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City of the Living Dead!

Entry updated 27 May 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.

US Comic (1952). One issue. Avon Periodicals, Inc (see Avon Comics). 36 pages. Artists include A C Hollingsworth, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Harry Lazarus and Norman Nodel. Four long strips and a two-page text story.

The title story has Professor Bob Martin and his wife Anne leading a small archaeological dig at the Aztec City of Quetana in Mexico; this despite warnings from the locals that 50 years previously escapees from a penal colony fled there and planned to take its gold. They had died of yellow fever; when they did so the God Quetzel (see Gods and Demons) appeared, cursing them to a living death for profaning his city. Additionally, Bob's and Marcia's assistants plan to kill them should they find any gold relics. The couple enter the city – "the foolish Scientist, his cold logic wouldn't let him be frightened" – but Anne is scared and flees, her husband following. The assistants stay and try to grab the gold, only to have the undead (see Zombies) fall upon them. Anne and Bob are captured, but as the undead fuss about ensuring their flesh be shared out equally, Quetzel appears, deems them "not really evil" and lets them depart; as they do so they hear the cries of their assistants: "Won't somebody spare us this eternal Torture!" The text story "Terror of the Skeleton Men" also has a female archaeologist kidnapped by skeletal zombies, whose caverns are referred to as a "City of the Living Dead", but this is set under the pyramids of Egypt.

In "The Glistening Death" crooked Warren Arno visits his reclusive uncle in the Louisiana swamps, staying despite the latter's warning that "unknown terror lurks out there" in the surrounding wetlands. As he sleeps a glistening, purple creature falls upon him, but leaves when he wakes: he assumes this is his uncle's attempt to scare him off. The following morning a beautiful young woman visits and the uncle is surprisingly abrupt with her. Soon after Warren follows his uncle carrying meat into the swamp, where the woman greets him. He flees when attacked again by the Monster; later he confronts his uncle who reveals he is enslaved to "an Alien intelligence" who gives him gold. Warren kills him and tells the woman he has done so: she explains that the uncle not only gave her food but also his body. "I am the first of my species on your planet ... I need the body energy of you mortals to live" (see Vampires); she then Shapeshifts into the monster and embraces him. "You shall become part of me."

"The Witches Come at Midnight" has farm boy Joel training the rooster Peter to crow on command: this is fortunate as the farm suffers the depredations of witches and monstrous birds at night. The lad goes to investigate, but is captured and brought before Satan (see Religion), who is about to punish him when Peter appears. Joel orders him to crow – and when he does Satan panics, calling Peter "Chanticleer" and flees: for "Chanticleer is a servant of God." This fabled rooster with a loud, exultant call appears in Reynard the Fox in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (written circa 1387-1400). The final tale is "Death Has Many Tongues", where slave trader (see Slavery) Captain Death is captured by Congolese natives, to be cursed by their witch doctor. But then, to his bafflement, he is set free – only to be driven to Suicide by the heads of two of his victims growing on his arms to berate him.

This is a good and varied selection of Horror tales. As discussed in that publisher's entry, Avon Comics published several one-offs that were intended as such (as distinct from series that stalled after the first issue); City Of The Living Dead! is atypical in being an anthology, as the others tended to be dominated by one tale. It was later reprinted (with a different cover) as Fantastic Tales #1 (1958). [SP]

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