I can become the richest jewel thief in the world! All I have to do is change my appearance after each robbery! This mirror is priceless! 
- —Boris Hann
Appearing in "The Face in the Glass!"
Featured Characters:
- Boris Hann
Other Characters:
- Fuester
- Johan
- Thomas
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Germany
- Miesner
Synopsis for "The Face in the Glass!"
A thief named Boris Hann runs through the streets of a small European village after a robbery. Seeking to evade the police, he takes shelter inside of Johan the Mirror Maker's shop. The police knock on Johan's door, but the craftsman doesn't realize that Boris has snuck into his house. After the police leave, Boris confronts the old man. Johan shows him a magic mirror that can instantly alter his appearance. He gives it to him in exchange for leaving him alone.
Boris takes the mirror and decides to use it as a means for committing more crimes. He has the mirror transform his image into that of a younger man, then breaks into the Furtwanger mansion. The police see Boris as he tries to escape and gives chase. Rushing back to his room, he collides with an elderly man and induces a heart attack.
He gets back to his room and uses the mirror to change his image to that of the old man. As the old man has since died however, the mirror works its magic only too well, as Boris takes on the form of the old man and falls to the floor in a death-like state.
Appearing in "The Next World"
Featured Characters:
- Benton
Antagonists:
- The “Shadowmen”, inhabitants of a parallel world
Other Characters:
- Associates of Benton’s
- Lewis
- Drake
Races and Species:
Locations:
- The “Shadow World”, a parallel Earth
Items:
- Benton’s machine for extracting samples from the “Shadow World”
- A similar machine built by the “Shadowmen”
Synopsis for "The Next World"
A scientist named Benton has built a machine that can extract from a parallel world samples of its life forms. It works by being used upon mirages, which Benton had been laughed at for suggesting are passing images of alternate realities. An experiment in the desert has brought to Earth a bizarre kind of bird, which has proven to his associates Lewis and Drake of the veracity of his theories. But they object to his ruthless intention to next bring a man from the so-called “shadow world”, kidnapping him from a mirage of a massive city nearby. Benton manages to free himself when they tie him up, and attempts to perform the experiment by himself. Instead, he finds himself disappearing from Earth and appearing on the parallel world. Ben at first thinks he had accidentally used the machine on himself, leaving open the possibility that Lewis and Drake will rescue him. He soon realizes the exact same experiment, performed by an even more ruthless team of scientists than he and his associates, had brought him to the world shown by the mirage, when he is approached by a small group of strangely garbed humanoids.
Appearing in "Bedlam in Barnesville"
Featured Characters:
- Hank Brody
Supporting Characters:
- Joe Dillon, the town sheriff
- Liza Barnes, the town matriarch
Antagonists:
- Nick Gabel
Other Characters:
- Citizens of Barnesville
- Ethel Hobson
- Mr. Perkins
- Lem Wilson
- Charlie Ritter
Races and Species:
- Humans
- Termites
Locations:
- United States of America
- Barnesville
Synopsis for "Bedlam in Barnesville"
In the small community of Barnesville, the town bigot and troublemaker Nick Gabel repeatedly attempts people against Hank Brody, a harmless enough old man whose one apparent eccentricity is to toss out breadcrumbs around his lawn only to chase away any birds that come to feed. Although he manages to persuade a few that Brody is a potential maniac and a threat, it’s not enough to follow Gabel’s lead in chasing him out of town, particularly the town sheriff, Joe Dillon, who holds that there’s no evidence connecting Brody to any crimes in the area. Gabel thus begins a campaign of secretly burglarizing his neighbors and accusing the old man of being the thief, quickly turning the panicky townsfolk against the old man.
After a small lynch mob chases Brody out of town, matters actually escalate as entire houses and barns vanish overnight, eventually including that of Gabel himself. It’s then that Dillon finds the stolen items among Gabel’s remaining possessions, which reveals he had performed the crimes to turn the town against Hank Brody. Things return to normal, except for the mystery of the missing buildings… which are revealed to have been devoured by the termites Hank Brody had befriended and had been feeding breadcrumbs.
