Tales to Astonish #30
In "The Return of the Gorilla-Man," a 1962 Marvel classic, a seemingly ordinary elevator operator holds a chilling secret—when a spy threatens to detonate a bomb in a hotel, the operator calmly vanishes, revealing the building has no 13th floor. Written by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber, with art by Don Heck and inks by Don Heck, this eerie tale blends suspense and surrealism. The cover by Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky captures the story’s unsettling tone in bold, dynamic style.
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An oddly cheerful elevator operator is held at gunpoint with a passer-by by a spy planning to blow up the hotel. The elevator lets the spy off at the 13th floor, and while the passer-by is terrified, the elevator operator simply fades away, explaining that the bomb will never go off, since there is no 13th floor.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).