Tales to Astonish #2

Tales to Astonish number 2 is a bit of an improvement over the first issue - the stories are a little less predictable - though you'll still guess the ending of a few - such as the cover story, "My Job: Capture a Martian!", where a private investigator is hired at $50/day (a large sum in those days), to find a Martian on Earth - the presumption of course being that any Martian on Earth must have ill-intentions.

All the stories are science fiction here - no fantasy (though by modern science standards, they might be considered fantasy) - but they hold up surprisingly well on the science front - it's the characters and plot that come across pretty wooden.

The art is actually pretty good too - it's clear that Marvel was intending to raise the bar on science fiction comics before its focus shifted to superheroes.