Skeleton Hand
Entry updated 4 November 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1952-1953). American Comics Group ACG. Six issues. Artists include Ken Bald and Pete Riss. Script writers include Richard Hughes. 36 pages per issue, with 3-5 long strips and a short text story, plus occasional short fiction or non-fiction strips as filler. The non-fiction strips would normally put "true" in quotation marks: "'True' Ghost Experiences".
The opening story in #1, "Deathless Mortal", features a sorcerer who has kept himself young for centuries – thus avoiding being carried off by evil spirits when aged – by posing as a stage magician and draining his assistants of their vitality at exact times (see Rejuvenation). He is foiled when two of his victims' boyfriends work together and surreptitiously wind his wristwatch back ten minutes. "Death for Hire" has the executed assassin of a crime lord revived as a Zombie by The Professor, who learnt the method from Haitian witch doctors; the crime lord is peeved to find it only obeys the Professor. "Monster of the Deep" features Scylla from Greek Mythology, who kills a pair of Russian agents sent to fund Italian saboteurs (see Cold War). In #2's "The Were-Serpent of Karnak" the priestess of an Ancient Egyptian serpent cult is revived 4,000 years after her death: she transforms her followers into were-serpents like herself: those they attack will change too, until all humanity are converted. However, an American photographer injects himself with his developing kit's silver nitrate and hypochlorite, which are apparently snakebite cures that "work by actually destroying venom"; so the priestess dies when she bites him. A Scientist in "The Bat and the Brain" builds a lifelike Robot bat he can control with his mind (his explanation involves electricity given off by thought waves and sensitive receptors in the machine, so avoids implying Psi Powers): but it begins to act independently of his thoughts, and he wonders if he has "tampered with a force I should have left unfathomed". It turns out it is being controlled by another brain, that of a skeletal ghost Vampire that feeds on fear. "The Waters of Doom!" in #3 has a volcanic Mexican lake inhabited by a Monster. Two visitors try to flee in their plane but the creature grabs it, forcing them to parachute out ... as they seemingly descend to their doom the plane crashes into the volcano, causing it to erupt and bury the lake and monster in lava, enabling them to escape. #4's "Beyond the Grave" involves a greedy nephew visiting a mind-reader (see Telepathy) who gives him an untraceable Poison to put in his rich uncle's medicine; he asks for no payment ... but the uncle becomes a zombie that kills the nephew, who is turned into a zombie as well, in servitude to the mind-reader.
When a town is to be flooded in #5's "Specters of the Dam" its graveyard's coffins are exhumed to be reburied on a hill: that night the angry dead rise and kill the nearby dam workers. Matters are resolved when it is found the dam is being built in the wrong place due to the machinations of a crooked ex-politician. In "The Were-Fiends of Finland" Mark, a young American scientist, learns his Finnish mentor is using asylum inmates to perform experiments in "Transmutation – the changing from one animal form into another" (that is, theriomorphy; see Werewolves). This is not quite as bad as it sounds, for the inmates seem to be werewolves and he is working on a serum to transform them back into humans (it seems the werewolf state is permanent). Though the serum works ("Y-you have driven out the fiend! My soul – it is clean once more!"), the patient dies. Other werewolves plan to kill the Finnish scientist, but die when their cave explodes – Mark having ignited the gas from the decomposing bodies of their victims that lie strewn about. #6 includes "Dark Journey" where Mere Sinestra, a witch, agrees to aid an uncle kill his rich nephew, but explains she needs to send him 50 years into the future (see Time Travel) where he must shoot the now elderly nephew: this will allow her to kill him with Magic in the present. It works out as planned, but on returning the uncle finds he is 92, having aged 50 years. In "The Land of Living Myths" the publisher of Ben Manding's book The Lies of Mythology predicts its debunking means the subject will no longer be taught in schools. Aware that once humanity ceases to believe in myths those beings will cease to exist, Zeus (see Gods and Demons) sends Ben and his fiancée to The Land of Living Myths to experience them for themselves – meanwhile, a warehouse fire burns all copies of the book.
#1 acknowledged that "supernatural magazines throng the newsstands" but "their contents are sheer and reasonless terror", not "dealing with the tense and spine-tingling chills of the real occult" that Skeleton Hand intended. In fact its stories were much the same as in those other Horror magazines, with a few interesting tales but no standouts. The artwork is usually competent, with that for "Specters of the Dam" probably the best. [SP]
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