Like our last post, here's another wonderfully wild, and highly deranged story from the June 1954 issue of Dark Mysteries #18, one so full of mean spirited, gut wrenching, nazi mad science violence, that you might actually begin to ponder whether Wertham was on to something! Fans of Haunted Horror will also undoubtably remember this one, as we featured it in the unforgettable, October 2017 issue of HH#30.
Thanks Karswell, A wonderfully abrupt ending to this horrorble tale. The doctor's face stood out for me. Can't capitalize that brand of medicine.
ReplyDeleteLove Burch's over-expressive hair.
ReplyDeleteI want to focus on the "mean spirited" which gets thrown around a lot. It certainly is mean spirited, but I wonder how intentional it is.
ReplyDeleteI think the writer is just stacking the deck -- i.e., making our guy as bad as possible. Take the beautiful Margaret and her pre-code sweater, she basically only exists so the doctor can make his final victim even more of a victim, she basically disappears after her part is done.
Basically, I think the mean spirited feel is just that the story gets kind of clumsy with setting up that our doctor is evil and deserves his fate (of which it doesn't follow through on, BTW, we just get that the skeleton is still stalking him, which, frankly, should be an easy fix.)
That said, and I've said probably too much, it's great -- because it makes the tale lurid and that much more exploitive.
When it comes to exploiting nazi horrors and comic horror, though, you're never going to raise the bar of the Warren story where a giant golem gets created out of a nazi pit of mutilated genitals.
I don't see why der not so good Herr Doktor Professor is so shocked in the last panel. Did he forget that he'd burnt the legs?
ReplyDeleteThat's what you get for not burning the whole skeleton, nazi.
(Probably the only concentration camp story I've yet seen with a commandant who's not depicted as a sadistic loon.)
By the way, in Panel 4th from last, isn't it the skeleton's arms he's chopping off?
ReplyDeleteSuper splash. Skeletons with perfect hair, sigh, you gotta love 'em.
ReplyDeleteThere's just something about concentration camp horror that triggers me a little. I try to remember that much of the NYC publishing world was Jewish at the time, and that they certainly had every right to crunch the horrors of WWII however they saw fit--be it in silly ass precode horror, or MAD Magazine Hitler satire, or whatever. But it still rubs me the wrong way, like it's playing fast an loose with a thing that should be treated with more care. So yeah, this story struck me as harsher than many. Even though a lot of the crimes depicted here are the same-ol'thang, well, that these are reinforced by real-world atrocity makes a difference.
Who knew mad Nazi scientists wore polka dot PJs
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