Thursday, November 27, 2014

Flaming Horror

As everyone works on adding an extra layer to their midsections and asses today, here's another story about a tubby individual with a whole other set of problems to contend with than just his weight! From the November 1952 issue of Strange Mysteries #8.

Happy Fangsgiving, fiends!









7 comments:

Morbid said...

Gave me kind of an eerie shiver towards the end. Probably because I actually cared what happened to this poor guy, and had some "investment" in the story. Liked this one.

Mr. Cavin said...

It's really kind of a shame his parents named him Tubby.

Brian Barnes said...

That ... beautiful. It's sweet, and through all the bad luck, two lost souls with lives of pain finally find happiness, and jerks like the oil company guy gets what they deserve.

The oil company guy was a macguffin to set it up so they could no longer live in the house alone, but even with some other plot trick, there wasn't a lot of horror, just sadness and a great redemption.

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Grant said...

I've heard that his movie career goes back to the ' 30s (I've even seen some of the films), but was Tor Johnson well-known in horror films when this was written? Because after the accident, Tubby looks a bit like him. Not in the face but in general - his clothing on Page 5 makes me think of that infamous "Time for go to bed" line.

J_D_La_Rue_67 said...

Reading again the comic and Mestiere's lines about his cousin suddenly made me understand why this story is so sad and touching.
It gives us a glimpse of the "everyday's horror" of this world. The complete incommunicability between the "freaks" and the "normals", the fact that everyday millions of men and women realize that diyng is actually better than living in agony. And yet... when the ghost offers him the only possible solution the man cries "please don't kill me!" This life is a mistery, we are a mistery to ourselves. This is no vampire tale, ... a very mature story.

Mr. Karswell said...

Glad to hear everyone enjoyed this one-- in fact, I'm so glad that I'm going to post another hot little number for you next-- better double check your fire extinguishers!