Adventures into Darkness
Entry updated 23 June 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1952-1954). Standard Comics. 10 issues (numbered #5-#14). Artists include Gene Fawcette, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, George Roussos, Mike Sekowsky and Alex Toth. Scriptwriters include Jack Katz, Irwin Shapiro and Bill Woolfolk. 36 pages, each issue usually containing four longer strips, plus a few shorter ones (some claiming to be non-fiction, such as an account from 1348 of "sulphurous fire" bursting from the ground at "Cannery" in Central Asia, followed by "serpents and dragon-like monstrosities" that ate any survivors); there was also a short text story. #15 was created but not published, doubtless a victim of the moral panic engendered by Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent (1954): its contents were later printed in a comic entitled Seduction of the Innocent 3-D #1 (October 1985).
The opening story of #5 (the first issue) is "Murder Mansion": blackmailers and murderers Danny and Helen break into a deserted mansion. Finding a centuries-old hand-lettered book, Danny reads out a phrase, invoking the demon Teneshed (see Gods and Demons), who is happy to grant their wishes. As they enjoy the luxuries he provides Teneshed grows and the house becomes infested with his monstrous pets (see Monsters): Helen escapes, but Teneshed takes Danny to see his previous master – still alive, begging for death while being devoured by the pets; these, disturbed, turn on Danny. "Death Follows Orders" has a present day French farmer discovering a unit of fanatical Nazi soldiers (see World War Two) buried in a cellar that collapsed in 1940 following a bomb blast. Now Zombies, they carry out their interrupted mission – to capture a nearby town – only to fall to pieces when the farmer's daughter burns the paper on which their orders are written. In "Day of Reckoning" a singer's beautiful voice has her nicknamed the "Bird Girl", only to be disfigured after a fire so she now looks like a bird and can communicate with them. Her adulterous husband murders her; shortly after, he and his girlfriend are harassed over a cliff by a flock of birds.
In #8's "Mark of Evil" a journalist murders a colleague for his camera, which shows the person or object photographed in the future: a newspaper will show its headlines weeks ahead (see Timeslip). He gains wealth from his apparent Precognitive abilities, but then develops a photograph of himself, to see he is in the electric chair. "The House That Jackdaw Built" has a couple spend their honeymoon as a guest of Jim Jackdaw, the man the bride almost married. He lives in a "robot house", fully automated and filled with gadgets (see Technology) – which try to kill them. However, the house appears to be an AI and when it sees the couple's reactions declares "Love? Love? What strange power makes these two willing to die for each other?" and berating Jackdaw: "Why did you not tell me of this? Why did you implant in my memory cells only the logic of hate and vengeance?" The couple escape as the house destroys itself and its creator. #9's "Nothing Can Save Her" has Dr Saunders running over a woman in his car: a blood transfusion is needed, but the local doctor says the depredations of a Vampire on the populace means he has used all the blood bank's stock. Dr Saunders volunteers his own: the woman seems to recover at night but lapses into a coma during the day. Needless to say, she is the vampire.
#10's "The Man Who Could Not Die!" has an assassin hired by a masked man, with circumstances always preventing him from killing the intended victim. Unsurprisingly the target is the masked man, who explains he is a 5,000 years old Ancient Egyptian pharaoh who bargained with Death and is tormented by the cries of the 10,000 he killed in return for his Immortality. "The Evil Cornucopia" is possessed by a demon who grants wishes; it is stolen by a murderer who, when mortally shot, wishes "don't let me die" and is left in unbearable pain from his incurable wounds, while the demon has departed with the cornucopia. #11's "Mission From the Grave" has an artist dying in a fire but returning from death to complete an unfinished painting. #12 has a nagging wife bought a snake-like necklace of the Egyptian god Seth by her husband; she kills him then marries a wealthy man who's puzzled by her fondness for his dark, wet cellar. She begins to transform into a serpent-woman (the story seems to confuse Seth with the god Apep). "The Living-Dead of Kulatum!" has explorer Neil Barth in the Matto Grosso kidnapped by the zombies of previous explorers and taken to the ruins of the lost City of Manoa (another name for El Dorado); here the "last remaining degenerate inhabitants" (see Lost Races) keep their "aged ruler ... alive by the draining of the vital force" of their abductees (turning them into zombies) using a "vicious blend of science and black Magic": however one zombie has a spark of humanity left and creates a diversion enabling Neil to escape. This story's header has striking art by Gene Fawcette who also does good work for "Nightmare Island", a short strip about a man who is paid to stay on a haunted island overnight. "The Garden of Evil" in #14 has a jealous artist discovering the reason a previously mediocre sculptor now produces life-like statues is because his wife is Medusa. In "The Frozen Death" a mountain guide finds a woman encased in ice: after defrosting her she awakes (see Suspended Animation) and is shocked to find it's 1953 and not 1900. She runs off with another man, but the warmth of an inn turns her into a skeleton.
A few of the text stories have sf elements – the prehensile seaweed in "The Clutching Weed" (#7); a zombie in "Walking Dead" (#10); a Werewolf in "Call of the Werewolf" (#11) and – in "The Living Brain" (#14) – a Mad Scientist who puts a fellow Scientist's brain into a "giant Robot" (see Cyborgs), who kills him, then commits Suicide.
Adventures into Darkness was a strong, varied Horror comic with some sf elements. The standouts are a couple of the stories illustrated by Toth, "Murder Mansion" and "The House That Jackdaw Built", plus "The Living-Dead of Kulatum!"; there are other good stories too. [SP]
further reading
- Adventures into Darkness, Volume One (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2025) [graph: collects issues #5-#9: illus/various: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: hb/George Roussos]
- Adventures into Darkness, Volume Two (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2025) [graph: collects issues #10-#14: illus/various: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: hb/Ross Andru]
links
previous versions of this entry