded on Earth after a failed mission finds himself transformed into a human—only to be left green by alien technology that perceives the world in black and white. Now hunted and isolated, he must navigate a reality where his very appearance marks him as an outsider, with no place to turn.