Number 891


Dancing the roomba with Moomba


Today's posting is courtesy of Pappy's readers John Kaminski and Jim Sharpe. John was kind enough to pass along a request to Jim to scan the first two pages of "The Unbelievable Menace of Moomba" from Tales To Astonish #23, and as a bonus they sent the entire story, "The Strange Fate Of the Statue Maker" from Tales To Astonish #34.

You can see from this scan of my copy of TTA #23 why I needed help with the splash and second page.

Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers drew the story. I get a kick out of Moomba not because it's a monster story (typical for the era), but because of the title. Marvel used some creative names for the monsters: Vandoom, Fin Fang Foom, Groot, and my favorite, Tim Boo Ba. "Moomba" is in that rich tradition of ridiculous sobriquets with the "oo" sound.

"The Strange Fate Of the Statue Maker", drawn by Kirby and Paul Reinman, has a typically outrageous plot: inventor builds ray that turns the living into stone.* What got my attention wasn't that silliness, but the ad the scientist placed, "Wanted -- Sculptor's Model. Must be without friends or family." A girl would be really smart to answer that ad, wouldn't she?

Thanks, John and Jim.





















*A short-sighted businessman, he rejects his own invention as a failure, when the military would have paid anything for a ray that could turn enemy soldiers to stone.