Weird Science #21

In "EC Confidential!", the editor of Fables Publishing Company grows uneasy as strange events mirror the sci-fi tales in Weird Science. When a sudden alien attack strikes the office, the truth unfolds: Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein, and the entire staff are not human, but survivors from Venus who fled the destruction of their world.

George Hill, shattered by his wife Katherine’s affair with Leonard Phelps, takes a desperate, illegal step: he pays to have a stringless marionette crafted to resemble her, then stages her murder as revenge. When the law treats the marionette’s death as equivalent to a human one, George faces execution—despite Katherine, the real woman, still alive.

In a forgotten corner of the cosmos, a stranded man named Forbes finds unexpected companionship with a mute girl named Velda on a planet teeming with alien dinosaurs. When a rescue mission arrives years later, the truth about Velda’s existence is shattered — but the moment the crew is gone, she returns as if never gone at all.

In "The Ugly One," a young woman raised on a planet where her appearance is reviled discovers a shocking truth when a spaceship arrives—her true home awaits, where she is not the monster, but the beautiful one. The story quietly builds around her isolation and longing, turning the idea of beauty on its head in a moment that reframes everything.