Number 1461: Horror without the horrible

Only a few more days until Halloween. Fill up those candy bowls for the visiting trick-or-treaters, but save the best stuff for yourself. Pappy's rule for Halloween: the kids get the cheap stuff.

No cheap stuff for you today. I’m showing all the stories from Atlas Comics’ Marvel Tales #119 (1953). The tales run the gamut from a golddigger/serial killer to mummies from outer space to choosing a new life, to...well, read on.

Unlike most horror comics of the era there aren’t any vampires or werewolves, and the mummies aren’t even Egyptian mummies. All in all it’s a fun issue. There is some variety, even humor to some of the stories. Besides the total silliness of the plot of “When the Mummies Rise,” drawn by Russ Heath, there is a shaggy dog joke ending to “They Gave Him a Grave,” illustrated by Larry Woromay. John Forte’s art is perfect for the serial killer story, “Collector’s Item!” I got a laugh out of the Marilyn Monroe panel in “The New Life!” drawn by Al Eadeh. Mac Pakula wraps up the issue with a story of a killer who escapes earthly justice only to find it in space.

I could not help comparing the cover by an unknown artist to an earlier cover by horrormeister Bernard Baily for Mister Mystery #11.

As a morbid child I used to think of what would be the most terrible way to die. High on my list was being buried up to my chin and set upon by ants. Despite having a higher ratio of skulls to head, the Marvel Tales cover is tepid compared to Baily’s.

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Number 1390: “All that glitters...”

For a time in the 1950s comic artist John Forte’s work could be found prominently in ACG titles. He went from there to DC where he did the Bizarro World stories in Adventure Comics, written by Jerry Siegel. He then became the first artist for the Legion of Superheroes. He died young in 1965.

I never really saw him as a superhero artist, although his Bizarro stories are some of my favorites of the era. My affection for Forte is for his work on mystery and supernatural. This particular story, “The Glittering Nightmare,” is credited to Forte and writer Shane O’Shea (actually ACG editor Richard E. Hughes). It has a scientist obsessed with a project that ruins his marriage and an alien lifeform taking on earthly shapes, reminding us of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I showed this story in the early days of this blog, but these are my new and improved scans.

From Forbidden Worlds #76 (1959):

Some pre-Comics Code Forte here. Just click the picture.

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Number 1085


Police Action!


Atlas Comics' Police Action #1 is another of those comics I think is interesting enough to show all the stories. I'm guessing here, but I imagine it was published with "police" in the title, cops as heroes, to deflect criticism from the crime comics that had been getting the comics in trouble. Of course, even with the emphasis being on police, this is still a crime comic.

Atlas fave Joe Maneely did the outstanding cover. Robert Q. Sale, who was a studio mate for a time with Severin, Elder and Kurtzman, did the lead story. Sale was a good artist, but his faces can be grotesque, homely with popping eyes. His action-packed splash panel of "Riot Squad" is great.

John Forte, a favorite of mine, did the story, "Homicide." Forte was another journeyman comic book artist, coming into the field in 1940. He went from drawing fantasy at ACG to DC in 1961 to do "Tales of the Bizarro World" in Adventure Comics. When that was canceled he went on to draw "The Legion of Superheroes" until his death in 1965.

Paul Reinman, whose work on Green Lantern I showed last week, did the third story, set in Paris. Gene Colan did the last story; it suffers from poor reproduction, turning Colan's finer lines into inky blobs, but the elements of action art that are central to Colan's work are here.

Police Action lasted for seven issues, all dated 1954.

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