Mystic #38

One of Atlas Comics' "Tales of the Unusual," Mystic #38 (July 1955) poses a deliciously eerie question right on its cover: "What Really Happened… When Time Stood Still?" Carl Burgos's cover depicts a lone man in a dark overcoat moving freely through a snow-swept city street while every person around him — pedestrians, bystanders, even a woman mid-step — has been frozen solid like statues in the falling snow, a large jewelry-store clock looming in the background as if time itself has seized up. Rounding out the package are interior stories including "The Man Who Listened" and the teased "To Touch the Stars," making this a satisfying anthology of strange and unsettling imagination.