Ghostly Weird Stories
Entry updated 27 January 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1953-1954). Star Publications Inc. 5 issues (numbered #120-#124). Artists include L B Cole and Jay Disbrow. Scriptwriters include Jay Disbrow. 36 pages per issue, each having 3-4 long strips and a short text story, with up to 3 one-page strips as filler. Ghostly Weird Stories was a mixture of original stories and reprints; this entry focuses on the former. As the title suggests, supernatural Horror is common, but there are sf, jungle (featuring both male and female variations of Tarzan) and borderline-Superhero tales, the last two genres represented only by reprints.
The opening story to #120 is "Night-Monster": here comic artist Ray Alexander presents a sf strip to his editor, declaring it the finest story he has ever written. The editor does not disagree, but spends a text-heavy page lecturing him on the current comics market: people want "weird stories", by which he means Horror, with "ghouls, and Monsters ... [and the] grotesque", showing him their competitors' comics, with "pictures of people being butchered, stabbed, strangled and bludgeoned. It's gruesome, but it sells". Ray points out science fiction has "weird potentialities" – nobody knows what creatures might be found on other planets (see Life on Other Worlds); the editor concedes that "that angle can be played up occasionally, but ... a weird story has to be something that the average person can associate himself with, therefore, it must take place right here on Earth!" Ray agrees to come up with a monster of some kind, and that night leaves his bed and wanders a graveyard, seeking inspiration. Here he is attacked by a suitably hideous creature (though an Alien) which chases him back to his house ... then he wakes up. The editor is delighted with the resulting monster illustration, so Ray happily returns home, where he notices evidence that it might not have been a dream (see Clichés).
#121 includes "Terrible Encounter", where a couple inherit a haunted castle in Upper Vermont (see Supernatural Creatures), and "The Last Man Alive". The latter has misanthrope elevator operator Joe Kerr wishing everybody would disappear – and one morning he wakes up to find they have (see Last Man). He enjoys himself, until he falls from a building ... then awakens again. He decides it was a nightmare and acknowledges it has taught him a lesson, but when he leaves his house the streets are deserted. #122 has "Death Ship", set in 2243: a Spaceship from the galactic fleet (see Galactic Empires) is heading to the constellation Orion to investigate reports that one of its Stars is about to go supernova. Its commander Ben Woodruff is a disciplinarian, but discontented; seeking peace of mind among the stars, he left his pleading, pregnant wife to go on this mission. En-route the ship battles aliens and we see the commander's past heroics, told by a crew member to a new recruit. However, everyone perishes as, distracted when the ship is attacked by an enormous monster, the star they are approaching does indeed go supernova. Ben dies regretting his choices, crying out to his wife, "Forgive me for the pain and anguish I've caused you! You were right, but I didn't know!"
#123's "The Thing from the Void" has a spaceship crash into a South Louisiana swamp, from which a giant humanoid beast exits and attacks the locals, declaring to one "for countless ages I was incarcerated within a shell of stone and steel" – having been declared evil and exiled from the "world of idealism" by the "rulers of the Milky Way" because "I sought the secrets of life, and drank the wine of paradise." The hero knocks the monster into quicksand after it kidnaps his girlfriend, its final words ominous: "it must not end like this! I have not yet prepared the way for the others!" (the text describes him as a "titan", which may or may not be significant). #124's "The Homecoming" has an Amnesiac visiting Haiti, drawn to the voodoo drumming emanating from the jungle. He discovers he is Abdarkaren, Immortal ruler of the demons (see Gods and Demons) that dwell there, who years ago had Shapeshifted into the British Admiral in charge of the province and presumably forgot his true Identity.
Most of the original work is by Disbrow (the main exception being "The Last Man Alive"), whose strips are noticeably wordier than was typical; his "Night Monster", "Death Ship" and "The Thing from the Void" are good. "Night Monster", though the ending is cliched, provides an in-house perspective of how and why the market was being flooded with horror comics, to the detriment of other genres and creators' ambitions (see Arts). "Death Ship" addresses the sf trope that man must find his destiny in space, even if it means leaving a weeping wife/girlfriend behind. "Night Monster" also has a sense of a larger story unseen. Disbrow's artwork is effective. [SP]
further reading
- Ghostly Weird Stories – Vol 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2017) [graph: collects issues #120-#124 of the comic: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/L B Cole]
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