House of Mystery #149 (Mar.'65)

An unusual turn in "The Man-Thing That Unearthed Secrets," had Diabolu zapping a loser named "Driftwood" Dagan, who then turned into a giant mole to dig up a child's buried "treasure." That was a test run before Dagan transformed into a steel screw against his will and drilled into the side of a building to swipe a time "scroll" (or capsule.) Returning to normal, Driftwood was arrested for defacing public property. That didn't last long, as he was forced to break out as a giant vulture that shot fire from its wings. With a power like that, you just knew the Manhunter would soon appear and be felled by it. Little Zook's body ballooned up, then expelled a gust of air (and presumably, a monster lugee) to cushion the powerless Martian's fall.

At least MM managed to snag a bill from the bag the vulture had uncovered, and concluded the money was from a recent payroll robbery just from the serial number. Like Martian Super-Breath, Martian mega memory was overused in spurts. Manhunter used his photographic memory to recall a page from the "Crutch (I mean Book) of Diabolu." He gathered that the Idol-Head was empowering Dugan to find the "Witch Doctor's Tomahawk of Evil," but something was derailing its efforts.

All that detective work led to a giant winged caterpillar pilfering gold bullion from the military. Zook froze the giant bug, which released the gold bars from hundreds of legs to rain down over the heads of Army soldiers charged with guarding the loot. Martian Super Speed allowed our hero to catch all the bars, but not to capture the creature. As a giant weasel (Yes, giant again. They wrote it, all right? I've got a thesaurus,) the drifter broke into the Manhunter's secret cave. Knowing this, Manhunter used this precious time while the plunderer was distracted to fashion and bury a fake evil tomahawk. Finding the forgery, Driftwood reverted back to normal. The full moon faded into a sunny morning, and all was well...except that the Manhunter lost the cover spot of HoM this month and the next. This one was of course drawn by Joe Certa and probably scripted by Dave Wood, though it's understandable if he'd demand to be let off due to reasonable doubt.