Murder in Wax "Starring: A Corpse"

It's Midweek Murder-thon time again, so lets crack open another perfect pair-up of crime horror mystery cases guaranteed to knock your nylons off and well into next week! Hollywood dick, Dan Turner has himself a heckuva of handful trying to straighten out a murderous screwy angle or two while on a macabre movie set in, "Murder in Wax", from the July 1953 issue of Crime Mysteries #8. But first, Hollywood glamor girl, Queenie Starr starrs in the new Sam Wilde horror picture over at Paragram Studios, (via the July 1952 issue of Crime Mysteries #2), and if she's not careful, she too could find herself playing the lead corpse! Heater bangs, head bops, horror chops, and heavenly babes a'plenty-- what more could you ask for in a THOIA Double Feature, anyway?

Feast of the Dead!

When the Spirit Halloween stores start poppin' up around your area, you know it's finally time to get serious about what you too are going to be wearing this All Hallow's Eve! You still have 50+ days to get your act together, but just once I'd love to see someone get as serious about their horror presentation as the corpse mutilatin' madmen depicted in today's atmospheric beast of a feast terror tale from the Sept. '54 issue of Crime Mysteries #15. Good lord this one is insanely inspired, and hysterically gruesome, --even by 'ol Mr. Karswell standards! And not to be a spoiler sport here or anything, but fyi Shaggy and Scoob never encountered cemetery cosplay quite on the same level as this! These goons really go for the gold. Oh, while we're at it, don't bother checking Spirit for gas-filled balloons, radium glow cloth, and steel knives 'n grippers, they don't carry any of that stuff...

Kiss of the Vampires!

After last Friday's feast of flesh appetizer, I'm guessing some of you might still need a little liquid refreshment to wash it all down! So today thy cups be runnethin' over a'plenty with a brutal vampire saga from the April 1973 issue of Nightmare #12. Chic Stone unleashes all kinds of head loppin', stake stabbin', sinister blood slurpin' sexiness, --where even the vampire hunter himself realizes too late that even he's bitten off just a bit more than he can chew! This is definitely one of the best ever Skywald entries in my opinion, and it contains quite a few panels I've seen taken out of context / tumblr'd endlessly over the last decade or so. And stay tombed-- the actual main encore corpse chow-down is up next!

Web of Horror

The world wide web can be a horrible place for sure, --but so can a cemetery! And that's why today it's time to oopsie-daisy on the old "bury 'em now / dig 'em up later for money" routine. And as usual, we archival specialists of THOIA trickster atrocities discover (yet again, sigh) that this fatally flawed "fast one" rarely ever actually works. From the same revolting, jolting, July - August 1951 issue of Weird Adventures #2 as our previous post. GCD believes the art here is by eerie Ed Moline, unfortunately, nobody has a clue about that great flaming dungeon cover design. We'll be back shortly tho because OMG it's already almost September again! Where does the time go as we lay here pondering what comes next? Under 6 feet of dirt. Air growing thinner. The sound of worms churning. So dark. Are my eyes open, or closed? When did I last clear my web browser history cache? Stay. Tombed.

I, the Coffin

Like our previous post, here's another story that already slumbers eternally in the THOIA Archive (since 2010 HERE!), but alas, it was also a black and white, Eerie Pub repo version from the 60's. So, time now to re-Earth this little gem as it originally appeared in the May - June 1954 issue of Fantastic Fears # #7, and pry it wide open in all of its full, gasping, casketty colors, (as well as giving some of you long time followers a chance to finally comment on it as well.)

The Coffin

It's been a while since my fellow horror host chum, Mister Mystery stopped by with one of his own terrible old terror tales to tell! So let's set sail on a nightmarish sea of screams, errr dreams, and find out what awaits in this creepy coffin... from the November 1951 issue of Mister Mystery #2.

The Madhouse Murder Mystery

A few of you seemed on the fence about the hot pink horrors of our previous post, so I thought maybe we'd take another stab at it with a fun, old-time oddity from the March 1939 issue of Amazing Mystery Funnies V2 #3. Of the 7 pages, 3 of them are overlayed with a variety of perplexing pink hues, while the other 4 pages are in black and white. Not sure why they did it like this exactly, but I think it adds a screaming surrealness to the sinister setting, as well as to the masked murderer and their spooky dungeon of brain swappin', scientific madcappery. GCD notes that artist/writer, E.F. Webster was actually Ethel Felder Webster, and she was rockin' the Richard Sala-esque murder mystery style tale a few decades before he was even born. Man I miss that guy...