The Ghost Bell of Terror Valley!

I've been promising to post a horror western tale for a few a months now (per request), so here's a good'un from Bobby Benson's B-BAR-B Riders Vol. 1 #14 from 1952. This pre-Marvel cowboy "Ghost Rider" by the king of severed heads himself Dick Ayers is certainly no Johnny Blaze, but his quest for justice is just as thrilling and hair-raisingly hellbent.

For a much more gruesome old west horror story from this issue click HERE! And if westerns aren't really your cup of tea, head over to AEET for some lovely pulp luridness courtesy of Man's Book Periodical!

Cursing Skulls!

Got a nifty back-up feature from the June-July 1953 issue of Frankenstein #25 today... it seems kind of obvious, but does anyone wanna take a stab at who worked on this one? I also want to apologize about the gutter on a few of the pages, this issue is badly stapled and this was the best I could do with the scan/editing.

COLORAMA

Larry "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" Blamire recently wrote in requesting Bob Powell's classic "Colorama" tale from the August 1953 issue of Black Cat Mystery #45 ...so, being a huge fan of Larry's fantastic output of fine film, I of course said "yes, sir!" And despite the fact that this tale has been reprinted countless times over the years in multiple forms and easy to find versions, I (in fact) did not actually have a copy of it-- argh! Soooo, once again I turn my blog over to the terrifying scans of Mr. Brian Hirsch, the one man on the planet who undoubtably owns every comic book ever made.

PLEASE NOTE: These scans are actually the later reprint and slightly modified version of this story from the January 1958 issue of Black Cat Mystery #61. (see comments)

The Sealed Coffin!

I challenged myself to find a Standard Comics story that was more deranged than our previous dances with wolves post, and I do believe we have a contender-- and from the same August 1953 issue of The Unseen #11 even! Yes, it's a pre-code classic with all the right (or wrong) elements: a jungle curse, a pretty blonde (who doesn't stay that way for long), murder, grotesque deformity, a dame socked in the kisser, a vengeful spirit, and so on... I think you're definitely gonna like (or despise) this one!

(BONUS!)

The Wolf Dancer

The August 1953 issue of The Unseen #11 contains this charmingly clunky, unintentionally hilarious Artie Saaf werewolf tale, and with its indian mumbo-jumbo angle would probably feel more at home a decade or so later in one of the many Silver Age DC horror comics... that's the vibe I get from it anyway.

(BONUS!)

The Fifth Corpse

With this post, the April 1954 issue of The Unseen #14 is now available here at THOIA in its entirety (minus the text story which I'll kindly add to the next post.) This is a quick and violent gangster horror tale, and you'd have to be Nick Mangoti not to see the ending coming from a card tables length away... so after you're done here, check the THOIA Archives for more stories from this great issue, including: "Monsters of the Deep", "No Rest for the Dead!", and Skeleton's Gibbet", (you might have to dig around a bit for the bonus filler stuff like the funny "Grim Grins" one panel gags and the challenging "Devil's Puzzle.")

The Girl Who Wasn't There

From the July 1954 issue of The Tormented #1, here's the last of the four stories from this frightening first issue (see our previous post for links to the other three) ...I also included the two-page text story so you pre-code completists don't start complaining. This is a nice sort of Twilight Zonie tale of witchcraft and the supernatural, with some fine work from Mike Sekowsky, in particular his lovely rendered young ladies, both good and evil!