This Magazine Is Haunted
Entry updated 14 October 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
Horror Comic initially published by Fawcett (1951-1953); who, when they put their comic production on hiatus for several years, sold it to Charlton Comics. Perhaps due to the moral panic stirred by Fredric Wertham that led to the imposition of the Comics Code, Charlton suspended publication after 1954, with a revival in 1957-1958.
1. US Comic (1951-1953). 14 issues. Fawcett Publications Inc. Artists include Leonard Frank, Bob McCarthy, Sheldon Moldoff and Bob Powell. Script writers include John Martin, Bob Powell and Bill Woolfolk. Otto Binder (as Eando Binder) wrote the text story for #6 (not sf). 36 pages. 3-4 strips and a short text story per issue, with occasional brief non-fiction pieces.
Top-hatted Doctor Death introduces each tale, assuring us "... and through my eyes you shall see horror that defies comprehension! Terror that drives men to madness!" The plots do sometimes defy comprehension, but there is a good variety of stories and some nice artwork.
#1 opens with "The Curse of Carnoc Castle": 200 years ago the Duke of Allister agrees to marry a witch if she kept him eternally young and handsome (see Immortality), but after drinking her potion he stabs her; he then sleeps until the present day (see Suspended Animation), a predicted side effect of the drink. He is still young and handsome, but discovers not only that the witch is still alive but that any living thing he touches rapidly ages and dies; in his distress he inadvertently causes his own death. The witch is briefly unhappy to have lost him, but then the new duke arrives, who proves as handsome and vain as his ancestor. #2 has "The Green Hands of Terror": here two criminals save a chemist after a set of arms and legs try to kill him. He explains he is "working on synthetic protoplasm, trying to create life artificially ... but my work with genes and chromosones [sic] – the hereditary factors, is incomplete! I've created only isolated parts of humans" (see Biology; Genetic Engineering). The limbs were directed by a head he had recently made (see Psi Powers); the crooks let the next attempt on the chemist's life succeed and flee with his research, but the head – now able to coordinate its parts to form a single body – pursues. In the end the crooks kill the head, but the police find all the body parts and assume the pair have been slaughtering people. "Beware The Jabberwock" in #3 informs us "for centuries Scientists have believed that two mirrors in exact alignment would absorb the reflections of anything placed between them" and a couple, using "two antique mounts", have achieved this – further discovering that any person placed between them will be absorbed into the mirror too, "like Alice" (see Lewis Carroll). But there is no Wonderland there, just the Jabberwock, a flesh-eating Monster. #4 has "The Constant Eye" where a murderer is haunted by his victim's eye; in the "Seance of Terror!" a man's soul leaves his body during a séance and a dead soul enters it before he can return, then begins building a device (see Inventions) that will return the souls of the evil dead to Earth. Fortunately, with the help of the man's girlfriend and the medium, the plan is foiled.
In #6's "The Secret of the Walking Dead" a disbarred Scientist works at a graveyard where plenty of test subjects are available for his experiments to resurrect the dead. His first and last success is an angry homicidal maniac: "I had found a peace I never knew here – but you had to meddle." In #7's "The Man Who Saw Too Much" a photographer buys a strange camera at a pawn shop: after he appears to photograph ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures) he looks into its history: it was built by a man who, by adding "a few simple refracting mirrors ... [had] perfected a camera which can photograph events of the past" (see Time Viewer). Unfortunately he had captured images of a murder and the ghosts of the criminals seek him out and kill him. #8 has "The Dance of the Dead!" where the soul of a ballet dancer is kidnapped by the inhabitants of the World of the Dead (which seems to be another planet rather than another Dimension), intended to be the first of many: but her dance of life transports her "through the uncharted wastes of time and space" back to Earth. In #9's "The House of Doors" two men are taken to a house to recover after their car crashes: here every corridor is lined with doors and the corridors themselves seem endless (see TARDIS). The owner explains it is "The House of Life and Death", with some doors opening into other realms: one man falls into a bottomless void ("the beginning and the end of nothingness"); the second, suspicious when the owner tries to dissuade him from entering, deliberately goes into a room containing a green pool with tentacles breaking the surface. He awakes in a hospital bed, having been taken there after the crash; his friend had died.
