A HALLOWEEN HORROR SUSPENSTORY

GOOD LORD! Here's a grisly tale from EC's SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES #2 (April-May 1952) that only Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein could think up for Graham Ingels to illustrate. Colors are by Marie Severin and lettering by Jim and Margaret Wroten.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

EC Comics are copyright (c) by William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

THE CREEPING DEATH

I've always enjoyed plant horror stories and there were plenty of them during the pre-Code era. In this second issue of ADVENTURES INTO TERROR (Atlas, February 1951) with art possibly by Allen Bellman, a botanist receives a strange plant from a colleague in South America. As expected in a story like this, it soon grows out of control until . . .

MENACE, ANYONE?

While artists like Lee Elias, Warren Kremer and Don Heck were designing horrific covers that would become legendary in pre-Code horror comics, over at Atlas, Stan Lee was cranking out reams of stories. While they eventually became formulaic, no one can deny that they were nearly always well-written.

Publisher Martin Goodman was a harsh taskmaster and kept his staff at Atlas busy. As a result, the imprint sold more titles (18) and released almost 400 single issues (see FIFC reference page HERE) than any other publisher during the pre-Code years. One of them was called MENACE and ran for 11 issues from 1953-1954 before it was cancelled, another casualty of the Comics Code Authority.

MENACE

Vol. 1 No. 1

March 1953

Hercules Publishing Corp. (Atlas Comics)

Editor: Stan Lee

Cover: Bill Everett

Pages: 36

Cover price: 10 cents

CONTENTS

"One Head Too Many!"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Bill Everett

"The Man Who Couldn't Move"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: George Tuska

"Poor Mr. Watkins"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Werner Roth

"The Wait In Their... Dungeon!"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Russ Heath