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.

HEN-PECKED!

This story from Stanley Morse's MISTER MYSTERY #17 (Aragon Magazines, June 1954) is short and sick. The cartoonish art is by Eugene Hughes. Caution, ladies! If you constantly hen-peck your husband or Dad you may want to think twice after reading this!

REPRINT HORRORS!

Posted today on FEAR IN FOUR COLORS' companion site, WORLD OF MONSTERS, is Eerie Publications' first issue of TALES FROM THE TOMB. Fans of these lurid and vile things are aware that they were made up of reprints from pre-Code horror comics beginning with the plundering of Robert Farrell's fairly substantial inventory. Behind the revolting covers--many by Golden and Silver Age artist Carl Burgos--were stories that were now in black and white, with splash pages and panels re-worked with more exploitative images. These were often drawn by African-American artist Ezra Jackson who was listed as an art director for the magazine.

Following are examples of how the story art was modified by changing titles (that were sometimes previously reprinted in Farrell's comics) and images to better fit the Eerie way of sensationalizing their aim of disgusting readers.

This story was apparently left intact from the original.

DR. LORCH'S SIXTH POTION

Dr. Simon Lorch is obsessed with concocting a potion that will turn a man into one that possesses primordial strength. After five tries, he drinks the sixth one himself and turns into not only a man who has primordial strength, but is also a primordial beast! He goes on the usual killing spree until he is stopped (aka killed) by one of his previous experiments. Poor Dr. Lorch, he should have stopped at five tries!

This one's from Ace's WEB OF MYSTERY #3 (June 1951) with pencils by Mike Sekowsky and inks by Vince Alascia.

NOTE: I've began to go back into some of my earlier posts and started adding labels that are descriptive of some of the common themes found in pre-Code horror comics, such as today's "mad doctor" trope. I'll be including things like cannibalism, hanging, etc. when I come across them. This will be a work in progress for a while.

THE FACE OF HORROR!

In this crazy story from Stanley Morse's WEIRD CHILLS #2 (Key Publications, September 1954), a comic book writer concocts a story that includes such delightful tidbits of terror as electrocution, a revivified corpse, a werewolf, a vampire and plenty of mayhem and murder. The writer and artist of this morbid story are unknown.