The titular City in #10's "The City of the Dead" (see Eschatology) is set in a Near-Eastern desert; it attracts a western explorer who takes a Drug to put himself in a death-like trance enabling him to enter. He finds it more horrific than he expects and is relieved when the inhabitants let him leave – until he discovers he is now dead (see Zombies); impelled to return to the city, he is refused entrance. In #11's "Lover", when his girlfriend is seduced by an actor and she commits Suicide, a scientist builds a female Android whose organic parts are taken from stolen corpses: he brings it to life by transferring his "life-energy" to it (which kills him). The android marries the actor and makes his life miserable: he eventually tries to kill her, but she returns – her fleshy covering now in tatters – and drags him into a swamp. #12's "Ready – Action – Camera!" concerns a new movie (see Cinema) Men from Mars, which cost $1m to make but which the studio realizes is no good. They hire a publicity agent to generate public interest; his attempt to have actors dressed as Martians land at the film set is spoilt by the arrival of an actual Spaceship from Mars (it turns out a man he had hired, who said they could Communicate with Mars, was not a fraud after all). In "The Wall of Flesh!" a hospital doctor has indeed created a wall of flesh (he sees it as a type of blood bank, but for flesh – see Medicine), but it needs to be fed to live, so he allows it to slowly absorb a nurse: fortunately her boyfriend arrives in time to save her. In #13's "The Formless Shadows" the camera used by a scientist to study cosmic Rays shows the landing of a spaceship carrying Aliens, part of a Invasion of our planet: they are Invisible to the naked eye. Shortly after he is killed, but a journalist who had seen the film notices many people's shadows now lack a clear shape: they have been replaced by the aliens. His attempts to warn the rest of humanity fail. In #14's "The Greatest Secret on Earth" a man's head injury allows him to see lines attached to himself and everyone else; he realizes they are puppet strings. Humanity is being used by creatures called Ids to act out their malicious plays: a psychiatrist he tells makes the connection between their name and the Psychological term. The man dies, and though the psychiatrist has been convinced, he can think of no way to break the Ids' fetters.
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2. US Comic (1954). 7 issues. Charlton Comics. Artists include Steve Ditko, Sheldon Moldoff, Bill Molno and Sy Moskowitz. Scriptwriters include Joe Gill. 36 pages. 3-5 (usually 4) long strips and a short text story per issue, plus short strips and non-fiction pieces as filler.
The weakest of the three versions of This Magazine Is Haunted, with a narrower range of storylines; there are still a few reasonably good tales. Ditko worked on only one issue.
#15's opening tale is "Horror In Duplicate" where two Scientists at a radiological laboratory discover their colleagues are being replaced with evil duplicates from another Dimension. When one is dragged through the portal the other follows and apparently rescues him – but it is the Doppelganger, and shortly after the rescuer too is swapped. "Monsters of the Deep" has Monsters from Under the Sea who like the taste of drowned sailors so much that they start to attack live ones; their appearances also change to partially resemble the last people they ate. In #16's "The Evil Ministers?" a new Balkan Premier and his Ministers hold their first press conference, but cameras are forbidden. Journalist Tom Farrell sneaks in a microfilm camera, but when he develops the pictures monsters stand where the Ministers were. His attempts to warn everyone fails. Tom suggests they are "demons maybe". As one of the Ministers says "We are placing our comrades in all the positions of power", a Cold War metaphor is presumably intended. "Some Things Weren't Meant to Be Written" has a historian discovering John Wilkes Booth did not assassinate President Lincoln, but Booth's ghost prevents him from writing this down as otherwise he would be forgotten by history, a thought he cannot bear. Circumstances force the historian into attending a masquerade as Lincoln, leading to a predictable end.
#17 has "A Simple Wish": single-eyed slug-like creatures dwell at the Earth's core (see Underground); one wishes to see the surface and live like a human being, so climbs up through an erupting volcano. A school book they have found says humans are friendly and judge people by deeds not looks: their heart is broken on finding this is not so. In #20 "The Curse Of the Odyssey" a group of scientists discover Ulysses' treasure, dismissing the accompanying curse; during their journey home all but a young couple are killed off by the monsters from the Odyssey. The issue also has "Quest of the Beyond!!" (which has exactly the same plot as "Journey to Chaos" from #7 of Worlds of Fear, though the artwork is less good) and a reprint from the Fawcett years, as did #19; #21 has two such reprints.
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3. US Comic (1957-1958). 5 issues. Charlton Comics. Artists include Steve Ditko, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio and Bill Molno. Script writers include Joe Gill. 36 pages. 4-5 long strips and a short text story per issue, plus short strips and non-fiction pieces as filler.
The numbering continues from Za Za the Mystic and is not connected to previous iterations of the title. We have lost the rather seedy Doctor Death, his role now taken by Dr Haunt, a more charismatic figure in a voluminous green cape and broad-brimmed hat. Ditko dominates four of these issues and his ability to make even slight stories interesting is shown here (and some are very slight). The ratio of sf is higher than before, with several good tales, "From Out of the Depths" probably being the best.
