What Happened to Charley Banes?

Surprised myself this week after realizing that in all the years I've been posting stories online here at THOIA, I've yet to post any from Dell's fun 60's comic spin-off of the great television series, The Outer Limits. And this is a unique yarn to correct my oversight with, mainly because it has a little bit of everything: horror, humor, beach babes, a tunnel of love, neat Jack Sparling artwork, and a cool monster that looks a little bit like the Creature from the Black Lagoon! Add one final "last name" ingredient into the mix (spelled correctly on the cover, but not in the story, dagnabbit!) and you have one winner of a fishy tail freak-out. From the April 1967 issue of The Outer Limits #12, and we'll take a look at another great story from this series in our next post as well, stay tombed...

The Web of Horror

We haven't seen a silly Purple Claw horror adventure around here in quite a while, so here's a good one from the March 1953 issue of Purple Claw #2. Boy oh boy, Brown and Gantz sure could draw a sexy lady... I do wonder if they've ever seen an actual spider in real life though? Hmmm...

Wish for the Dead

Vince Napoli was one of those precode artists whose work at first appears weirdly wonky, and even amateurishly flimsy at times. But the more you look at it, the more it begins to take on a brilliantly eerie, otherworldly vibe. It's as lanky and surreal as it is uneven and bizarre, and thus, it's the perfect illustrative style for a nightmarish tale of terror like Wish for the Dead, (from the January 1953 issue of Beware #13.) Faces distort wildly as sinister supernatural forces take over, spectral clawed hands reach out from the black beyond, --and in my favorite panel of the whole story (page 7, panel 2) a partially open door reveals the spookiest set of disembodied eyes ever put to a comic book page! The sloppy coloring and cheap print job on this Trojan comic is typically an unfortunate tragedy, but it also adds an ominous underground zine edge to the freak-out stranglehold of funeral-esque atmosphere. This is the kind of unique soul transference story that THOIA was created for, please enjoy... 

Don't Dance w/ Me When I'm Dead!

Did you come to THOIA today looking for something hilariously grim to totally grime up your Saturday afternoon with? Well good, cuz here's a perfect example of how precode horror occasionally went to batty bat with a truly preposterous concept, and with the help of some very uneven, but totally likable Sokoli art, still manages to hit an oddly surreal home run like no other. Actually, pop culture took this "carry the corpse" concept and went wild with it over the last century, --you've all seen Weekend At Bernies for example by now, right? From the October 1952 issue of Beware #12.

The Last of its Kind

Time for a fur 'n fang feast of fearsome delight from the October 1978 issue of Haunted #38 --though this story originally appeared in the December 1972 issue of Midnight Tales #1, (both from Charlton.) And if you missed it earlier this month, CLICK HERE to head over to AEET and read another devilishly great story from this same, eerie issue!

Two is a Crowd!

Another mean-spirited Atlas tale on deck today, this time from the awesome April 1952 issue of Marvel Tales #106. If you've ever wanted to see a nice time-lapse of a corpse being entombed behind a wall, well, you've absolutely come to the right place! For some reason the Atlas Tales website notes: "Buried Alive" even though our victim is clearly seen being choked to death on the previous page-- did I miss something?

The Little Pests

Here's a little 4 page reminder from the October 1952 issue of Adventures into Terror #12 that even your most water-logged idea of brutalized body disposal could potentially backfire on you if you simply overlook the smaller things in life. *SLAP! Yep, we're keepin' the mean-spirited, rancid romance alive all this month here at THOIA with eerie excursions into the most awful, wedded lifestyles. And don't forget the DDT!