The Wooden Woman

Time to carve out another creepy crummy, February themed love connection, this time from the October 1952 issue of Menace #8. Highlighted by some interesting art from Bob Fujitani, --but be warned, the print job here is a little murky in a few spots, so apologies to those who like to gripe about that sort of thing. I mean, I did my best to clean it up, and it's still a fun bit of hopeless doom for yet another smitten goon who gets everything he deserves for being the foolish f*#kin' fanged face freak that he is...

Still Life

The October 1962 one-shot issue of Tales from the Tomb #1 (published by Dell) is 84 freaky pages of varied anthology horror about ghosts, monsters, and all manner of eerie bumps 'n boos in the night. It's a fun, though somewhat mixed bag, with the real stand-out story for me being this engagingly casual 8-pager about an artist and his friendly female neighbor discussing the man's recent return from the cursed countryside. Their breezy cool, flirty conversation in a big city loft feels nothing short of a spooky stage play, slowly turning more and more ominous with each chilly page turn, until that single... final... panel...

Portrait of Doom

Here's another whack-a-doodle story from the December 1953 issue of Strange Fantasy #9 (see previous post), concerning a very mad artist who-- to be honest-- doesn't seem that much different than most of the actual mad artists that I know in real life! As noted in the comments of the last post, every tale from this issue was reprinted, and a few even reworked a few decades later for the Eerie Pubs... I'll try to dig those out and we'll take a look at them sometime in the coming new year. Also of note: before becoming a doomed studio model for Tony in today's yarn, beautiful blonde Susan also appeared in various advertisements featured in Golden Age comics. I've included a few below after the story...

Horror on Canvas

GCD notes that today's Baffling Mystery contains: "Unusually and uniquely bad artwork for Ace." And that it: "Could be a swipe artist's singular try." If you ask me though, the insane art (uncredited) only adds to the nightmarishly bonkers nature of nearly every single aspect of the story. See what you think, because it's still entertaining as Hell regardless... from the January 1952 issue of Baffling Mysteries #6.

Doorway to Horror

Earlier this month we took a stairway to madness, now it's time to open an epic doorway to horror! From the November 1951 one-shot issue of World's Beyond #1, and featuring loads of atmospheric Sheldon Moldoff artwork, --this one's lengthy, but frightfully fun. We have a few more horror doors to still open before the big night comes down on the 31st, so what's everyone got planned this year? Something terrifying, I hope!

A Rampage of Demons!

Ahhh, the life of a comic book artist! It's all fun and games (and rockin' redheads) until your boss spoils it with those darn pesky deadlines! So yeah, today's terror tale from the June 1976 issue of The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #57 would probably have benefitted a bit from a few additional pages of story to really flesh out that panel jumbled story, but it still has a nice twist ending and the ominously groovy art adds a wild, nightmarish, surreal flair as only Charlton could do it...

The End of Madam Satan!

We now conclude our exciting month of Saturdays with Madam Satan (check the previous two weekend posts if you missed 'em!), and it's time for the two grand finale entries from Pep Comics #20 and #21 featuring 'ol faceless leggy at the climax of her brief Golden Age career. And yea, though she did waltz through the valleys of a variety of other later comic book series pages, it's her satanic stint in Pep that remains one of the more memorable, evil female characters from that glorious, war time capsule era. It's kind of sad to now read that final panel mentioning "America's most unique comic strip" and knowing that she would in fact not return. But you know what else time has revealed? Maybe sticking around too long and wearing out your welcome can be a bad thing-- like how a lot of comic book characters are boringly guilty of!