#12 opens with "The Faceless Ones", where – after going over a cliff – a driver finds himself in another Dimension and is stopped at a roadblock manned by faceless people. They wish to reconnoitre Earth prior to an Invasion but are aware that their lack of features will prove an obstacle; they have a machine that can mould one of their faces to match the driver's and thus wander our world undetected. However, the driver was an escaped convict so the spy is quickly arrested and imprisoned. "The Messages" has a fairground hustler displaying miniature people he claims to have found in the wilds: they tap on their cage and one of the audience recognizes Morse code telling him the hustler stole shrinking fluid from a laboratory and used it on them (see Miniaturization). "The Last One" is the last of the Centaurs (see Supernatural Creatures), who after centuries buried, returns to the surface and vows revenge on humanity for wiping out his people. He threatens a couple, but they assume he is in a costume: fading away he remembers how centaurs were driven to extinction – by humanity's disbelief. In #13 "Menace of the Invisibles" has Invisible and inaudible creatures plotting to steal a Scientist's secret formula and use it to take over the Earth: but his Dog (who Dr Haunt reveals to be the narrator) can hear them and foils their plan. In "The Man Who Changed Bodies" a bitter and envious tramp uses a millionaire scientist's Identity Exchange device to swap bodies with him: within a few years he is poor again and the man in his old body is once more rich (see Social Darwinism). "The End" has scientists demonstrating how the world might end (see End of the World), which is fortuitously seen by an Alien invasion force, who turn back, believing there is no point in taking over a destroyed planet.
"From Out of the Depths" in #14 has a strange shadow-like creature crawling onto land from the sea onto a drought-ridden part of Mexico: it is destroyed by the rage of a despairing peon – it dissipates, bringing rain to the man's parched farmland. In "The Green Man" a man's skin turns green, a mutation (see Mutants) having turned his blood to chlorophyll and meaning he no longer has to eat. "The Second Self" has a scientist with a weak heart Cloning himself so he can continue his work even if he dies; because the clone has no soul, it is evil (see Religion) and tries to murder his original, but has inherited the weak heart and is killed by this exertion. In "The Man Who Disappeared" a scientist accidentally shrinks himself: but there are worlds within worlds and he shrinks into one that is perhaps ours and tells his story – but he is still shrinking and will continue to pass through ever smaller worlds (see Great and Small) until he reaches "the infinite and stop shrinking, and in that world I'll stay". There is a strong resemblance to "He Who Shrank" (August 1936 Amazing) by Henry L Hasse.
"Past Imperfect" in #15 has a historian (see History in SF) who despises Alexander the Great ("I suppose I was born with a great capacity for hatred. Luckily I've taken it out on a man long dead."); however, he loves his wayward son. The son works for a scientist at a museum who is building a Time Machine. When the police come to arrest him he uses the device to escape (see Time Travel): later the scientist sees a painting of Alexander the Great the historian has found and, although the latter doesn't recognize the image, the other realizes it is the historian's son. In #16 "The Man from Time", a scientist secretly builds a time machine behind the Iron Curtain: he plans to travel to the future, learn their secrets, then return to the present and become dictator of the world. However, the peaceful future civilization is well aware of his plans and foil him. Up until this point they didn't have a time machine: now they do, they will send agents to our present to ensure their Utopia comes to be (see Time Police). "The Night Was Strange" has an astronaut return to Earth after two years away: it has changed and without the proper papers he is arrested and taken before the Science Consul (see Dystopias). They disbelieve his story, insisting "man cannot exist in space". The astronaut, who left Earth in 1958, asks his jailer the year: it is 2956. He then wakes: it turns out he was dreaming, dozing off just before he boarded his spaceship in 1958. In his final briefing he is reminded that "in space time might be greatly different than it is on Earth" and feels some trepidation (see Precognition). [SP]
further reading
- This Magazine is Haunted: Volume 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2016) [graph: collects issues #1-#7 of the Fawcett Comics title This Magazine Is Haunted: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Sheldon Moldoff]
- This Magazine is Haunted: Volume 2 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2016) [graph: collects issues #8-#14 of the Fawcett Comics title This Magazine Is Haunted: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Sheldon Moldoff]
- This Magazine is Haunted: Volume 3 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2016) [graph: collects issues #15-#21 of the Charlton Comics title This Magazine Is Haunted: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Steve Ditko]
- This Magazine Is Haunted: Volume 4 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2016) [graph: collects issues #15-#21 of the Charlton Comics title This Magazine Is Haunted: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Steve Ditko]
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