Weekly Dose Of Weird -- FCBD Edition!

EC Sampler -- Free Comic Book Day -- I hope those books are bagged and boarded. You really shouldn't keep your comics in such a moist, humid environment.

I. "Spawn Of Venus" -- A team of two-fisted scientists rocket to Venus, only for half of them to fall victim to the deadly flora and a giant ameoba. One returns to Earth with a beautiful flower, only for it to produce another ameoba. The army blows it up with an atom bomb, which of course does little except produce hundreds of the little suckers.

II. "Dying City" -- A blinded North Korean officer is informed of all the death and carnage his choice to join the revolution has brought upon his village and his family by his grandfather.

III. "Curse Of The Full Moon!" -- An American travelling in Europe is pricked by wolfsbane, and believes himself to be a werewolf when reports of a feral beast pop up wherever he and his partner travel. Back in the states, he confesses this to his friend, who promptly reveals himself to be the killer, having used the werewolf bit as cover.

IV. "Under Cover!" -- The Black Vigilante Society (a barely-disguised Klan allegory) flogs a woman to death in view of an intrepid reporter. Escaping the Hoods in the forst, the reporter makes it back to his hotel, only for the Society to catch up with him and lay a beating on him. He awakes in the hospital to find the FBI wanting his information. When he tells that he saw the Grandmaster's face, the FBI "agents" pull their pieces and silence the witness to the Society's evil.

Overall Weird Rating: 3.5 (out of 5).

These stories (from Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, The Crypt Of Terror (forerunner of Tales From The Crypt), and Shock SuspenStories) offer a very good sampling of EC's output from the 50s, and are an excellent commercial for the hardcover Archive editions. The overall weirdness is negatively impacted by the second story, one of Two-Fisted classicly harsh anti-war features, which is excellent but in no way "weird." The first feature kinda makes up for this. Definitely pick this one up if your retailer has any sitting around after FCBD.

Weekly Dose Of Weird!

The Vault Of Horror #2 (Russ Cochran 1993, reprinting VOH #13) -- How did they not see her when they were walking in? I mean, it's not that big of a tomb, is it?

I. "The Dead Will Return!" -- A woman and her lover kill her husband and dump the body at sea, so it will wash ashore and his death be thought accidental. While they search his lighthouse for the man's stashed loot, his body washes ashore right below them. The dump the rotting corpse again, and again it returns. As her lover drives the corpse far away, the wife continues to look for the cash, until she is cornered in the top of the lighthouse by some unseen spook. Her lover returns, discovers her, and then shares her fate. The police come by the next morning, find the two dead lovers, and a almost unrecognizable corpse on the shore. The Vaultkeeper informs us that the man's money was on his person the whole time, and now waterlogged and useless.

II. "The Curse of Harkley Heath" -- Three cousins are the last heirs of the Harkley estate (namely by killing their uncle with morphene), which has been cursed for generations. When the dominant one plans to kill off his two cousins to collect it all, things seem to be going well: he poisons his pretty cousin with morphene, and then threatens the wormy one. Well turns out that his cousin has a tolerance to morphene, and she ends up shooting him, which causes the wormy guy to accidentally start a fire and burn them all to death.

III. "The Diamond of Death!" -- Text story. A gem collector and exotic plant enthusiast dies, and his manservant finds a giant diamond, which supposedly curses whomever posseses it. Next thing you knw the guy is doing his best Little Shop of Horrors impression as he becomes plantfood.

IV. "Doctor of Horror" -- A 19th century surgery professor needs to provide bodies for his students, and thus gets into the graverobbing business. Spinning this acumen into success, he becomes the Chair of the Surgery department by murdering his rival and letting his students dissect him. Now aiming for the Deanship, the doctor hires hoodlums to murder riffraff and deliver the bodies to him, so he can impress the current Dean. Not one to trust his hirelings, he goes to check on their progress, and ends up laid out on the slab in his own classroom.

V. "Island of Death" -- A plane crash strands two men on a tropical island. Getting seperated, one man finds a giant castle, home to a mysterious Count, a big game hunter. Now interested in hunting the most dangerous game, the Count sends his guest into the jungle. The castaway is not helpless, though, as he manages to garrote the Count's manservant with a tripwire, and kill his hunting dogs in a pit trap. But before the Count can finish him off, the man's copilot finds him and plugs the Count in the back.

Yeah, I WISH I could afford the original one. This reprint is every bit as weird as the original, though, since it's a complete reprint, from the Johnny Craig cover right down the line (albeit with different letters to the Vaultkeeper, but the same letterhead -- which I intend to scan for Rick at some point). EC set the standard for weird comics with their line of "new look" horror mags from the 50s, and this early example is a fine one. Each artist brings a different quality to the table, from Harrison's gothic ghost story in "Curse" to Graham Ingels harsh lines on "Doctor." The tales themselves are just creepy and spooky, with the exception of the last one, although it has some gruesome elements which make up for it. Even the text piece is not bad, for this type. Either hunt down the reprints, or check out the handsome hardcovers, but if you like horror comics at all you MUST read EC.

Discount Bin Finds

Weird Science #13/2

The kids these days, they don't know how good they got it.

