Unseen, The
Entry updated 7 July 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1952-1954). Standard Comics. 11 issues (numbered #5-#15). Artists include John Celardo, Gene Fawcette, Jack Katz, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Art Saaf, Mike Sekowsky and Alex Toth. Scriptwriters include Margaret Isbella and Irwin Shapiro. 36 pages, usually with 4 long strips and a few shorter ones (including non-fiction), plus a short text story.
"The Hungry Lodger" in #5 (the first issue) has a man paying a diner to leave meals outside his apartment every two hours, with a warning never to enter. One day, running short of tableware, one of the diner's owners returns early to find the food being devoured by caterpillars; then, some days later, he sees an enormous one come out of the door. When the police break in, the giant caterpillar (see Monsters) attacks them; when subsequently killed by flamethrowers it is revealed to have the man's face. In "Shadows in Pawn" a pawnbroker buys people's shadows for $100, but takes them only when the sellers become successful, the lack of shadow making them pariahs and thus desperate enough to pay $3,000 for their return. "The Nine Horrors" has a big game hunter and his wife threatened by a tiger who can Shapeshift into human form and seeks revenge on the hunter for killing her mate. This Cat-woman has to be killed nine times.
#6's "The Eerie Glen" has Joe going to bed feeling poorly; he's awoken in the night by his long dead father who shows him round a dismal wooded glen explaining that "All the creatures of the forest make this their home, they regard us as friends"; somewhat unnerved, Joe walks away and into town, puzzled that no one acknowledges his greetings. Reaching home he sees his mother weeping by a casket and, peering in, looks upon his own corpse; he returns to the glen (see Eschatology). In #7's "Moon Madness" a tramp is savaged by a rabid dog; its witch-like owner uses a "Magic salve" to help him recover but warns against being caught in the light of a full moon: this inevitably occurs and he becomes a Werewolf. #8's "The Ring of Horror" has the first "non-oriental" member of the "cult of the beast" dying, but coming back as a Zombie for his wife. In #9's "Your Grave Is Ready" wolf hunters find they have shot and injured a boy: he's taken in by a doctor who believes him an orphan raised by wolves, wondering "perhaps I can make a civilized person out of this bestial throw-back?", having him recite as a mantra "Not to eat meat, not to run on all fours! I am a man not a beast", in echo of H G Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896). But ten years later, on a skiing trip, he hears a distant wolf and becomes a werewolf again.
In #10's "The Vengeance of Mark Denton" Mark is murdered by his wife and her lover: he briefly returns to the mortal realm for revenge, gaining permission from the boatman who waits to ferry him across a river, on whose far shore he will find "eternal peace" (see Mythology; curiously, the Styx is not mentioned by name). "The Thirsty Idol" is a blood-drinking statuette that knows the location of treasure; a man pours animal blood on it, but it responds "you have given me animal blood to drink, I can give you only the wisdom of animals – where the water pools are shady and the long grass succulent. For human wisdom I must have human blood." (From the idol's perspective, this might be considered an issue of Perception.) The man is not prepared to commit murder to acquire human blood, but his hammer-wielding wife is. #11's one-page strip "Two Deaths to Die!" has an executed man brought back to life by a gangster using scientific methods, to see if it could be done; since he had squealed to the cops, he is immediately killed again.
#12's "The Thing from the Dark" has a love triangle among an Anthropological expedition to Peru, one man trapping his rival in an Underground cave system; over the following months "he assumes a bestial, inhuman appearance, like a huge mole" (see Biology) and develops a desire for human blood. Eventually escaping, he goes on a killing spree, then rips out the throats of the other two (now husband and wife), escaping the pursuing police by burrowing beneath the earth, laughing all the while. #13's "The Hole of Hell", set in 1896, has a greedy Welsh mine owner visiting Tunnel 4, where a gas explosion recently killed many of his miners: one wall has collapsed, exposing an immense eye, which opens: it causes a cave-in that kills his son and drives the owner mad. "Monsters of the Deep" in #14 has a diver captured by a mermaid (see Under the Sea) to be used in a sacrifice, which exasperates her queen (humans bring only trouble) but she agrees to the ceremony. However the man seduces his guard to escape (at this point, for unexplained reasons, he can breath underwater), whom he deserts as soon as he is close to his boat – but the queen transforms the treacherous guard into an octopus, who assumes the departing boat has kidnapped her beloved; she destroys it, accidentally killing the man. "No Rest for the Dead" has undertaker Lethan Krewal inventing a Drug that brings the dead back to "a kind of half-life": his victims are people who angered him whilst alive, and he keeps them in caskets to be tormented. After running over the woman he loves but who rejected him, Lethan injects her with the drug – but as he tries to place her in the casket she drags him inside and its lid closes and locks. #15's "Beware the Curse of the Undead!" has the "spirits of the ancient cave dwellers" of the Harlow Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains (see Lost Races) possessing one of the Cavern's security men so as to abduct his beautiful wife for sacrifice; however, the guard is knocked out and about to be pushed over a cliff by the wife's lover, but now the possessing cave dweller manifests physically and carries off the wife and lover to be sacrificed – by being crushed by an enormous skull. "Cellini's Night with the Demons" has a sixteenth-century priest summoning demons (see Gods and Demons) in the Colosseum, witnessed by goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, an event based on an account in his autobiography. "The Curse of the Undead!" has a rejected suitor dying and turned into a Vampire; he now plans to kill and turn the woman who rejected his advances. Realizing what is happening, and motivated by compassion, she stabs him in the heart with a bayonet; he is grateful.
A Horror comic with some borderline sf tales, the quality of The Unseen's stories was variable, but there were some good ones; though there are the familiar witches, ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures) and curses, plus rather a lot of duplicitous wives and bitter ugly men (see Clichés), it was capable of the occasional surprise such as the appearance of Benvenuto Cellini. [SP]
further reading
- The Unseen – Volume 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2024) [graph: collects issues #5-#10: illus/various: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: hb/Jack Katz]
- The Unseen – Volume 2 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2024) [graph: collects issues #11-#15 plus #5 of Who Is Next?: illus/various: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: hb/Nick Cardy]
links
previous versions of this entry