Tales of Horror
Entry updated 17 February 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1952-1954). Minoan Publishing Corp/Toby Press Inc. 13 issues. Artists include Ben Brown, Max Elkin, Myron Fass, Mel Keefer, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio and Jack Sparling. Script writers include Art Helfant. 36 pages per issue, usually with four long strips and a short text story (though these are absent in some of the early issues), plus short strips as filler.
Though this is a Horror comic, sf and Science Fantasy stories are common in the first four issues; from #5 they become scarcer, aside from those with Vampires, Werewolves or other borderline elements. Tales of Horror was a good, solid comic – though with some notable idiot plotting (see "The Ripper's Return", below). The artwork is usually competent to good, but can sometimes be memorable, such as Max Elkin's work for "Love from a Plant".
In #1's "Demons Below Us!" Joe Morton is a patient suffering from dehydration, who absorbs water "as if a sponge" only to become dry ten minutes later. He was a mining engineer who passed through a door uncovered by new tunnelling, to find "the remains of an old civilization buried by the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago" (see Lost Worlds). The body of a miner who entered earlier collapses into dust on his touch, whilst a beautiful, scantily-clad woman offers Joe an eternal life of "joys and pleasures" (we see people carousing), with the miner who became dust reappearing to corroborate her; Joe notices he is now transparent. Pulling away as the woman tries to kiss him, her lips only brush his: he flees and destroys the door, then collapses and is taken to the hospital. "Exile to Death" is set in 9852, when Earth is deemed a "perfectly balanced world" (see Utopia) and its World Council has banned scientific research in case it upsets that balance. On trial, Scientists Tum Par and Jan Kal point out that the Sun will eventually cool and the Earth change – so science will need to find answers to ensuing problems (see Disaster), but are told "our machines have run perfectly for thousands of years and will continue to the end of time" (see Technology). The couple are condemned to exile in the Far Future, using the Time Machine they built, so they can discover how wrong they were (the device seems to send people to the future but not accompany them): but they find humanity extinct save for some strange, hostile animals: "there's something almost human about them" (see Evolution), and are forced to flee into an abandoned museum. Inside is their time machine, still in working condition, with a plaque acknowledging that by the time people realized Tum and Jan were right, there was no one left who knew science. So Tum and Jan return to 9852 and use the plaque to convince the Council to revive science.
In #2's "The Thing in the Pool" a rich businessman invites his ex-secretary – who had spurned him a year ago – and her fiancée to his new mansion. This is built around a pool inhabited by a beaked Monster with eye-tipped tentacles ("a survivor from prehistoric times") that he discovered shortly after his rejection. It duly kills the secretary, fiancée and – this unplanned – the businessman. "The Ripper's Return" is set in an asylum where Dr Brown, puzzled by the seemingly deluded patients' knowledge of those they claim to be, theorizes they have been possessed by the spirits of the dead. His colleague Dr Karvel has "discovered how to collect the tiny brain atoms of persons long dead" and secretly insert them into the patients (arguably a kind of Reincarnation). Karvel takes the Brown to his laboratory – which is full of equipment befitting a Mad Scientist – and performs the operation on the unwilling doctor. Inexplicably, when deciding whose brain atoms to insert, he picks Jack the Ripper's. This does not go well for him. "Love from a Plant" has a henpecked horticulturalist who spends his time in the greenhouse experimenting with plants; one day he accidentally spills "potassitate carbonite" onto a vine – and shortly after it caresses his hand. He concludes "it's a miracle of science ... [the chemical] has endowed this plant with the human emotion of love!" (see Biology) – then wonders, would the chemical formula exactly opposite to potassitate carbonite make it feel hate? It does, and he has the vine throttle his wife. Re-applying the first chemical he settles down to the happy life of reading passionate poetry to his beloved plant ... until the "amorous vegetable" reaches for him and he dies in "the ferocity of its fervous embrace" (see Sex).