As anyone reading this probably knows, back in the days of Newsstand distribution, there was a postage fee involved for publishers putting out a new #1 -- obviously, Marvel and DC as we know it would never be able to function in such an environment. But publishers at the time took this in stride, including Bill Gaines over at EC. See, Weird Science was one of the many horror, crime, and science fiction format mags which EC was starting to put out to an eager audience of boys in the early 1950s. Before transitioning into aliens and mad scientists, this series was known for it's first eleven issues as Saddle Romances (I think there is something to be said that WS replaced not just a Western book, but a Western Romance book). Well anyone expecting prarie love and heartache was in for a big shock with #12, and it continued in the next installment, which is what we are looking at today.

Now, obviously, I didn't find an original copy of Weird Science #13/2 in a discount bin. But my brother did happen to find a Russ Cochran/Gemstone reprint copy while at a comic book show, and he was kind enough to give it to me. I'm a big fan of the "Big Three" EC horror books -- Tales From The Crypt, The Haunt of Fear and personal favorite Vault of Horror -- but I unfortunately had never read much of their "weird" books, which also included Weird Fantasy. I like science fiction almost as much as I like horror, so I was eager to check out this blast from the past.

Like any good EC title, this is an anthology, with four main features, plus a pair of single-page text pieces to keep us entertained. Each is lettered in the classic EC all-caps block style, which, combined with the "house style" of the art (from the EC mainstays) and Al Feldstein's unstoppable brain, makes for a unique comic experience.

The first feature is titled, straight-forwardly enough, "The Flying Saucer Invasion," which is written and drawn by Feldstein. People all over the country start to see UFOs in the sky, and, like all good Americans, report them to the government. A federal investigator is called in to quell the "UFO panic," and using deductive reasoning, is able to dismiss the "wild" claims of the gullible dupes who have bought into this UFO stuff. So once can imagine the egg on his face a government space observation station spots a giant fleet of saucers heading straight for the unarmed and unprepared Earth! Read enough EC comic books and you will quickly get familiar with this type of character archetype: The Smug Smart Guy. Too smart for their own good, they inevitably "prove" something to be untrue, only to have that untruth come back to bite them where it hurts.

Next up is "The Meteor Monster," which reminds me of a mix between The Thing From Another World and The Beast With A Million Eyes. A small alien crashlands on Earth, and quickly dominates the mind of any human whom it looks in the eyes. Quickly taking over the entire town, our astro-fiend has designs to control the entire planet, but they don't really stick when the town's one blind guy manages to break everyone free from his control -- unleashing their righteous anger in the process. Needless to say there is a little nest of the aliens hiding out that the humans don't notice, but you knew that, right? Alliterative artists Wally Wood and Harry Harrison (who would later go on to pen the inspiration for Soylent Green) team up for this quirky little story.

The next installment is our first text peice, ominously entitled "The Experiment." Like most of these quickie stories from the period, it's not very good, but it's not entirely unreadable like some, either. Considering that a lot of these were done to get the content count up for postage purposes, it's usually a roll of the dice anyway. Essentially, scientists trying to observe the heavens end up sending the entire universe out of whack (as scientists will do).

Our third feature is entitled "The Micro Race," and if this Feldstein and Jack Kamen effort was not the inspiration for the classic Simpsons bit "The Genesis Tub," I'd be really surprised. A scientist (using RADIOACTIVITY!) creates a microscopic race of organisms who live at an accelerated rate in order to study the history of humanity. Needless to say, the tiny race is much more humanlike than the scientist initially predicts, and they begin not only to settle their internal conflicts violently, but also to aggressively defend their very existance against "higher powers." A story like this seems quaint now, but in 1950, this was pushing it. It's a familiar theme but a nice riff on it.

The second and last text story, "Sands of Time," is better than the first one. Dealing with a strange kind of sand which began in a farmer's yard in South Carolina, the silicate substance spreads to cover the entire East Coast. Told as a series of AP articles, everything is presented very matter-of-factly, with no embellishment or explanation beyond the facts. Pretty interesting considering the brevity, really.

Finally, the fourth feature, "The Man Who Raced Time," drawn by none other than Harvey Kurtzman (of Mad fame), stars a somewhat-mad scientist of the "Fools! I'll destroy them all!" school. Repeatedly spurned by the pretty young professor he lusts after, he uses his experimental machine on himself, speeding him up faster than the eye can see. This allows him to causes all sorts of trouble in a (failing) effort to win his lady love's affections. But when the gal decides to marry her handsome suiter, the scientist's attempts at engineered vehicular manslaughter go all sorts of wrong. The simple moral here -- chasing pretty girls will inevitably be the death of you -- is pretty universal. Seriously though, I really liked the ending to this one, which is pretty immediate in it's impact and also touches on the Smug Smart Guy archetype a bit too.

All in all, you get 31 pages of weird fun, a pretty good return on investment considering that this reprint cost $1.50 when it was published, and only put my brother back a buck or so. That's the value of anthology titles right there. None of the stories are really outstanding, but they make for diverting reading and are short enough that you can read one without getting too involved. The art is strong throughout, with the four artists each unique but thematically tied together. Of course, we all know what would befall EC a few years after this was initially published, but that doesn't mean we can't all enjoy the fruits of their labors some 50 years after the fact. With RC and Gemstone reprinting various EC titles in the early-to-mid 90s, plus the new hardcovers in stores now, it's a good time to go on a little hunt for something just to the left of center. And while the "glory days" of EC might have been short-lived, it makes me happy to know that we can still re-live them today to our strange little hearts' content.