I have posted, at least twice, over the years about a comic story I remember reading as a young child, but have totally forgotten most of the details about in the intervening years- I recall it being a S-F story about a formerly benevolent ruler named "Talos" who became corrupt and evil, and that it was most likely from before I was born in 1960. That, and it was lettered by the then-ubitiquous A. Machine. There was one panel which showed the globe, and a bunch of radio towers (you know, you used to see this in the movies a lot back in the day), broadcasting the news that "Talos is dead". But I couldn't remember much of anything else, who drew, wrote, or even published it, and it was bugging me.
Nobody seemed to know, not my good pal Dave (who knows a LOT about old comics), not the old-comics enthusiasts on a couple of message boards I posted to while I was searching.
However, I do believe I have cracked the case! And I have the most excellent Mr. Door Tree, he of the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog, to thank. Mr. D.Tree posted one of the other stories I recall from that long-lost comic today, a retelling of the Native American legend of the Maid of the Mist...and it was credited to the above comic, Strange Worlds #6, published by Avon Comics in late 1951 or early 1952. When I saw this, I went straight to the GCDB, and found the page for this comic...and lo and behold, the second tale in this multi-story collection was a little opus entitled "The Man Who Owned the Earth"- they don't have any other information except the title, no writer or artist or synopsis or anything...but this CAN'T be a coincidence! It must be my long-sought childhood memory comic! Woo hoo! Clinching it for me was the listing of another story in this book, "Wrath of the Totem", which featured an (animated, I believe) totem pole which really gave me the creeps. This HAS to be the one!
Now what I was doing in possession of a comic book that was published a good eight years before I came into existence, I can't say- perhaps it was in a stack of comics my folks bought for me, perhaps at one of the old country grocery stores my Dad used to call on in his job as a wholesale grocery salesman. I'd love to own a copy someday, but I'm sure they're quite expensive...a cursory search on the eBay turned up nothing, but I found an auction site offering it for $73, kinda out of my range to say the least. Hopefully, someone will post scans of it someday for download. But, until then, at least I believe that I have at last found the answer to something which has been bugging me for quite a while now!
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