AMAZING STORIES OF SUSPENSE #150...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

Saw this comic on eBay recently and it rang a bell in my memory.  I'm pretty sure I must have had it back around the mid-'70s so I bought it as a replacement to add to my collection of ALAN CLASS comics, most of which (12 to be precise) are the original issues I owned at the time.  I think that now brings my collection up to 16, but I'll probably add a few more as and when I see ones that interest me.

I really enjoyed most of the stories in this ish, but there's one which is a real clunker, called 'OPEN WIDER, PLEASE!', which relates the tale of a man who visits a dentist as he has "severe toothache".  The dentist examines his teeth and discovers "quite a cavity" and proceeds to try and give him a filling (behave yourselves), only to find that several drills keep breaking on his teeth as they're "super strong".  We may be forgiven for wondering how he got a cavity then.

Turns out there's two reasons for wondering, as it transpires that the patient is a Martian robot spy and the dentist is a Venusian robot spy (disguised as humans), whose home planets each have designs on conquering Earth.  But since when did robots with super strong teeth develop cavities, and how could one have severe toothache?  And a robot who goes to the dentist?  He knows he's a robot, so It's completely absurd on every level as he'd surely realise that a dentist could do nothing for him and that he'd be found out?

I don't know who wrote it, but it has some decent art by DON HECK, despite the story being contrived beyond what is sensible, reasonable, or logical (a three-pronged synonymous attack, just to drive my point home).  In fact, it could rightly be said that the plot has "quite a cavity".  As I said though, the other strips were entertaining, with art by JACK KIRBY and STEVE DITKO (and others), so it's an issue worth having.

Oh, go on then - read the story for yourself and judge how daft it is.

A robot with toothache?  Now I've heard everything!

Surely the dentist, also being a robot, likewise has a lifeless, expressionless
face and unblinking eyes?  Why isn't the other robot suspicious of him?

He's a robot - why did he even go to a dentist in the first place?

Presumably, Martians and Venusians used the same robot design -
otherwise where did he know where the control stud would be?

Doesn't look the same design as the other one though, eh?