Saturday, December 29, 2018

No Pockets on the Dead

It's been a weird while since we had a good 'ol gag-inducing grave robbin' story around here, so let's try this ominous one on for size from the May 1954 issue of Beware #9, art by Leo Morey. Mmm hmm, fits just like an airtight coffin for two, if I do scream so myself!













And don't leave before heading over to my other blog today and wishing Barbara Steele a happy birthday! All scream fiends pay your respects by clicking HERE! 

6 comments:

JMR777 said...

A crazy ghoulish tale, just the way we like 'em.

I can't recall any tales, comic book or otherwise, where the cemetery caretaker robbed the dead at night. There must be one or two out there but I just can't recall any offhand right now.

Glowworm said...

After reading a lot of pre-code horror comics, I've come to realize that the term "ghoul" isn't just used to describe an undead creature similar to a zombie who eats human flesh but also used to describe gravediggers/grave robbers who dig up graves and rob the dead bodies of any valuables they once had.
While the ghouls in this comic are the second kind, they certainly aren't squeamish in their methods of robbing the dead. The severed fingers containing rings remind me of the fairy tale "The Robber Bridegroom."

Grant said...

It really threw me to see Quagg evidently get killed, when none of the actual grave robbers get killed or even caught. After all, he's the "mere" pickpocket who has to be forced into grave robbing and they're the real villains. I'm always saying this, but where where the Frederic Wertham's when THIS story came out?

Brian Barnes said...

This one is very interesting -- a collection of characters where the least evil of the lot gets the worse fate and the rest go free. There's no supernatural elements (and as always, in these pre-code comics ghost/ghoul don't always mean what we think) and it actually ends up being a "crime does not pay" type comic.

I love the corpse at the end, it's really gruesome!

Mr. Cavin said...

Whoa, they opened the coffin back up at the end for the sole purpose of poking fun at Marlin Quagg's corpse. That is pretty rough stuff. I love the splash. I guess I say that a lot, but this one's got a whiff of the fine arts about it. The shape repetition and blue distribution are very elegant!

Happy New Year, errybody!

Unknown said...

I remember the "horrible earless mutilated cadaver" from the (presumably unauthorized) 1970 Eerie Publications rework "Ghoul Without Pockets". I didn't think the new title made sense, but I was unfamiliar with the original story then.

In the 1970 rework, the earring-wearing corpse was wearing a man's suit which was rather strange to my 14-year old eyes. In the original story, the corpse seems in addition to have changed sex on pages 5-6!