Tales of Suspense #18
"Kraa the Unhuman Part 1" kicks off in Tales of Suspense #18 (1961), a gripping early Marvel tale from Steve Ditko’s distinctive artistic hand—pencils and inks by Ditko, with Stan Goldberg’s colors and Artie Simek’s lettering. When a mine foreman sabotages a new robot out of fear for his job, he’s trapped in a collapsed tunnel with only the malfunctioning machine as his chance to survive—though the very wiring he tampered with now holds the key to his escape. The cover, a dynamic collaboration by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, captures the tension of a man facing his own consequences in the dark.
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A mine foreman is concerned that a new robot may take his job, so he scrambles the wires in its control panel. When a cave-in occurs, the men outside contact the foreman by radio and tell him that the robot was not built to work in the mine, but as a safety measure. All he has to do to escape the collapsed tunnel is turn the robot on, but since he has sabotaged the robot's wiring, all he can do is desperately attempt to find the right connections by accident until his air gives out. This same story, credited to Gary Friedrich, was re-used in Tower of Shadows #2 (November 1969)
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).