In #3's "The Big Snake" a scientist's serum causes animals to grow large (see Great and Small); plus, when mixed with another species' blood, the recipient animal also takes on the characteristics of the donor. The scientist ends up swallowed by one of his already giant test subjects, a snake, and – as he was carrying the serum at the time – it becomes immense and has human intelligence. It wraps itself around the Empire State Building. "The Toy Army" has a toy collector acquire an Ancient Egyptian high priest who was shrunk as punishment for a misdeed. But the priest is still alive and animates the collector's toys, planning to conquer the world. Not surprisingly, the threat is easily vanquished. #4 has "The Curse of King Kala", where a scientist tests a shrinking potion on his niece and her fiancée, who duly find themselves fighting off garden creatures (see Clichés). The scientist gets his comeuppance: the potion had been created by the ancient king of the title and he had foolishly dismissed the accompanying curse as superstitious nonsense. With "The Man Who Imagined a Monster!" a radio broadcaster boasts of the credulity of his audience, and when a friend warns him if a million people believe there is a monster in the park then it might come to be, he scornfully makes such an announcement. When the monster appears he realizes the only way to get rid of it is his own Suicide. "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" has a European scientist able to double the Intelligence of any animal. Mocked, he treats Rats with his formula and plans to conquer the Earth, so a hydrogen bomb is dropped on his city and humanity congratulates itself. But some rats have escaped.
#5's "Game of Death" has a Chess match between two arrogant chess masters, one from the present day and another twenty years dead, his jealously of the other's fame having led to his return from the grave. The Devil intervenes. There are also stories about a witch who foolishly casts a spell to kill the most evil person in the room, a man who loses his shadow, and Danish vampires. #6 has further straightforward supernatural horror stories, such as the self-explanatory "The Treacherous Genie" and another vampire tale. #7 includes a sf story, "Beast from the Deep" which is an (unacknowledged) adaption of Ray Bradbury's "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (23 June 1951 Saturday Evening Post; vt "The Fog Horn" in The Golden Apples of the Sun, coll 1953). There is also a Werewolf tale and "The Man Who Tricked the Devil!" where a lawyer draughts his own contract for the traditional deal with Satan, with a vast number of "different prohibitory clauses": but the Devil (see Gods and Demons) insists each clause be signed, and as this has to be in the lawyer's blood, exsanguination follows.
#8's "Pool of the Skeletons" is a revenge tale where a chemical added to a swimming pool reduces bodies to skeletons in seconds, whilst "The Big Snake" from #3 is reprinted. Reprints continue (mainly from The Purple Claw): #9 has two, as well as stories featuring Satan, swapping a newborn for an imp, and Neptune, god of the sea. #10's only original long strip is "He Walks by Night", where the wife of a professor of Hindu philosophy believes him to be sleepwalking when he walks along the ledge of their 16th-storey apartment: she is persuaded by a doctor to take out insurance and await the husband's inevitable death; however, they die due to a weak cornice; whilst, unaware of this, the husband has achieved his aim and, stepping off the ledge, announces: "I knew if I practised yoga long enough I'd master the art of walking on air." (See Psi Powers.) #11 is entirely reprints.
The final two issues are original supernatural horror strips (though one might be thought sf): #12 includes "Fate of Alberto", Alberto being an ambitious sixteenth-century peasant who has his wish to be "the highest being on Earth" granted by some witches he had upset: they chain him to the top of Mount Everest for eternity. #13 has "The Little Children!" with subterranean (see Underground) "demons" who enter the bodies of children so they can sabotage industrial plants, killing hundreds as a prequel to conquering the surface: a detective learns his son is one such, but cannot bring himself to kill him (if not considered to involve literal demons, this is a sf tale). "The Vampire Goes West" is a Western with a vampire. [SP]
further reading
- Tales of Horror – Volume 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2018) [graph: collects issues #1 of Tales of Terror and #1-#4 of Tales of Horror: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Elliott Caplin]
- Tales of Horror – Volume 2 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2019) [graph: collects issues #5-#9 of Tales of Horror: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/uncredited]
- Tales of Horror – Volume 3 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2019) [graph: collects issues #10-#13 of Tales of Horror plus the May 1953 issue of The Black Knight: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Ben Brown]
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