The Blue Glass Bottle

History: The mysterious Blue Glass Bottle was rumored to be buried in Asia by Gulliver from the land of Lilliput, and was found by the sinister Elias Dane. Dane brought it back to America, to his curio shop. He tested its powers on the first customer who came into his shop, a girl. As the girl held the bottle, the light shining through the glass caused her to shrink in size and she was trapped in the bottle. Wanting to see if the bottle's spell worked on men, Dane tried it on a man who came into his shop. The man also shrank, and was imprisoned in the bottle with the girl. Dane told the shrunken couple of his plans to use the bottle's power to menace the world. The man borrowed the girl's pocket mirror and reflected light into Dane's eyes, blinding him. Dane dropped the bottle, shattering it into fragments. The man and the girl returned to their normal size, and looked down to see Dane shrinking smaller and smaller. Seeing there was nothing they could do to help Dane, the two left together as Dane shrank out of existance.

Height: 6 in.
Demonstrated Powers: The Blue Glass Bottle could shrink people by exposing them to the light passing through the bottle's glass, and the people would be trapped within the bottle.

Dane claimed the bottle had other powers:

1. It could shrink and then enlarge objects by focusing light through the prisms.

2. By shining light through the bottle when it was filled with water, it could change three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional objects.

3. By holding the magic prisms at an angle, it could reproduce an image of the Earth, thus creating a duplicate elsewhere.

However, none of these abilities were actually demonstrated, only shown as part of Dane's imagination.

Those Pym particles, they turn up everywhere, don't they? Even on the island of Lilliput, where they created an entire ecosystem of miniature life-forms … .

Actually the idea is pretty good - well, you could make something out of it. Last seen, Gulliver was used in Alan Moores “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. While other cross-connected literary references DO exist in old Marvel stories, there still is huge amount of literature from the 18th, 19th and 20th Century full of gorgeous ideas, waiting to be harvested…

Revisiting this idea I wonder… are there any other old comic stories with ideas related to literature? If the Blue Glass Bottle comes from Liliput, does that mean all of Gullivers' Tales are true? Are the countries he visited in any way related to other Marvel concepts? And what of other strange journeys reported?

See the entry for The Martian Plant Creature from the story “The Sacrifice!” - it tells of a previous civilization of humanoids on the planet Mars — could they be the descendants of the Martians encountered by Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter and Edwin Arnold's Gullivar Jones?

To Axel: There was also an earlier story from Astonishing #60 (April 1957) (reprinted in Chamber of Chills #13) - “Trapped By the Little Men” - wherein a descendent of Gulliver was visited by Liliputians.

Dear John, just found your two postings. Thank you very much for all of this. This is just plain fun. And now I'm gonna try to find more on these stories… maybe someone should try to connect these Liliputians to the various shrinking ray gizmos that have appeared all over the Marvel Universe and connect all of this to the “Pym Particles”. Yeah, that sounds like fun… Oh well, thanks again… gotta run… there's a dollman on the rampage in my brain…

Axel: and you could also include the “Teeny-Weeny People” (which were seen in Captain America #69), maybe they were Lilliputians as well.
see “The Man in the Ant Hill” profile for other shrinking characters

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY#19 has a story called 'the little things' and has the title characters in bottles,you have mentioned several other stories from the 50s pre code era,being done again,this is a story that…..well the resemblances are hard to ignore,and if you dont believe me go to the gcbd for a coverscan.PS. why dont you include the early 50s monsters and horror characters from books like SUSPENSE and ADVENTURES INTO WEIRD WORLDS,UNCANNY TALES,ADVENTURES INTO TERROR etc. they should count as marvel monsters since some,like the headmen members have been brought into continuity,and dont lie and say you only use kirby monsters,you included a ditko monster:the swamp aliens and missed one of kirbys others…….5 points to the fan who can guess which one im talking about(HINT:SEE:MARVEL 5 FABULOUS DECADES OF THE WORLDS GREATEST COMICS PG.78)

Strange Tales vol.1#35(4/55)has a story called”The Man In The Bottle”;seen on the cover[www.comics.org/details.lasso?id=12008].

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