Appearing in "Hallucination"
Featured Characters:
- Cooper
Supporting Characters:
- Doctor Morse
Antagonists:
- Unidentified, disembodied aliens
- Torg
- Torg’s superior
Other Characters:
- Dr. Morse’s nurse
- Dr. Blake
- Dr. Shaw
Races and Species:
Locations:
- United States of America
- “State Hospital for the Insane”
Synopsis for "Hallucination"
A man named Cooper talks to a doctor of being beset by voices and other sensations that terrify him, but Dr. Morse dismisses them as hallucinations. Cooper goes to bed in a hospital room, but is awakened a fresh new set of terrifying thoughts and voices. Confronting Morse along with a group of other doctors, he claims to have been in contact with an alien that’s examining Earth to see if it’s worth invading. The doctors struggle with Cooper as he grows agitated and violent, and given him a tranquilizer that knocks him out. As he sleeps, however, a disembodied aline being leaves his body and flits up into space. There, the alien Torg reports that Earth had humans that are physically perfect to perform the labor for them, but the sample he possessed showed that human minds were too disorganized and irrational, disqualifying them for invasion; the two aliens then flit off into space to look for another planet. Back on Earth, Morse and his associates discuss Cooper’s case, dismissing his ramblings about an alien invasion as yet another set of fantasies for the years-long mental patient., as they leave their hospital, which is a mental sanitarium.
Appearing in "The Enemy!"
Featured Characters:
Other Characters:
- A movie film crew
Races and Species:
Locations:
- A cave in an unidentified location
Items:
- A life-sized robotic dinosaur
Synopsis for "The Enemy!"
A thunderstorm over a remote mountainous region sends a lightning bolt into a cave, where it happens to strike a long-buried dinosaur egg. This galvanizes the creature inside to gestate in modern times, and in time a ‘Tyrannosaurus rex’ hatches. Growing to maturity within the cave, it eventually lumbers out of the cave and begins hunting. It encounters another dinosaur which it fights, and flees when it proves unable to harm it. Returning to its cave, the ‘T. rex’ causes an avalanche to occur as it enters, burying the cave’s entrance. Meanwhile, a film crew is left bewildered by the appearance – and disappearance – of a second animatronic dinosaur.
Appearing in "Lucille's Robot"
Adventures into Weird Worlds #19
(originally printed as The Empty Room)
Synopsis for "Lucille's Robot"
Adventures into Weird Worlds #19
(originally printed as The Empty Room)
- Synopsis not yet written
Appearing in "Hiding Place"
Featured Characters:
- Richard Baldwin
Antagonists:
- Herb Baldwin
- Larry Stoner
- Dave Morgan
- Steve Lowry
Other Characters:
- {{m|William Shakespeare))
- Matt Turner, vice-president of the bank (deceased)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- United States of America
- Fleet City
- Richard Baldwin’s workshop
- Fleet City Federal Bank and Trust
- Big Ace Club
- Fleet City
- South America
- Brazil
- Sao Paulo
- Amazon River
- A jungle
- Brazil
Items:
- Richard Baldwin’s electronic retriever, a space/time-viewing device
Synopsis for "Hiding Place"
Professional lowlife Herb Baldwin goes begging for another handout from his genius inventor cousin Richard, who’s created a device for viewing events – and even retrieving items – from across space and time. Rather than listen to his cousin’s advice, Herb made plans to use the electronic retriever to uncover a cache of stolen money, specifically money that had been embezzled from the local bank about ten years ago, only to be lost in the South American jungle. Breaking into Richard’s workshop that night, Herb was able to figure out how to work the retriever, eventually spying on the bank’s vice-president as he buried the money in the jungles along the Amazon River and make a map of the location.
Rather than use the retriever’s function to steal the money itself, Herb instead grabs the map, then enlists his underworld gambling associates to finance a trip to Brazil to recover the money. Fearful it’s just a scam to run off with their money for the expedition, the gamblers join Herb on his trip to Brazil. However, just as Herb and his associates arrived in the jungle, Richard returned from visiting the patent office in Washington, D.C., and found that his electronic retriever had been operated while he was away. Using the time and place settings left by Herb, Richard is able to deduce his cousin’s plans and uses the retriever to steal back the map, leaving the criminals lost in the jungle and blaming Herb for their misfortune. Back in America, Troubled by the misuse of his machine, Richard then destroyed the electronic retriever rather than risk it being used for evil purposes ever again.
Notes
- "The Face in the Glass!" is reprinted in The Frankenstein Monster #10.
- "The Next World" reprinted in Giant-Size Chillers #2
- This issue includes a two-page text story entitled "Lucille's Robot".
