Baffling Mysteries
Entry updated 29 April 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1951-1955). 22 issues (starting from #5). Ace Magazines, Inc. Artists include Lou Cameron, Jim McLaughlin, Kenneth Rice and Louis Zansky. 36 pages. Usually 4 long strips, 2 one-page strips entitled "Baffling Mysteries" and a two-page text story per issue.
Like its sister publication The Beyond, Baffling Mysteries heavily featured supernatural Horror stories, with devils (see Gods and Demons), ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures), Magic, Vampires, voodoo, Werewolves and Zombies being commonplace. #5 (that is, the first issue) opens with "Volcano of Vengeance" where an American museum collector visiting Central America wakes to find a goat man in his room, who assures him it is but a dream, then departs. Within minutes the local villagers are throwing him into a nearby volcano which has begun to erupt; they believe he has angered the goat men who live there. However they save him and take him to their queen. She too is a rescued sacrifice, from centuries ago (but still young): other victims have not been so lucky. On her instructions, he returns to tell the villages to stop the sacrifices, which are due to their misunderstanding the goat men's culture. "The Lady Was a Tiger", set in India, has an injured woman taken to a Doctor Zanda for treatment: a transfusion of treated tiger blood turns her into a tiger. The doctor is delighted, the woman's husband less so. In #6's "Fatal Rendezvous", Warner Davis dies on the operating table: he finds himself in what looks like a futuristic airport, before a man at a desk labelled "Celestial Clerk Flight Assignments" (see Eschatology) who tells him he is here 5 years early, "the first mistake we've made in 50,000 years." Warner is sent back to Earth, but warned he will now be clairvoyant (see Precognition). He is, and the experience is unbearable: he even tries to kill himself by boarding a plane he knows will crash, but is the only survivor. His death five years later comes as a relief. "Black Magic in a Slinky Gown" has a beautiful woman who can transform into a giant spider, to kill those who harm her smaller brethren.
#7's "Scourge of the Kentucky Hills" has a dying doctor replace his failing heart with that of a wolf: needless to say, he becomes a Werewolf. "Back from an Unhallowed Grave" has Count Ricco reminding the workmen moving an ancestor's coffin "under no circumstances must the large spike which pierces the coffin be removed". It is dislodged. The revived Vampire is a niece who, 20 years previously, had tried to commit suicide because she was ugly: the attempt failed but doctors reported "she is completely insane and shows vampire tendencies". Locked away, the spike was inserted when she died. "Terror Beneath the Tides" has a women abducted to become the queen of a tribe of humanoid Monsters that live Under the Sea – a whirlpool sucks air down "at such force that our City is covered by a hemisphere of air". #8's "The Bride's Borrowed Time" has a husband discovering his new wife's study of the rites of Australian head-hunters enables her to restore her youth (see Regeneration) by shrinking and preserving the bodies of her previous spouses (there are five), keeping them as dolls in a near-death state. #9's "When Black Wings Flap..." has a pet shop owner cross-breeding a vulture and a vampire bat: she calls the result a "Vulbat". Unfortunately, it escapes and attacks her: it is killed, but its scratches turns her into a vampire, and whenever she transforms she can only revert to her human state by drinking blood. In "Dread City of the Undead" a giant caveman (see Origin of Man) discovered in a coal mine comes to life and turns the miners into zombies. In "Victims for the Crawling Menace" Professor Darnad (see Scientists) creates "protoplasmic life": it is a "vile pulsating mass ... hideous ... hideous" and he wants to destroy it "before it reproduces itself ... engulfs the island ... perhaps the world!" (implying something not dissimilar to a Grey Goo scenario): his assistant, who does not want their hard work destroyed, tries to stop him but is engulfed by the creature. Eventually it is killed with acid. In #10, "Diogenes' Deadly Lamp", the light of said lamp, once owned by the Greek philosopher, shows a person's true features, reflecting their nature; and, in the shadow cast, their fate. "Land of the Silicon Men" has an African Lost Race of glass people capturing some visitors and trying to turn them to glass by forcing them to drink a potion: fortunately, the prisoners discover loud noise shatters their captors.
