Strange Adventures #8

Cover Artist: Win Mortimer.

The City Zoo is all a'buzz when it is discovered that one of its apes can talk! The ape pleads with the crowd that he is not just a talking ape, but a scientist named Ralph Gains who has had his brain trapped inside the body of a gorilla. Finally, the gorilla convinces Ralph's sister, Ruth that he is really who he says.

But... (shock-o-la!) he is not! (Gasp!)

It turns out that the gorilla is really petty crook, Johnny Farrel! Johnny happens to be old friends with Ralph Gains (go figure), who shows Johnny the Evolution Machine he's just invented. The Evolution Machine uses cosmic rays to speed up the evolutionalry changes of any creature,and Ralph has a goofy lookin' cat-from-the-future to prove it. Johnny acidentally kills Ralph while begging him to turn him into "a man of the future-- a super being with the mind of a genius!" So Johnny operates the machine himself (how hard could it be?) and turns himself into the "man of the future," with golden skin and super strength. With his new found power, Johnny easily commits many crimes, gathering "rubies from India, pearls from the South Seas, emeralds from Spain, and diamonds from South Africa." But Johnny isn't satisfied, and goes back to the Evolution Machine, and evolves himself ten million years, where he becomes a pink skinned, bug eyed alien with antennae and... a cape! With the antennae, he can tune in on every human thought, and learns of safe combinations and secret war weapons. But again, Johnny can't stop himself! He goes back in the Evolution Machine and sets it ahead a million billion years, where he becomes a giant brain, who can travel time and space by pure thought. But being godlike isn't what Johnny really wanted; he just wants to be a master criminal. But Johnny has gone so far forward in evolution, that he starts back at the beginning of time, and becomes a giant goopy amoeba. He must keep going forward in the machine to return himself to a normal man. By the time he evolves himself in to being a gorilla, the machine burns itself out! He tries to disguse himself in a trenchcoat, but is soon discovered to be a gorilla and is put in the zoo. After proving his (false) identity to Ruth, he's allowed to go home, but soon after his release his mind starts turning to that of a gorilla, and all he wants to do is eat bananas. So, Johnny is returned to the zoo, where he curses his existance, "Bars! Like the bars of a jail! All of my life I was too smart to get caught and this is the way I wind up...!"

Remeber kids, crime dosn't pay!