Time to head back to the graveyard to pick up a body or two, via the October 1952 issue of Beware #12 from Youthful. Some of the art is a little wonky in places, but that's always been the macabre magic of Harry Harrison in my book, as perspective problems mostly always translate into surreal nightmares, plus he does a great job with the weird spirits and narrow, claustrophobic paneling. Love that splash too!
Goofy lookin' host aside (I can actually think of plenty of names for "The Nameless One"), this is a wonderfully eerie tale from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10 about spooky skeleton pirates guarding their sunken sea booty vs. those who try to take it from them! THOIA art fave, Art Gates, again demonstrates just exactly how underrated he is / was...
Time to look to the skies for some truly weird sci-fi horror thrills, and today they reign down from above via Marty Elkin and the September 1954 issue of Beware #11 --which also features a really great Myron Fass cover illustration!
If you're still exhausted from all that trompin' around the swamp with a cat girl in our last post-- too bad! Cuz today it's time to traipes around a fen-- with a thing! It's also been a while since we're seen joltin' Jay Disbrow around these parts, so let him lead the weird way, from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10. And while I don't believe this story made the final cut for our Jay Disbrow Chilling Archives collection, this freakin' awesome Frank Frazetta / Sid Check art did grace my Return of the Zombies hardcover, which still seems to be available through Barnes and Noble HERE! (Psst, you cooler ghouls will remember this book as the one with the bite taken out of the front cover corner!)
Vince Napoli was one of those precode artists whose work at first appears weirdly wonky, and even amateurishly flimsy at times. But the more you look at it, the more it begins to take on a brilliantly eerie, otherworldly vibe. It's as lanky and surreal as it is uneven and bizarre, and thus, it's the perfect illustrative style for a nightmarish tale of terror like Wish for the Dead, (from the January 1953 issue of Beware #13.) Faces distort wildly as sinister supernatural forces take over, spectral clawed hands reach out from the black beyond, --and in my favorite panel of the whole story (page 7, panel 2) a partially open door reveals the spookiest set of disembodied eyes ever put to a comic book page! The sloppy coloring and cheap print job on this Trojan comic is typically an unfortunate tragedy, but it also adds an ominous underground zine edge to the freak-out stranglehold of funeral-esque atmosphere. This is the kind of unique soul transference story that THOIA was created for, please enjoy...
Did you come to THOIA today looking for something hilariously grim to totally grime up your Saturday afternoon with? Well good, cuz here's a perfect example of how precode horror occasionally went to batty bat with a truly preposterous concept, and with the help of some very uneven, but totally likable Sokoli art, still manages to hit an oddly surreal home run like no other. Actually, pop culture took this "carry the corpse" concept and went wild with it over the last century, --you've all seen Weekend At Bernies for example by now, right? From the October 1952 issue of Beware #12.
