The Bell Tolls Death!

Goofy lookin' host aside (I can actually think of plenty of names for "The Nameless One"), this is a wonderfully eerie tale from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10 about spooky skeleton pirates guarding their sunken sea booty vs. those who try to take it from them! THOIA art fave, Art Gates, again demonstrates just exactly how underrated he is / was...

Cry: Danger!

Time to look to the skies for some truly weird sci-fi horror thrills, and today they reign down from above via Marty Elkin and the September 1954 issue of Beware #11 --which also features a really great Myron Fass cover illustration!

The Thing in the Fens

If you're still exhausted from all that trompin' around the swamp with a cat girl in our last post-- too bad! Cuz today it's time to traipes around a fen-- with a thing! It's also been a while since we're seen joltin' Jay Disbrow around these parts, so let him lead the weird way, from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10. And while I don't believe this story made the final cut for our Jay Disbrow Chilling Archives collection, this freakin' awesome Frank Frazetta / Sid Check art did grace my Return of the Zombies hardcover, which still seems to be available through Barnes and Noble HERE! (Psst, you cooler ghouls will remember this book as the one with the bite taken out of the front cover corner!) 

Wish for the Dead

Vince Napoli was one of those precode artists whose work at first appears weirdly wonky, and even amateurishly flimsy at times. But the more you look at it, the more it begins to take on a brilliantly eerie, otherworldly vibe. It's as lanky and surreal as it is uneven and bizarre, and thus, it's the perfect illustrative style for a nightmarish tale of terror like Wish for the Dead, (from the January 1953 issue of Beware #13.) Faces distort wildly as sinister supernatural forces take over, spectral clawed hands reach out from the black beyond, --and in my favorite panel of the whole story (page 7, panel 2) a partially open door reveals the spookiest set of disembodied eyes ever put to a comic book page! The sloppy coloring and cheap print job on this Trojan comic is typically an unfortunate tragedy, but it also adds an ominous underground zine edge to the freak-out stranglehold of funeral-esque atmosphere. This is the kind of unique soul transference story that THOIA was created for, please enjoy... 

Rebirth!

Okay, enough with the hairy scaries for a while, how about something more slimy and formless? Maybe a tale of extreme cuckoldism + blobs from the deep (courtesy of the January 1953 issue of Beware #13) adds up to something weird and different? You'll soon find out, as we sink deeper and deeper into our Valentines Massacre 2020 love affair of freakish frights 'n doomed delights this month...

Kill No More!

Got another goofball gorilla tale for you today, this time from the July 1953 issue of Beware #16. I suppose the surrealness of this silly story is the real highpoint here, because the A.C. Hollingsworth artwork feels just as exceptionally uninspired and phoned-in as the slap-dash, crap coloring.

Come Die With Me!

On the last lousy day of the year, you can almost feel, and even hear, 2018 die screaming. And with the tragic loss of an astounding amount of talent in the entertainment industry these past 12 months (not to mention the tragic loss of brain cells in our own socially and politically divided country), we here at THOIA say adios to the old, and look forward to a much better new year with 2019. Fingers crossed. Inverted. But for tonight, let's take a traumatizing tip from the March 1954 issue of Beware #8, and on this final, flabbergasting day of a most unpleasant year, I ask you all to just simply--













HAPPY NEW YEAR?