The Man in the Sky!
Release: April 3, 1962
Cover: July 1962
12 cents
Credits: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
5 pages
I read this story in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus vol. 1.
This is one of my all-time favorite story tropes; has been ever since I read my first X-Men comic 28 years ago. Though my first encounter with it would probably be the film Escape to Witch Mountain I saw as a young child.
The basic idea is that there is a child or children with special abilities, and there is a place where they gather together in secret. Perhaps they have a teacher. Perhaps there are competing teachers, each trying to recruit them. Perhaps they encounter prejudice from people who fear them.
The earliest example of the trope I’m aware of is the 1953 novel Children of the Atom by Wilmar Shiras, adapted from her short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction going back to “In Hiding” from 1948. It concerns the children of workers exposed to a nuclear explosion. Their abilities aren’t as flashy as those of the X-Men; they are just intelligent, but inhumanly so. A teacher gathers them together in an exclusive school, and they must confront the fear and prejudice the outside world directs toward them. Marvel’s X-Men were nicknamed “Children of the Atom” in a nod to their debt to the seminal work.
Also in 1953 is Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, which grew out of his 1952 novella “Baby is Three”. This concerns a group of children with unique abilities who find each other and band together. Only when they realize their abilities allow them to form together as one hive mind uber-being are they contacted by others like them, and invited to come join the larger community of uber-beings.
In film, there’s the aforementioned Escape to Witch Mountain from 1975. Two children with psychic powers find their way to a sanctuary in Witch Mountain and learn they are not alone. It’s based on the 1968 novel by Alan Key, which I have not read, but should.
In 1978, Brian de Palma directed The Fury (based on the novel by John Farris), about a girl with psychic powers who goes to live in an institute that can help her, but soon discovers sinister motives. Cronenberg’s 1981 film Scanners has two competing groups attempting to recruit the titular psychic scanners. The 2006 film Ugly Swans concerns some grotesquely deformed people and a school for gifted children, based on the novel by Arkady and Boris Stugatsky (who also wrote Stalker). More recently, the young adult sci-fi thriller Darkest Minds has been adapted to film, again involving two competing groups seeking to recruit super-powered children.
I’m always on the lookout for other X-Men-like stories in comic, book, or film. Three of the above movies were based on books I should seek out.
Before X-Men, Marvel came out with this story about Tad Carter, a mutant with telepathic and telekinetic powers. Perhaps Marvel’s first mutant. Like the kids from Children of the Atom, the source of his powers is radiation his father was exposed to. He attemps to use his gifts to better mankind, but his efforts soon fall prey to fear and prejudice. He receives a psychic summons from a hidden community of mutants, awaiting the day when mankind is ready for the help they can offer.
Marvel is famous for having many titles which can be easily mistaken for having pornographic content; we will encounter many such. “Amazing Adult Fantasy” could be easily misinterpreted. Stan Lee just meant that these stories were smarter, more sophisticated. Short tales of science fiction and fantasy aimed at the thinkers. He was right. The series started as “Amazing Adventures” and told more routine fare of monster and mystical stories, but was notable for introducing Dr. Droom, who we will see later. With issue 7, it changed its name and focus to sophisticated short tales. Stan Lee put out 9 excellent and brilliant comics in collaboration with Steve Ditko. It truly was the “magazine that respects your intelligence”. However, the series was short-lived. This is the last issue with the name “Amazing Adult Fantasy”. Its next and final issue will simply be called “Amazing Fantasy”. We may check out a story from that issue.
Steve Ditko. After Kirby, he is the biggest name amongst the ’60s Marvel artists. The two of them are two of the biggest names in American comics, ever. Kirby is the more famous and well-regarded of the two, it seems. But Ditko is by far my favorite. I think Ditko was a genius. This series is one of the best showcases of his genius and this story as good as any of them.
Ditko was an objectivist, who believed in the philosophy put forth by Ayn Rand. This becomes more obvious in some his later work, in which he had complete creative control. But I sometimes have trouble seeing it in his collaborations with Stan Lee, which often put forth ideas I don’t find very Randian at all. But you see hints of it here. There is a superior person who wants to help people, but people are too jealous of his superiority to accept.
It’s an oddity to this story that the super-powered human is rejected to the point where he feels he needs to go hide in a secret colony. That’s in contrast with the seeming celebrity status of the Fantastic Four. It almost suggests these stories don’t belong in the same world, because they almost seem contradictory. But Marvel will soon introduce X-Men, mutant superheroes who are hated and feared for being mutants. And it will intertwine their stories with superheroes like the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, cheered and loved for their powers.
How do we reconcile this? Can people hold such irrationally contradictory views?
Well, yes. They can.
Other stories in this issue are: “Beware the Giants!”; “What Happened in the Wax Museum?”; and, “Footsteps at Midnight!”
Rating: ★★★★☆, 72/100
Significance: ★★☆☆☆
I’m pretty much always gonna be a sucker for Ditko art, and this is him at the top of his game. As for the story, everything I love about the hundreds of issues of X-Men I have read basically gets covered here.
Characters:
- Tad Carter
Minor characters
- Brad Carter (father)
- Mutant who contacts Tad
Story notes:
- Table of contents for issue calls the story “Man in Space”; likely a mistake
#11 story in reading order
Next: Incredible Hulk #2
Previous: Tales to Astonish #32, Story C
