Tales of Suspense #19
In "The Green Thing!, Part 1," a desperate criminal uses a mysterious typesetter to rewrite headlines that predict the future—turning his newspaper into a dangerous oracle. When the machine’s eerie accuracy threatens to expose him, he panics and turns himself in, only to find the typesetter’s plan was always one step ahead. Steve Ditko’s sharp art and Stan Goldberg’s bold colors bring this early Marvel mystery to life, with Jack Kirby’s dynamic cover capturing the story’s eerie tension.
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A criminal skips town and sets up a newspaper as a front. When his typesetter changes the headlines from what they should read into what actually happens in the near future, he realizes he's got a goldmine, but the typesetter refuses to tell him how he can accurately predict the future. The criminal threatens to fire and blacklist the typesetter if he doesn't come clean, and the next headline he sets tells of an accident happening to the newspaper owner. Panicked, he turns himself in to the police so that he will be safe in jail, which is what the typesetter wanted all along.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).