DEADTIME STORIES NO. 36

It's getting late, monster kiddies. Are you ready for a Deadtime Story to send you off to nightmare land? Well this little tale, called "The Cave of the Bats", is a story about, well, bats in a cave, what else? As a certain vampire vixen used to say, "Unpleasant dreams!"

[FROM: WEIRD TERROR #1, September 1952]

FEAR IN FOUR COLORS: LOVECRAFT IN THE COMICS (PART 5)

WEIRD TERROR
Vol. 1 No. 1
September, 1952
Publisher: Alan Hardy Associates
Editor: Alan Hardy
Imprint: Comic Media
Cover: Don Heck

Alan Hardy's WEIRD TERROR sought to emulate the success of the grisly and gruesome EC horror titles. While the stories here are pretty wild, they just don't match the -- dare I say it -- lurid lyricism of Bill Gaines' books. Hardy had worked in the office of Harvey Comics and decided to start a comic company of his own. He created the "Comic Media" imprint and hired Don Heck away from Harvey to produce his horror title. Heck created the cover art and logo and contributed much of the production work as well. He later went on to a career with Marvel Comics and was the co-creator of the now world-famous Iron Man superhero.

Other artists in this issue include: C.A. Winter, Rudy Palais and Don Perlin (who later penciled the Marvel title, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT).

Of particular interest to fans of H.P. Lovecraft is the story included in this issue called, "Portrait of Death", drawn by Rudy Palais. Whether by chance or design, the tale told here is undeniably influenced by Lovecraft's short story, "Pickman's Model".

The scan shown here has two pages missing. The pages were photocopied and added later to make a "complete" issue.