*Ack!* Those things are just WRONG. This story appeared in MISTER MYSTERY# 7, September 1952. Basil Wolverton had a distinctive style like no other, it had texture and solidity that made it seem both unreal and convincing. He's mostly remembered for his twisted distorted portraits that appeared in MAD and DC's PLOP, as well as trading cards. Odd stuff. He also wrote and drew POWERHOUSE PEPPER, which used more alliteration per page than anything in history. Later in life, he did religious art that seems to concentrate on the coming apocalypse and it's as unsettling as you might expect.Earthmen Rod Crenshaw and Reese Bitner make a crashed landing on Venus, slamming down on the dense mysterious jungle. Not wearing any restraint belts (of course a 1950s comic), Bitner dies from a broken neck in the crash. Oh well, Crenshaw thinks and goes out to clear the encroaching fungus off the ship and make repairs. Then he notices some native life forms that are a bit unusual.
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I imagine the inspiration for these Brain Bats came from an old Edgar Rice Burroughs story, one of the Barsoom books where John Carter met these varmints that were parasitic heads which attached themselves to headless bodies and used them as steeds. Creepy no matter where the idea came from. FUTURAMA did a twist on this, with some space blobs that fastened themselves to people's heads and took over their minds. Crenshaw suffers thirst and anxiety as the Brain Bats hurry the ship back to Earth, eager to start proliferating. All those nice useful human bodies to kill and reanimate, it's like a dream come true for them. At the last minute, Crenshaw figures a way to make the spaceship crash (again!) in the hopes of killing off the Brain Bats even if it means sacrificing himself. No such luck.