The Sleepers in the Crypt

One more from Fiction House's uniquely odd Ghost Comics series, (you guys seem to be having a love/hate with these stories, so we'll move on to other stuff in our next post.) But this is a pretty decent tale-- not unlike one of our previous entries about ghosts vs. gangsters-- to round things out on a lazy Sunday morning. From the Spring 1953 issue of Ghost Stories #6. Waaaake up!

Wrath of Satan

As promised, we now return to our regularly scheduled channel of 100% pure evil. From the November 1952 issue of Weird Terror #2, art by John Belcastro and Joe Galotti.

Lords of the Upper Air

Backpedaling a bit to  Ghost Comics #11 (1954) for another story from the dark beyond. I was initially saving this gem for the colder, more wintery months ahead of us, but THOIA reader Ben Dickow wrote in today looking for "any pre-code comic book stories that feature a yeti or big foot monster or big ape" --so who am I to disappoint? Hope this was what you're looking for Ben!

FYI: Ben Dickow has a theater company in LA that performs pre-code comic book stories in the spirit of old radio shows. If you live in or near Los Angeles check www.capturedauralphantasy.com for more info about their upcoming "Halloween Gallery of Horrors" October 29th and 30th! Looks like a blast!

The Dark Abysmal

I’m not really the biggest fan of Fiction House pre-code comics from the 50’s… sure, Ghost and Monster have great covers and are full of top notch art, but nearly everything I’ve read from their horror titles so far contained very little in the writing department considered “on par” with the pretty pictures. So, for the next few days this week I tried to find a sampling of stories that are better than the usual FH fare, and oddly enough all of these examples come from the 1953 issue of Monster #2, starting with this fun little Monster-fest by Johnny Belcastro featuring 7 crammed pages of inspired art and ideas with a creepy, rampaging, tentacled Squiddly Diddly monster straight out of Lovecraft, (and totally keep your eyes peeled for the hilarious “Austin Powers-esque, Nudity Obscured” panel at the top of page 2.)

TOMORROW: A better example of bad Fiction House writing, (but cool art...)

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