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Tales to Astonish Vol 1 40

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As the spider said to the fly, "welcome, suckers!"

—The Hijacker

Appearing in "The Day That Ant-Man Failed!"

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Synopsis for "The Day That Ant-Man Failed!"

While Hank Pym has invented a new gas mask made out of unstable molecules, armored cars in the city are being besieged by a criminal dubbed the Hijacker, who is able to steal entire armored cars and make the drivers forget what happened. Heaviest hit by this is Howard Mitchell, owner of the Mitchell Armored Truck Company, who is losing clients every time one of his armored cars is stolen.

Hearing of Mitchell's plight via his spy ants, Ant-Man pays Mitchell a visit and agrees to help try and catch the Hijacker. Before leaving, Ant-Man takes note that Mitchell happens to have a collection of ancient Inca carvings.

Arriving on the scene, Ant-Man's presence gives the guards on site a sense of relief until Ant-Man is stricken with appendicitis and orders his ants to carry him to a hospital. Feeling as though Ant-Man had failed them, the guards continue on their armored car rounds anyway.

As expected the Hijacker attacks and uses a gas to knock out the truck drivers. As he is using a blow torch to access the money inside the truck, Ant-Man suddenly attacks! In combat, Ant-Man explains that he has a suspicion that the robberies were an inside job so he feigned illness to give the Hijacker the courage to make the theft, while Ant-Man hid on the roof of the truck (using his gas mask to render him immune to the gas.)

Eluding his opponent in the interior and engine of the truck, Ant-Man manages to land on his foe's gas-mask and tear a hole in it big enough for the Hijacker to be affected by his own gas, causing him to pass out. Ant-Man orders his ants to unmask his foe, revealing him to be Howard Mitchell. When the police arrive, Ant-Man explains that he was tipped off that Mitchell was the crook because the statues in Mitchell's office tipped him off about what he knew about the Inca use of sleeping vapors that cause memory loss. Defeated, Mitchell reveals that the reason why he committed the robberies was because his company was losing money and his thefts would recoup the losses, however he never figured Ant-Man would ever get wise to his plot.

Appearing in "I Was Trapped in the Mad Universe!"

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Synopsis for "I Was Trapped in the Mad Universe!"

Tommy Jordan was a boy who one day, returning from school, met some friends and stopped with them to play marbles. During the game he found a marble with changing colors and won the games with it. Returning home, however, he found a boy in the house identical to him, apart from the hairstyle of his hair, who said he was Tommy Jordan and even his parents did not recognize him as their son. Desperate, he went down the street and there he met a man who was asking if anyone had found a strange marble. Tommy said that he had found it, but the man told him that he came from the future and that it was not a marble but a device that was used to pass between dimensions and that Tommy by using it involuntarily had activated it and found himself in an alternative reality practically identical to his. At that point the man made Tommy return to his reality and he happily returned home, not stopping to play but intending to do his school homework.

Appearing in "Bird Talk"

Reprint of the 5th story from
Journey Into Unknown Worlds #50

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Synopsis for "Bird Talk"

Reprint of the 5th story from
Journey Into Unknown Worlds #50
Tony Tipple wanted to have a parakeet, like many of his friends but couldn't afford it. After seeing the evolutions of his friend Toodles Murphy's parakeet, he went home sad but on the way he met a garishly dressed man. Asking him who he was and what he did, the man replied that he was taking a bird census but that of the earphones he used to listen to the birds, one had fallen off and he couldn't find it and the other wasn't working well. After chatting with Tony and giving him some information about birds, the strange man left and soon after Tony found the earpiece that he had lost. By wearing it he discovered that he really could listen to the birds and understand them to the point of being able to make pigeons listen to him, becoming the envy of the other inhabitants of the town. Thanks to this, Tony became a true expert and scholar of ornithology without anyone knowing that he could really talk to birds.

Appearing in "The Worst Man on Earth"

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Synopsis for "The Worst Man on Earth"

A criminal in the year 2000 is sentenced to be exiled from humanity for his various crimes as the death penalty has been abolished. He mocks his accusers since he has prepared a micro-drill built into his finger that will get the door of his cell open eventually. When he does succeed in getting it open, he wishes he hadn't, as it turns out his cell had been placed in orbit around the planet.

Notes

  • "The Worst Man on Earth" is very similar to "Man in the Dark" in Mystic #51.

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