A POUND OF FLESH

It's just a hard fact of life that more than one man has said: "My wife's gone to hell!" after a few years of marriage. That might have rung true back in the day, but if you ask me, these days women spend more time keeping themselves looking good than ever before.

Not so in this story, "A Pound of Flesh" from MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES #16 (Story Comics, October 1953), where Herbert, a mechanic and "tinkerer" hatches an idea to bring his wife back to the beauty that she was when he married her. How he does it is seen in the revolting end of the story. The art is reported to have been done by Ross Andru and I think that's a pretty good guess.

I LOVED A ZOMBIE!

This two-timer gives two-timers a bad name -- he's married not one, but two women! Both of them are rich and both of them are . . . hungry. Find out why in this story called "Two for the Money" from MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES #22 (Story Comics, October 1954).

SKIN 'EM ALIVE!

Oddly, Story Comics never identified themselves with a logo on any of their covers. Ownership remains muddled, but it seems that Master was the name listed as being the owner of Story, Merit and Master Comics. While much of the scripts and art are not identified, they apparently did not use any comics packaging studios (ex. Iger) to produce their work. Other than an address in New York indicated in the indicia, not much else is known about the company, who seemed to prefer lurking in the shadows, as it were.

MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES began with #1 and ran for 25 issues from March 1951 until August 1955. One read through this issue and you will see that Story had some pretty grisly stuff going on in its pages. Titles like "String 'Em Up!" actually delivered with a wonderfully nasty story and very "Pre-Code horror comic"-worthy. "Skin 'Em Alive!", with it's sports theme, looks like it could be a rip-off of the notorious baseball game story, "Foul Play" in EC Comics. "Ghost Town" is more than derivative of "Midnight Mess" in EC's TALES FROM THE CRYPT #35.

A great cover by Hy Fleishman begins the fearsome festivities. This issue also features two different hosts: the Coffin-Keeper and, unimaginatively -- but starkly effective for a horror comic -- Corpse (!).

NOTE: Third-party ads and the text story have been removed from this scan.

MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES

Vol. 1 No. 18

February 1954

Story Comics

Editor: ?

Cover: Hy Fleishman

Pages: 36

Cover price: 10 cents

CONTENTS

"Skin 'Em Alive!"

Script: ?

Art: ?

"Ghost Town"

Script: ?

Art: ?

"String 'Em Up!"

Script: ?

Art: Hy Fleishman

"Bottoms Up"

Script: ?

Art: ?