Still, It's Better Than Our Current Health Care System

Neville Smythe, of the British Explorers' Museum, is on an "investigative mission" in "central Africa." One of their party is severely mauled by a "maddened buffalo" (!).

His injuries are clearly fatal, but they rush him to a nearby village, where Ammortu the witch doctor treats him:


Strange moon, eh?

Success!! And it seems as if he's not the only one Ammortu is healing...

Indeed, Ammortu soon has an entourage of obedient former patients, many of whom are rich and powerful:

So what's the deal? What's up with the "green moon?" How does Ammortu heal the unhealable, and why do they become his slaves??



Whaa??


Now, as plans of alien conquest go, this one has a few problems. I can see starting out with a central African witch doctor as a pilot project, to work the kinks out and make sure the technology works and all.

But seriously--cure all the leaders of all the great nations of Earth? I'm pretty certain that a witch doctor is getting nowhere near POTUS or the head of the Supreme Soviet or...well, you get my drift. Maybe if you recruited the heads of the Mayo Clinic or such...

Of course, that begs the question, if the aliens have these mind control powers, why do they have to act through a surrogate at all? Does it only work on sick people? Can't they beam the world leaders up themselves?

Still, it's a much better plan than the one Smythe comes up with to stop them:




"What will happen?" "I don't know." I DON'T KNOW?!?!?! This is your big plan?? "Bound to have some effect"?!?!?!?! SCIENCE!!!

Still, he's right, you know:

Say what you want about Obamacare--it (probably) won't have witch doctors turning us into mindless zombies so we have to chuck 100 pound chunks of uranium at alien spacecraft. Probably.

From Strange Suspense Stories #9 (1969)