Mystic #40

Atlas Comics' Mystic #40 brings another installment of "Tales of the Unusual" to 1955 readers, and Sol Brodsky's cover delivers a genuinely puzzling scene: a uniformed police officer appears to be writing a citation for a man in an orange checked jacket and green hat who is casually seated — impossibly — floating in mid-air on a busy city street, with a crowd of bystanders and a fire hydrant below him. The bold cover copy promises that "Nothing Could Be As Impossible As 'The Impossible Man!'" and the image absolutely sells that premise, leaving you eager to flip inside. Bill Everett handles the full interior package — writing, art, inking, and lettering — making this a remarkably unified vision of the weird and uncanny.