#12's "House of the Screaming Fiends" has a married couple inherit a house, to discover human-like monsters in the basement. The husband's great-great uncle, a doctor, succeeded in extending his life (see Rejuvenation), faked his death and now spends his time on human experimentation (see Biology), such as creating a cyclops and removing all of someone's features save their mouth: thus the screaming. He plans to turn the wife into a human bat. "Dr. Gueux's Nightmare Monsters" in #13 has a psychiatrist obtaining pills created by the Nazis (see World War Two) that cause nightmares where the monsters physically manifest. He plans to use the products of a Hypnotized mystery writer's mind to rule the world ("mystery" here clearly meaning in the sense of this comic's title, rather than crime). "Slaves of the Orchid Goddess" (#14) has a pair of New York florists visiting Bengal, seeking new flowers for their shop: they are attacked by man-eating orchids and one of their guides is devoured, but they manage to escape, reaching the temple of the Orchid Goddess (see Religion). They refuse to pay homage to her, but are given a small orchid to take with them. One becomes overly fond of it, but the other is uneasy and leaves to set up his own business: later he reads of children and young women disappearing in the vicinity of the old shop and – rightly – fears the worst. #15 has "My Image of Evil", where the climate of the glass world of the mirror people – our reflections – has become too hot, cracking glass. They want to emigrate to our Dimension, replacing its fleshy inhabitants; but, being too vulnerable in their present state, they approach an expert in strengthening glass. "6 of Me on the Prowl" in #18 has a sculptress making six clay statues of a man she persuaded to pose as a model (see Arts), then knocks him unconscious to scrape off a tissue sample for her Mad Scientist uncle, who adds a "special hormone solution", and mixes it with clay, as "My experiments in tissue culture and embryology has proven these bits of cell and tissue can generate life and duplicate themselves and form in the clay a living being." The statues duly become six soulless beings obedient to their creator (arguably a kind of Cloning). In "12 Hours to Doom", in return for his not destroying a sundial, Chronos offers Time-fixated businessman Arthur Matlin the ability to Time Travel 12 hours into the future, then return to the present: an ability he uses for evil. Circumstances lead to the destruction of the sundial and Matlin is sent travelling non-stop into the future, and as the Sun dies (see Far Future), Chronos assures him: "You are doomed to wander in the future forever, without rest."
"The Monster Maker" (#19) has a horror writer kidnapped by his creations and taken to "the world beyond", where the monsters of fiction dwell, these being created by skilled writers who also preserve their manuscripts. He is to be put on trial for murder after burning a failed draft, as it killed the monster it told of. He and another writer escape, and he takes revenge by destroying all his manuscripts – then writes a novel about his journey to the world beyond, burning the original but retaining a carbon copy. Learning the other writer has done the same he throws their original manuscript into the fire ... only to be burnt alive, as she had made him the hero of her novel. In #20's "The Maze Master" a vicious South American industrialist, fixated on games (see Games and Sports) and Labyrinths, agrees to a mystic transporting his spirit (see Psi Powers) into a trio of otherworldly mazes. He escapes the first two, set in the minds of an Amnesiac and a madman – but not the last, when he is sent into his own mind. "Hostage of the Unearthly" has the creatures of the half-world, banished thousands of years ago from ours, seeking a road by which to return – and a scientist's creation of a "radiation Force Field" would seem to provide it. They are foiled by their inability to cross water.
From #17 one of the longer strips would be a reprint (except #20, with none); until #22 and #23, which had two, then three in #24, with all four long strips in the final two issues (#25 and #26) being previously published. Most of these reprints were from The Beyond. Early issues of Baffling Mysteries were a little dull, but whilst over-familiar plots were always commonplace (see Clichés), there was a sprinkling of more interesting stories among them. The artwork was usually good and on occasional better than that, as in the above-mentioned "Diogenes' Deadly Lamp" and "The Maze Master". [SP]
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