TRULY GONE&FORGOTTEN: WHAM-O GIANT COMICS PRESENTS THE UNHUMANS / THE STELLAR APES

The Unhumans
(w/a John Ushler)

Dell/Disney artist John Ushler pops up with a bit of a Body Snatcher story around the middle of the tabloid. Mike bates is a Public Relations Man for Dane Chemical Company, but he's noticed some unusual changes lately. For one thing, his best pal Carl has been avoiding him for weeks -- and he's even forgotten about their favorite restaurant, Excello's! We should go there, it sounds excellent.

Even Carl's wife and child have noticed something different, and the family dog tried to bite him! Listen, I know this from watching far too many movies and reading far too many comics: Light Carl on fire now and save yourself the headache.

Mike begins to investigate on his own, but this snooping leads him back to the office where a secret, late-night meeting is in full effect. Pretty much every other high-ranking member of the company is there, and they hush up as soon as Mike shows up. I know what this is, they're planning a surprise party!

Mike follows the group to their next destination, which is a spooky meeting with Lovecraftian elements. When Mike is detected, he's attacked by a dog with no mouth. How does he smell? Just fine, his nose is fine, there is nothing wrong with his nose. Also, he explodes when he misses attacking Mike and accidentally jumps in the window, killing all the weird employees.

Turns out that the whole thing is a plan by the race of aliens called The Chiron, who are replacing prominent Earthlings with androids. The lead Chiron is hiding as the butler of the owner of the chemical plant, and it is genuinely hilarious when he says "Now I'm Roy." Haha, okay alien dude, very intimidating.

Mike throws an Arnold Palmer or something on Roy, which causes him to melt because "it is acid to a Chiron!" Me too, man, four years sober last December. Plus at the end an FBI agent shows up, exceptionally too late for the party. The end.

The Stellar Apes
(w/a Dennis Ellefson)

I feel like there's a joke with the name for this one, but I cannot decipher it. If you have any ideas, write them down on the back on an envelope which you've already addressed and stamped for sending to someone else, then let them deal with it.

Like, I get how these are the stellar apes, that much I got.

The story involves a crew of galactic explorers landing on a strange, seemingly-uninhabited moon. Further explorations reveal a race of gliding gorillas who live on a sort-of honeycomb of mucus. Also, they are tremendously vicious and murder a bunch of the astronauts.

Despite counting a bunch of "APNERS" (That's Anti-Personal [sic] Nuclear Energy Ray Rifles) among their arsenal, the surviving astronauts end up hiding out in a cave until a better plan occurs to them. Turns out that the stellar apes are hypnotized by one astronaut's harmonica playing, are fooled by old-fashioned tape recorders mimicking human voices, and are easily blinded by the flash of a camera. When did these guys go to space, exactly, uh ... 1967? Yes, apparently. Either that or they raided a Rite-Aid in the modern day (I swear, some Rite-Aids still carry blank audio cassettes. It's a miracle).

Anyway, the twist is that harmonicas are better than nuclear guns, no matter how anti-personal they may be.

I think he's just amazed at how shitty you are at it.