Wednesday, July 30, 2014

An Army of Walking Dead, aka The Zombie

My buddy Jason was wanting to see a Phantom Lady adventure where she takes on monsters or some kind of supernatural evil, and this tale of legs vs. the undead is probably the best choice in my collection. My scans are from the Great Action Comics #8 (1958) reprint-- a sexy 'n wild Matt Baker illustrated story that was originally featured over 10 years prior in the December 1947 issue of Phantom Lady #15... annnnd the story goes, that when I.W. Publishing got the print plates, they were missing the original splash page #1 which had been printed on the inside front cover of Phantom Lady #15 (see jpeg at the very end of this post.) So someone clever decided, "why not make the cover of Great Action Comics #8 the new page 1 of the reprint!" Off hand, I can't think of many other comics that ever did this with a cover, and with Carl Burgos doing the new cover art, who's gonna complain? Hope everyone enjoyed this month of posts!














(original page 1 splash)

6 comments:

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  2. Medusa Touch is a favorite of mine, underrated, overlooked classic.

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  3. Well, Dr. Crime invented the mad scientist formula for exposition, that's going to get mis-used!

    Aside from the comical (in 47) concept of super accurate, well hidden South African missiles, it always gets me about the "bullets don't stop a zombie!" Maybe a hand gun would be useless, but the cop is firing a tommy gun. If fire kills them, that gun would tear them to chunks.

    I like this Phantom Lady story, usually she's next to useless and wins through sheer right place/right time luck. This time she crashes a car, hurls a burning piece of wreckage, and other heroic things. Bravo (finally) Phantom Lady!

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  4. Can you help me find a comic I had as a kid--this would have been mid-to-late 70s. I want to say it was a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not", or some other anthology-style, allegedly true collection of paranormal stories. The part I remember is a guy is photographing a corpse (possibly in a morgue or hospital), and we see his view through the camera, and in a series of frames, the corpse opens his eyes and comes to life!

    Thanks---

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  5. Sounds like a cool story, Bill, unfortunately it's not ringing any bells with me at the moment. Anyone else know the story? If you can find out more info about it I'd be happy to track it down and post it for you.

    Thanks for the comments, lots more horror and surprises on the way in August!

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  6. I agree about THE MEDUSA TOUCH being underrated. Of course, some people are "disposed" to hating a horror film if it has Richard Burton in it! (Ever since those "Golden Turkey" books turned him into such a bad actor / bad movie "icon," people have gotten really ridiculous about the idea.)

    I know this is a pre-Code story, but it's kind of wild to read that line about the zombies being "turned loose, for their own pleasure," and then see that two of the three zombies in the picture are abducting attractive women!

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