Beware! Terror Tales
Entry updated 5 August 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1952-1953). 8 issues. Fawcett Publications Inc. Artists include Bernard Baily, Maurice Gutwirth, Bob McCarthy and Sheldon Moldoff. Script writers include John Martin and Bill Woolfolk. Harry Harrison drew at least one story, whilst Otto Binder (as Eando Binder) wrote the text story for #2 (neither were sf). 36 pages: #1-#4 and #8 had three strips, with #5-#7 having four strips; all had a short text story, two of which were sf.
Beware! Terror Tales was one of the plethora of Horror comics published in the early 1950s, before the imposition of the Comics Code in 1955 led to their ceasing publication or toning down the horror elements: as its last issue was dated July 1953 it might have been an early victim of Fredric Wertham's campaigning, or simply of a more mundane commercial decision. Each story was introduced by The Mummy: "For 2,000 years I have lain in the cold embrace of death – known intimately the blood-chilling secrets of the supernatural I am about to reveal ..." Some of these tales had sf or sf-adjacent tropes.
#1 has a pair of brutal Scottish squires continuing their rivalry after death, their hounds attacking anyone who wanders out after 11pm; in another tale a grave robber discovers cemetery caretakers are chosen by the dead. The third strip is "The Nameless Horror": here the giant white ape Tangunu is captured in Africa and shipped across the Atlantic, destined for a US Zoo: however, a local said no force could prevent it from returning to the jungle. Tangunu is tormented by its captor, Clay Breker, who gets too close and is bitten. A slow Identity Exchange now takes place, with Clay's body becoming hairier and bulkier, the ape's less so: Clay also becomes susceptible to the other's will (see Psi Powers). In the end the one with an ape-like appearance falls into the sea, whilst Clay tells his girlfriend "when the boat touches shore I am returning to the jungle – alone". In #2 "The Devil's Creation" concerns an author who decides to kill off The Lunk, a character he created but despises: unfortunately The Lunk's popularity means he has "crossed the line between reality and fiction" and he kills the author, only to discover murdering his creator kills him too (though the ending muddies the waters a little).
In #3's "Death's Round Trip" Dr Albert Carlton plans to die for 15 minutes "to see what lies beyond death's door" (see Eschatology): once that time has elapsed a "mechanical heart-pump will send blood through my veins. I've worked it successfully on guinea-pigs". As he admits to the colleague responsible for turning on the pump, he is doing it for the glory; significantly, that colleague happens to be rather elderly. Carlton dies and is ferried across the River Styx (see Mythology): he has some adventures but manages to get back to the river in time to meet the next ferry, expecting to make the return journey – but his colleague steps off the boat, having died before the 15 minutes had elapsed. In #4's "The Crawling Horror" biochemist Wilbur Hatch's bowl of protoplasm grown from frog cells (see Biology) now devours meat. However, he's frustrated by the slowness of his research – but then a friend, Titus Grimm, suggests the "electronic brain" (see Computers) he has devised might speed things up. Later, the pair discover the brain has become autonomous and the cell mass is larger and more mobile; they suspect the brain is influencing the protoplasm; Hatch is concerned and decides to destroy them, but Grimm wants to link the brain to the protoplasm – even suggesting an army of such creatures would allow them to rule the world. When Hatch departs to buy some acid, Grimm hooks up the cell mass to the brain, planning to have it kill Hatch, but instead he is the one devoured; Hatch destroys the protoplasm on his return.
The new lighthouse keeper in #6's "Horror at the Lighthouse!" finds the old incumbent reluctant to leave "it won't have any more use for me" – and sure enough tentacles drag him underwater as he tries to row away. A Monster feeds on sailors diverted onto the rocks by the lighthouse keeper, in return for which the latter is allowed to live; it is Telepathic and stores its victims in glass cubes (it is possibly an Alien). But the frequency of shipwrecks leads to an investigation and the new keeper knows all options lead to his death: if his story is believed, he will be executed for murder; if he says the wrecks were accidents he will be fired for incompetence; and he saw what happened to the last sacked keeper. "The Man who Defeated Death!" in #7 is a Chess master who dies on the operating table: he is greeted by Death who wants to play chess – but before the game is finished the surgeons manage to revive him. Death enjoyed the competition so much that he pesters the living master into more games. "The Last Express" has an unpleasant train conductor accepting a job on a private line, despite the owner wearing a hood. It turns out his new train ferries (see Transportation) the dead to "the other world" – the owner is the train's skeletal engineer who reveals the conductor needs to be dead too.
In "The Walking Cadaver" a ghost (see Supernatural Creatures) is outraged to see his former body walking down the street and complains to the Lords of Judgement, who agree to investigate. It turns out that Gehr, a Scientist, has achieved the transmigration of souls (see Identity Transfer) and rents out the bodies of young corpses to rich old men. When he raises the price one man refuses to pay and walks out in a new body, so Gehr inhabits the corpse of a recently shot thug and murders him – only to be shot by the police, who are baffled by the body having more bullet holes than the shots they fired. Meanwhile, Lords of Judgement pass judgement on the dead Gehr. #8 has "The Man Who Could Fly!" where a giant black eagle carries off young men from a fishing village: the brother of one goes into the mountains to rescue his sibling, to find the victims are being turned into eagles by a bald, black-caped man who is also the giant bird: confronting him, the rescuer begins to transform, but manages to kill the giant eagle in a mid-air fight: all the victims revert back to humans. In "Tomorrow is Today" a man steals a ouija board that can predict the future (see Precognition): eventually it foretells his death and as so often in such plots his attempts to avoid it only lead to that fate (see Clichés).
The artwork is not particularly memorable, but Beware! Terror Tales is a good example of its genre, helped by its strips being more varied than usual for Horror comics of that era. None feature Vampires, on which there was a tendency to be over-reliant, though there are plenty of ghosts. [SP]
further reading
- Beware! Terror Tales: Volume 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2020) [graph: collects issues #1-4 of Beware Terror Tales comic plus other material: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Bernard Baily]
- Beware! Terror Tales: Volume 2 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2020) [graph: collects issues #5-8 of Beware Terror Tales comic plus other material: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/not known]
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