Tom Sutton was another in the long line of awesome, later era artists to really blow my gradeschooler mind in the 70's. That organically loose, mutated style of his lended just as much to the creepy, high level concepts and monster designs, as to his doomed human characters fighting to stay alive with those beady little petrified pupil'd eyes poppin' outta their freaky faces! So now, enter The Kukulkaton (not to be confused with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.) You get a murky glimpse of it on the cover of Monster Hunters #2 (Oct. '75), but to see it fully unleashed on the last page in all of its throbbing, Lovecraftian weirdness, well... I guess we all gasp 'n gooseflesh it with the tiny pupils once in a while, as well...
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Saturday, June 27, 2026
The She-Beast
We're heading back into the teeming, screaming jungle for another eerie, horror adventure encounter, and this time with the monstrously macabre maiden "REPTA" via the slithery, September 1953 issue of Horrific #7. And of course Marty Elkins art is always a welcome addition to the THOIA Archive, but just to further spice things up around here with something different, Mr. Karswell also welcomes the wild and wonderful work of master illustrator, Ruth Marten --see her incredible Alligator Girl painting at the end of this post! I also highly recommend her superb monograph collection, Ruth Marten: All About Eve, edited by Ina Dinter.
Monday, June 15, 2026
Altar of the Axe
After witnessing the blonde bombshell, ass kickin' horror action of our previous post HERE --I feel this voluptuous vibe has totally set us up for a wild, week long theme! Enter another fair haired, hard hittin' honey, this time in a juicy jungle jolter from the July 1954 issue of of Cave Girl #13! The great, Gardner Fox wrote the script, while Bob Powell delivers the va-va-va-visuals and pummlin', powerhouse savagery of manhandlin' Carol Mantomer, aka Cave Girl-- who makes her dynamic debut here at THOIA too, I might add! If you ever wondered what Poe's Pit and the Pendulum would be like in a jungle setting, well, --it's swingin' your way NOW!
Thursday, April 23, 2026
She Stalks at Sundown
Time now for a lurid, Lou Cameron, cat-girl classic, clawing its way at you from the January 1954 issue of Web of Mystery #22. Full of juicy good-girl art, and jungle jitters galore, I'm actually kind of surprised that I've never posted this one here at THOIA before. And meanwhile, I'm equally as baffled as to why it didn't make it into Cameron's Unsleeping Dead hardcover collection, via The Chilling Archives. We also have another beautiful "blonde in peril" cover design by mad man Jim McLaughlin, --plus, tacked on at the very end to round things out nicely, a shivery "Tale of Unexplained Mystery" by Sy Grudko concerning a macabre magic mirror...
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Triple-Header!
If the ancient Egyptian Karnak Curse in our previous post didn't do it for you, then how about a curse from the creepy old Carnoc Castle grotto instead? This story originally appeared here at THOIA in a black and white reprint version way back in 2017 (HERE), --but everyone hated the scan quality so I swore on the blood of thy ancestors that someday I would re-feature the proper, original story from the October 1951 debut issue of This Magazine is Haunted #1. George Evans art definitely deserves to be viewed in this manner, any 'ol way. Annnnd because the story is a whoppin' 13 pages long, I thought, hey, why not make this post even longer with some additional TMIH filler quickies, like even more fun Facts About Witches and Witchcraft (from TMIH #20), as well as a two-page Ditko horror adventure, via TMIH #17. This blog is pretty damned haunted too, you know?