A POUND OF FLESH

It's just a hard fact of life that more than one man has said: "My wife's gone to hell!" after a few years of marriage. That might have rung true back in the day, but if you ask me, these days women spend more time keeping themselves looking good than ever before.

Not so in this story, "A Pound of Flesh" from MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES #16 (Story Comics, October 1953), where Herbert, a mechanic and "tinkerer" hatches an idea to bring his wife back to the beauty that she was when he married her. How he does it is seen in the revolting end of the story. The art is reported to have been done by Ross Andru and I think that's a pretty good guess.

I LOVED A ZOMBIE!

This two-timer gives two-timers a bad name -- he's married not one, but two women! Both of them are rich and both of them are . . . hungry. Find out why in this story called "Two for the Money" from MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES #22 (Story Comics, October 1954).

YOU CAN'T JUDGE A HORROR COMIC BY ITS COVER!

After reports that EC Comic's horror titles were becoming profitable, numerous publishers were tip-toeing their way into the field, reluctant to go all in for an as-yet, largely untested new subject. As a result they used an interesting, but misleading "bait-and-switch" tactic.

A number of publishers mimicked EC's strategy of introducing horror stories into their crime titles (CRIME PATROL and WAR AGAINST CRIME), as well as swiping cover design ideas.. Thematically, it seemed like a fairly good fit and it was a cautious way of finding out how readers would react.

There was one problem with that: the cover images were as far as they went -- the interiors were still comprised of the usual crime stories that they had been using all along.

Shown here are a few examples some of the other publishers who experimented (such as it was) to test the blood-filled waters.

This is not an exactly a horror story, but it is definitely a weird tale (STARTLING TERROR TALES #13, art by Jay Disbrow).

Perhaps the most blatant come-on of all was Hillman's MONSTER CRIME, cover-dated October 1952. Behind the cover of the 52-page, 15-cent book were nothing more than crime stories from their overstocked inventory. The closet thing to horror was one story's title, "Another Hallowe'en".