WEIRD ROMANCE: PRINCESS OF THE SEA

The late-lamented Eclipse Comics published a one-shot, WEIRD ROMANCE with a cover date of February 1988. The issue consisted of pre-Code horror comics touched up and reprinted in black and white. This is the original story, "Princess of the Sea", a romance between a man and a mermaid, first appeared in WEIRD THRILLERS (Ziff-Davis, Spring 1952) with art by Dan and Sy Barry. The painted cover is by Allen Anderson.

MAD MONEY!

Here's a short and bittersweet tale of money, greed and murder; one of the trifectas of pre-Code horror comics. "Mad Money!" is from Stanley Morse's WEIRD MYSTERIES #5 (June 1953), illustrated by Ed Smalle.

DEATH KISS

Prof. Casper Skeezer invents a beautiful robot woman with the murderous desire to kiss everyone to death! She goes on a kiss/kill spree until Skeezer knocks her over the head. He soon finds that it takes something more than that to kill a killer.

"Death Kiss" appeared in HORRIFIC #5 (Comic Media, May 1953). The GCD lists the art as by the Iger Shop, but it sure looked like something by Rudy Palais to me. Palais, whose work is sometimes compared to EC's Graham "Ghastly" Ingles, did work for Jerry Iger, but it was for only about 9 months in 1941 and he wouldn't have been drawing stories like this back then. By chance, I came across this hidden on the splash page.

So, there you have it-- drawn by Rudy Palais. GCD is an excellent research tool, but nobody's perfect, as this proves.