Thursday, June 16, 2016

Reading Room MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLORED WORLDS "Forbidden Formula"

Before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four #13 (1963)...
...there was 
...The Watcher!
We're talking big bald alien in a cloak, part of a legion of cosmic observers keeping an eye on the doings of other races throughout the universe (and, presumably, the multiverse)!
Here's his first (and only, AFAIK) appearance from Charlton's Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #18 (1960)
Unlike Marvel's Watchers, Codin and his fellows deliberately interfere directly with others, albeit surreptitiously.
But, I'm compelled to ask...did this story influence either Stan or Jack several years later when they introduced their Watcher?
Guess we'll never know...

Both the writer and artist of this never-reprinted tale are, ironically, unknown.
(Too bad the Watcher can't tell us...)
The Grand Comics Database speculates the illustrator is Bill Fraccio, a long-time Charlton mainstay who did everything from romance to Westerns to war to sci-fi!

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Thanx for posting!