The Venus of Ille

As long as the sinister statues are rampaging this week (HERE), might we allow a fine female form of art to get in on the bone crushing action as well? This is a nicely told tale from the July - August 1951 issue of Weird Adventures #2, and is based on the classic short story by Prosper Merimee (read it HERE!) Art on this one is by the ever underrated, Bob Jenney, who started out his illustrative career way back in the late 30's working on pulps and young adult books. After the war, he continued steadily producing quality visuals for nearly every big name publisher in the biz, rounding out his career in the late 60's with Creepy and Eerie classics for Warren Publications. Longtime THOIA followers might remember his tremendous Dell adaptation of The Creature from the Black Lagoon that we featured HERE in 2010...

The Night the Statues Walked

Time for one of Lou Cameron's better, oft reprinted / reworked Ace classics, originally from the July 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #19 (as seen here.) This is a fast paced, ferocious tale of rampaging statues in a spooky old museum, and is seriously as funny at times as it is brutal. Tales of grotesque golems on the loose are no stranger to THOIA, or Hollywood for that matter, because once the military get involved here this story begins to remind me of IT! (1967) starring Roddy McDowell. Thinking about it even more, this Cameron crusher would have been a fun project for Ray Harryhausen to bring to life upon the silver screen-- what he created with the terrifying Talos statue in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) is unforgettable and forever frightening.

Kiss of Death!

With barely a dozen Bernie Krigstein stories nestled in the THOIA Archive, I feel like I've stumbled upon yet another back-stabbing travesty of epic proportions around here! I guess what I'm trying to say is: how can you have an All Atlas Fest August without some kooky spooky Krigstein?! His unique vision and expert sense of intense story telling really cuts to the bone-- so here we go, a whole new month of posts, and we're revvin' it right off the starting block with a couple of killer Krigstein klassiks! Wait, did I say a couple? Yep, stay tombed for him in our next post as well. But for now, enjoy this atmospherically wicked little walk in the park, from the June 1952 issue of Journey into Unknown Worlds #11.

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...

The Devil Statues

Originally titled "The Night the Statues Walked", this Lou Cameron tale appeared in the July 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #19, but today we have the Oscar Fraga re-drawn version for the Eerie Pubs (as well as Gredown), retitled "The Devil Statues", from the April 1971 issue of Weird Vol. 5 #2, plus a bonus "Weird Facts" page...

Meeting of the Damned! / The Statue!

Two stories with a humorous horror twist from Wayne Howard today, both from the August 1978 issue of Ghostly Tales #131. If  Wayne's style looks familiar to you it's because his mentor Wally Wood was a huge influence on most of the fabulous work he did for Charlton Comics in the 70's--read more about Wayne HERE! More Charlton on the way too, stay tombed...

The Statue of Evil

Scanned this one way back in early June and meant to post it, but only just now found it buried in some unrelated hard drive file that I accidentally saved it to-- arghh! Anyway, this is an eerie twist on the Dorian Gray tale (hope that doesn't give away too much), from the February 1952 issue of Web of Mystery #7, art by Sekowsky and possibly Alascia.