In June 1960, when I was 6, I remember suddenly being struck by the realization of what Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko were doing, month after month: they were simply taking every substance imaginable — every animal, mineral, and vegetable — and turning it into a giant monster.
The cover that tipped me off was Tales of Suspense 12, featuring the water monster Gor-Kill. Nearby on the newsstand were Strange Tales 78, featuring a giant crab-like Martian; Journey Into Mystery 61, spotlighting a giant mummy named Gomdulla; and Tales to Astonish 13, starring a giant tree creature named Groot, the Monster from Planet X.
Wood, water, fire, stone, shadow, smoke, whatever — every material eventually got its turn at proclaiming its omnipotence and threatening humanity at the company that would be Marvel.
Why all these giant monsters? In part because, like superheroes, they provided a power fantasy to children, compensating them for their smallness. And in part, also, because they are literally awesome.
“In an experiment to study awe, subjects were asked to stare at a seven-meter-high Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur skeleton for one minute,” noted psychologist Jonathan Myers. “A second group (was) asked to stare at an empty hall. Those who stared at the dinosaur were more likely than the other group to see themselves as connected to something beyond their immediate concerns, to something bigger than themselves. And when people feel part of a greater whole that changes how they interact with the world and the people around them, as well as alters their values.
“Studies like this begin to shed light on why our minds are geared to see monsters in the way they do. And why, for example, these great creatures are such a recurring theme of children’s toys, as well as why a similar kind of overwhelming feeling of awe is promoted when we look at the Grand Canyon or down on our Earth from space, as astronauts report experiencing. Something changes in our perspective; it’s meant to. The brain wants sensory stimulation, new thoughts to exercise it – even from TV and movies – but with an inherent richness of overwhelmingly strong content, this is like having a banquet as opposed to a meal.”
Gor-Kill may have supplied the awe, but irony offered satisfaction in the simple seven-page story.
When an intelligent alien gas drifting through space drops into the water supply of a Polish village, the thing finds itself able to animate the water.
The villagers identify the 50-foot creature with “Gor-Kill,” a legendary water demon, and only one of them — a ne’er-do-well named Hans Grubnik — has the insight to understand how Gor-Kill might be neutralized. Grubnik uses dynamite to disperse Gor-Kill just before he can reach the ocean and become all-powerful. So instead of rising to become a global threat, Gor-Kill falls as a gentle rain.
And is Grubnik cheered for his heroism? No. Instead, the scoffing villagers imprison him for having stolen the dynamite that rescued them.
Grubnik had saved the planet, yet despite that he’d be despised and denounced — a central theme Lee would revisit with a new character called Spider-Man exactly two years later.
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