From the first, Marvel Comics regularly repeated an anti-prejudice theme (except where “Reds” were concerned, of course).
Again and again, Marvel’s science fiction stories would echo the theme sounded in the 1951 Robert Wise film The Day the Earth Stood Still — that our unreasoning fear and hatred of the unknown only ends up hurting those who are trying to help us.
In writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko’s little back-pager Monsters on Mercury (Journey Into Mystery 78, March 1962), astronauts arrive on the planet Mercury and are immediately terrified by the appearance of huge, looming native inhabitants, whom they fire upon.
Ditko’s design for the massive monsters was arresting, as his designs so often were. They had long horizontal slits for eyes (the better to guard them against the huge Mercurial sun?).
Retreating to a shelter, the astronauts are further frightened when they sense the creatures telepathically invading their thoughts. The story ends when the aliens decorate a large conical stone with small colorful rocks, creating a symbolic image of the Christmas tree they’ve seen in the astronauts’ minds. That gesture of peace and understanding finally convinces the astronauts they were wrong in their panicked reaction to the creatures’ appearance.
Journey Into Mystery 78 was on the newsstands alongside Fantastic Four 3, which featured another misunderstood monster, the Thing. Two months later, another of them would make his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk 1.
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