Savage Tale

Sunday Al Williamson Surprise. 

  To do this weekly serialisation of all of the 100+ short stories Al Williamson did for Timely/Atlas (the later Marvel) in the second half of the fifties, I rely on several sources, but the most important one is the Atlas Tales website, which lists all of the stories done for Timely between the forties to the sixties along with any information available about publication, page numbers, artists, job numbers and anythign extra. I was one of several people who provided information for that site back when I still had 70% of all the Timely/Atlas titles. And I still send corrections and suggestions whenever I come across something. 

 One of the great things about the site is that they name the contributors of the information, so you can work out for yourself who you trust or not. Our next story is one that is credited to Al Williamson on Atlastales and The Grand Comics Database as being drawn and inked by Williamson. The Atlastales credit comes from John Vadebonceur Jr., the greates art spotter around (as he will be happy to tell you). Still I have my doubts. I can see traces of Williamson's involvement, but it is unsigned and it lacks some of his typical florishes of that stage of his career (such as the borderless panels). On the other hand, I don't recognize some of the usual suspects for the inking (such as Gray Morrow) - although Angelo Torres could have been involved.

On the other hand, it may also be a case of Williamson inking someone else. As previous posts have show, he was not above signing it if he had a different inker, but the other way around? The story itself is (which from his own records is confirmed to be by Carl Wessler) culturally interesting, because it features jungle savages, a man changing his skin to to look like them and a very culturally insensitive ending.