Strange Tales #103

Prisoner of the fifth dimension

By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: Xemu

Guest Appearances: Reed Richards

So, What Happens?

A new housing development keeps losing buildings, each night a new house sinks into the swamp, the only lead being a local crackpot insisting it is the work of swamp demons.

Johnny investigates and spots a pair of aliens, working together with the crackpot, causing the houses to sink with a ray cannon.

He is soon captured by the crackpot, a disguised alien it transpires, and taken to their dimension where they plan an invasion of Earth.

The Torch is soon freed from captivity by Valeria, a local revolutionary working on overthrowing the leader Xemu. The torch lends his powers to the fight and is soon destroying tanks and using sky-writing to provoke a general revolt. Valeria is suitably impressed but, with the battle won, the Torch wants to return home to Earth and his school lessons.

So is it any good?:

As is so often the case I liked some of the art but was let down by the story.

I actually quite liked the alien revolution aspect of it with the feisty Valeria rescuing and falling for the Torch. It’s just that this storyline grows out of a Scooby Doo ‘swamp demons are making the houses sink’ mystery story with aliens wearing rubber face masks to appear human.

Once the Torch gets into the 5th Dimension it’s fairly good with Xemu coming across as a fairly competent villain and Kirby having fun with the alien technology. For a change it is actually the Torch who battles the bad guys, he doesn’t rely on his sister or the police and he uses his powers in quite inventive ways without coming out with some new usage as a Deus Ex Machina.

It’s not a good story by any means but there are a lot worse ones in the run.

Are there any goofy moments?

The old man insisting that swamp demons have sunk the houses is pretty funny.

I also liked the magnet tanks that have huge magnets on the end of giant arms and can attract all sorts of non-ferrous things.

The Torch brushes Valeria off as quickly as possible then goes back to Earth and dreams about her. He’s a little mixed up.

Trivia:

The 5th Dimension reappeared, with Xemu back in power, in a storyline running through most of 1975’s Fantastic Four issues. I haven’t read them yet so I can’t really comment on them. It got dragged into a conflict with Polemachus and the Torch got to be briefly reunited with Valeria who in fact is the most memorable part of this story.

Is It a Landmark?:

No.

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