FEAR IN FOUR COLORS: ALEX TOTH

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Monday, January 6, 2025

THE UNSEEN NO. 5

Beginning in the 1940's as Nedor (owned by Ned Pines), Standard Comics' horror line came late to the show with three titles: ADVENTURES INTO DARKNESS, OUT OF THE SHADOWS and THE UNSEEN. The best part of these are their covers, as the stories were middle-of-the road and they never took the plunge into outright gore and grue, preferring to err on the side of "mystery" instead.

Nevertheless, many stories feature some fine artists as seen here in the first of their titles, THE UNSEEN, with work by Alex Toth, Mike Peppe, Jerry Grandenetti and Ross Andru. It is also likely that Andru drew the cover, although it has as yet to be confirmed.

Although the cover indicates issue #5, it's actually the first issue. Comic publishers used the idea to trick distributors into thinking that a certain title already had decent sales, enough to last in this case, through four previous issues. They also did this to dodge paying the postal service a fee for registering a new title -- that is, until they got caught!

Be sure to check out the craziest story of the issue, "The Hungry Lodger", illustrated by Jerry Grandenetti.

THE UNSEEN

Vol. 1 No. 5 (First issue)

June 1952

Standard Comics

Editor: ?

Cover: Ross Andru?

Pages: 36

Cover price: 10 cents

CONTENTS

"The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess"

Script: ?

Art: Alex Toth; Mike Peppe

"Shadows in Pawn"

Script: ?

Art: Abe Simon?

"The Hungry Lodger"

Script: ?

Art: Jerry Grandenetti

"The Nine Horrors"

Script: Ross Andru

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

ADVENTURES INTO DARKNESS (UNPUBLISHED)

One of the many publishers that had their horror comics world rocked when the Comics Code Authority was instituted was Standard. Formed in 1936 by Ned Pines, it was one of the leading superhero comics lines during the Golden Age (under several different imprints). While only publishing a handful of horror comics during the Pre-Code era such as ADVENTURES INTO DARKNESS, THE UNSEEN and OUT OF THE SHADOWS, they still suffered a loss of these apparently successful niche publications during The Great Purge of 1954.

Numbering began with #5 in August 1952 and ran for 10 issues until #14 (June 1954). They already had the next issue ready to go to press when Wertham's Silver Hammer dropped. After that, the Pines comics scattered to the four winds and nearly all of them disappeared, including the finished cover and art for ADVENTURES INTO DARKNESS #15.

Amazingly, over 3 decades later it re-surfaced in the hands of Eclipse Comics and was published as the one-shot THREE-DIMENSIONAL SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT in October 1985. Likely discovered by the Sherlock Holmes of comics researchers cat yronwode, the rights were purchased by Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney. They also got a knockout cover by Dave "The Rocketeer" Stevens and a sharp logo design by Ken Steacy. Now, here's the kicker -- for some bizarre reason they decided to print it in 3-D format, and while Ray Zone does his usual bang-up job with color separations, it's still a little befuddling that they didn't print it with the extant black and white art. Perhaps they didn't want to guess what colors were originally planned (if it got that far in the process), but there is no mention in the editorial on why this decision was made. There is mention in the editorial as Eclipse "taking a gamble" on publishing this at all, so maybe they thought a black and white comic wouldn't sell well despite its historical value. At least we finally got to see it!

The cover is credited by Eclipse to George Roussos, but after a look at the original cover art shown here, there's a note in the margins that is a little puzzling: the date "5/7/54 " with the circled initials "MR" in pencil. What makes this mysterious is that MR is used to sign the stories "Harvest of Death" and "Tryst With Terror". The credits for the pencils and inks are given to Mort Meskin and George Roussos respectively. So, if the cover uses the same initials, why isn't Meskin credited as the penciller and George Roussos as the inker like the stories are? Food for thought . . .