Wow, my 500th entry! It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for almost two years! I’m happy to see that I’m well into what I am calling the “Early Silver Age”, where many of the horror and science fictions stories are interesting, even if superheroes themselves have faded down to just a few exceptions. […]
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Weird Science #8 (April 1951) features a story called “Seeds of Jupiter” in which a meteor crashes on an aircraft carrier. Cracking open the meteor, a navy man finds a bunch of nuts and gives one to “Peachpit”, another navy man who likes sucking on peach pits (?). “Peachpit” obliges but accidentally swallows the nut […]
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The Vault of Horror #18 (January 1951) includes the story “Mask of Horror”. A story about masks, what they hide, what they do to us inside. It is very reminiscent of The Masks, an episode of the Twilight Zone that aired 13 years later. After being rejected by his cold, cheating fiance, Ken buys a […]
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Another horrifying tale in the Haunt of Fear #4 (October 1950), in which a ghoulish hunchback’s hump is discovered to be an evil Siamese twin that demands to eat the flesh of freshly buried corpses.
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“Crypt of Terror” is renamed again to the name it will forever be remembered for with Tales from the Crypt #20 (June 1950). “Rx… Death!” is perhaps a cute little six page allegory about substance abuse. Gregg’s live-in sister Janet notices that Gregg spends all his evenings studying and working and stressing. Insisting he get […]
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Although it varies by story, Haunt of Fear #17 (May 1950) shows that EC Comics continue to have the best overall stories by 1950, but the art has also stepped up too. Panels are increasingly filled with shadows and monsters and deranged people. Speaking of deranged people, Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein even make a […]
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In January 1950, EC renamed its “War Against Crime” comic to “Vault of Horror” with issue #12. In it, we get even more gruesome tales of horror than in last month’s Crypt of Terror comic, including an evil character using acid to first disfigure someone and then attempt to dissolve their entire body! The Vault […]
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Well, the era of EC horror comics finally begins in December 1949 with The Crypt of Terror #17. Prior to this issue, the comic was named “Crime Patrol” and before that it was International Comics. Remember? The Crypt-Keeper introduces the first story, but his debut appearance was actually two issues prior in Crime Patrol #15, […]
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The very very last vestige of Timely (Marvel) Comics’ superheroes occurs with Captain America’s Weird Tales #75 (November 1949). The cover mentions Captain America, but the book is very clearly EC Comics-inspired (down to the left-hand vertical title bar) with anthological horror tales. The magazine probably needed to include “Captain America” in the title so […]
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ACG continues to push its horror comic with Adventurers of the Unknown #7 (August 1949), featuring a story called “Drums of the Undead” which featured zombies. The zombie was a pretty new concept to western culture at the time, but the latter half of the 20th century brought zombies to the foreground in horror culture.
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