The Murder Masquerade!

We're halfway to Halloween again already, and typically on this day (aka Walpurgisnacht) I tend to feature posts themed a little more on the witchier side of things. But since this great Mack Martin: Private Investigator tale from the March 1949 issue of Super-Mystery Comics V8 #4 takes place during a costumed masquerade party, I think it still fits the holiday bill nicely. It's a super fun, super duper mystery of the highest caliber, with an assortment of diabolical suspects all dressed as Death itself! There's plenty of thrills, chills, furious fisticuffs action, and laugh out loud dialog too, along with some superb artwork from ever reliable Rudy Palais --who also created that great cover design (FYI: the added mummy themed cover at the end of the post remains uncredited.) I hope everyone enjoyed this month of posts, and I promise that May will be even more morbid than ever! Stay tombed...

Dark Journey! / The Phantom Bus

POST UPDATE: I had a busy week (actually "traumatizing" might be a better word for it) and forgot that I had planned to make this a "dark journey" double feature, --so here's the other story I absent-mindedly left out: "The Phantom Bus" from the September 1952 issue of The Unseen #6. We repo'd this one in the July 2015 issue of Haunted Horror #18, but it somehow never made its way here to THOIA, despite being one of my George Roussos favorites. I also included a ghostly half-pager from the same issue, which may have already been posted here somewhere over the years, I fergit. And of course, from the July-August 1953 issue of Skeleton Hand #6, comes a creepy tale of witchcraft and time travel gone oh-so horribly wrong. And to be honest, that's exactly the way I like it. I also dig that this one feels more like an ironically humorous Atlas quickie, and less the typical ACG happy ending that we've seen around here so many times before. 

Mangled in Madness

Springtime of course means spider-time in my neck of the woods, so let's weave up a creepy crawly, Silver Age classic from the Sept-October 1978 issue of The Unexpected #187. Be sure to slip into something a little more comfortable first though-- todays tale is a real drainer!

The Thing That Grew! (aka The Easter Basket Grass Monster)

Those of you with a great sense of memory may recall a couple of other THINGS that have already grown in the THOIA Archive HERE and HERE, --but believe it or not, I've found a way to twist today's Jordy Verrill-esque creeper show from the September 1954 issue of Horrific #13 into being the most perfectly stupid Easter post instead! Okay, besides the fact that this thing kills the Easter Bunny on page two, what you'll do is simply replace the final block of narrative above the last panel on Page One with this: "...some terrifying, unknown error in nature took place!! Suddenly a spark of life came to be, and just as the leaves mystically swirled away, they were magically replaced by flying strands of green, plastic Easter basket grass from the nearby neighborhood trashcans! Some even slithered in like snakes, some did the inch worm move! Some bounced like tumbleweed balls, --some twirled like tornados of terror! As if magnetically pulled towards the skeleton by some unseen force, the plastic Easter basket grass formed an eerie emerald shape around the boney, fetid framework." And so on. Please try to enjoy my attempt at whatever this is. (For more about the postcard, click HERE!)

Curse of the Mummy Queen

Our third curse of the month is also another unearthed Four Favorites horror tale as told once again by "The Unknown" (see our previous post HERE.) And we also got a taste of 1940's Rudy Palais art with the previous post's comic cover image as well. So now here he is delivering his wonderfully colorful, --though a bit more subdued than his hellacious Harvey sweat fests-- illustrative visuals in a rather epic 10-pager. So who's afraid of a beautiful mummy? Not me! But you might be, as her creepy curse carves its way through yet another hapless group of archeologists. From the May 1946 issue of Four Favorites #23.