Data courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under Creative Commons license.

Issue Details

Issue #20
Published June 1961
Frequency monthly
Cover Price 0.10 USD
Pages 36
Editing Stan Lee
Notes Distributed to newstands in March 1961. This issue includes 10 pages of paid advertisements. Distribution date from Joseph Marek's Marvel Comics Group history website.

Cover Details - I Was Hunted By "X" the Thing That Lived!!

Characters X
Genre monsters
Pencils Jack Kirby
Inks Dick Ayers ?; Jack Kirby ?
Notes Nick Caputo suggested the possibility of the Kirby inks credit via the GCD Error List (30 January 2009).
Reprinted in Fear (Marvel, 1970 series) #2 (January 1971); in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish (Marvel, 2006 series) #2 (2008)

18 page story What Was "X" the Thing That Lived!

Characters Charles Bentley; X (introduction, origin)
Synopsis A comic writer's monsters keep coming to life, until he creates one that can't be defeated. The monster is unstoppable physically, but he wills it out of existance.
Genre monsters
Pencils Jack Kirby
Inks Dick Ayers
Notes Narrated in the first person. This story is divided into four untitled parts (5 pp, 5 pp, 3 pp, 5 pp). X next appears in Alpha Flight (Marvel, 1997 series) #17 (December 1998).
Reprinted in Fear (Marvel, 1970 series) #2 (January 1971); in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish (Marvel, 2006 series) #2 (2008)

2 page text story "Odd Skills"

Characters Jim Branner; Bill Toney
Synopsis The manager of an auto parts shop develops a sudden tolerance for "human variation" in parts, possibly linked to otherworldly strangers in the shop at night.
Genre science fiction
Pencils Joe Maneely
Inks Joe Maneely
Letters typeset
Notes Text story with illustration.
Reprinted from Journey Into Mystery (Marvel, 1952 series) #34 (May 1956)

5 page story "One-Way Journey!"

Characters Adam Gree
Synopsis A heartless tycoon spends great resources and eliminates jobs in order to build a machine that will transport him forty years into the future from the current moment to one forty years hence because his scientists have predicted an end to disease, war, and poverty in the year 2001, but he neglects to consider his body will age forty years in what seems to his mind merely an instant and since the machine has only enough power to move forward the one time he's lost most of the years of his life.
Genre science fiction
Pencils Steve Ditko
Inks Steve Ditko
Reprinted in Fear (Marvel, 1970 series) #2 (January 1971); in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish (Marvel, 2006 series) #2 (2008)