Web of Mystery
Entry updated 5 May 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1951-1955). Ace Magazines. 29 issues. Artists include Lou Cameron, Jim McLaughlin, Kenneth Rice and Mike Sekowsky. Script writers include Paul Parker and Robert Turner. 36 pages, with 3-4 long strips, 1-2 one-page strips purporting to tell true stories of horror, plus a short text story.
Web of Mystery was predominantly a Horror comic, but regularly had sf tales or ones with sf elements. The quality inevitably varies, but on the whole is above average: the stories are often good, as is the artwork. Not all Web of Mystery covers illustrate a story within; for example, #5 shows a test tube-holding Scientist aghast at a giant club-wielding caveman (see Origin of Man), crying out "Wha ... !! A Cro-Magnon man! What horror have I brought into being with my new secret potion?"; #8 has a woman caught in a web as a giant green humanoid spider crawls towards her; on #26 a presumably Alien woman boasts, as her hair throttles three men at once: "Men! Puny little Earth men! You cannot escape the doom of the Strangling Witch."
#1's "Venom and the Vampires" has a pilot and his two passengers crashing in the wilds of Honduras: unfortunately one of the latter is a Vampire skilled in black Magic who now preys on the locals; eventually the pilot traps him in a cave full of vampire bats, who feed on him. "The Case of the Beckoning Mummy" involves an archaeologist named Dr Damon Knight, perhaps a nod to Damon Knight (see Tuckerisms), not heeding the warnings of an Ancient Egyptian king's ghost, and so being mummified. The issue's other stories has ghost pirates and a bell-maker for whom children are his cauldron's secret ingredient. The horror stories in subsequent issues would feature many more vampires; whilst Werewolves, the Devil (see Gods and Demons), ghosts (see Supernatural Creatures), Central American civilisations, Zombies and witches regularly appear; there's also Lorelei (though here not a siren), mummies, a genie, druids (see Religion), anthropomorphized Death and Cat women; plus gargoyles, statues and a puppet – the latter imbued with the soul of Jack the Ripper – all coming to life.
Stories of sf note include #3's "Strange Potion of Dr Lorch" where a Scientist wants to "distill a potion that would restore to man the vigor and power he had in the primordial era" – drinking it, he turns into a murderous brute (the story was reprinted in The Beyond #27). In #4's "Vengeance of the Undead" a carnival displaying four wax dummies of "sub-human criminals caught and executed in different parts of the world for deeds so ghastly they defy description" (they look like the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula, a werewolf and a caveman). They had been dug up by the carnival barker and the owner, then injected with a preservative: but the barker says they are in Suspended Animation, and – as part of a plan to force the owner to marry him – injects the werewolf with "a serum made from the venom of a black widow spider" that brings it back to life. Unfortunately it kills him; the owner now brings the other three to life, hoping to profit from them, but they eventually turn on her. #5 has a Mayan tribe surviving in a hidden valley, whose gods are real (see Lost Races). #6 includes Tree Men, human beings whose flesh becomes wood, the result of magic not science. #8's "The Haunts of Devil's Lake" has a tribe of zombie Native Americans who have reached an agreement with the titular lake's demons: in return for human sacrifices they need not "pass from this undead state into the cruel and punishing beyond!" In #9's "Lynx Man's Nine Lives" lynxes (and a lynx man) try to sacrifice a woman to their gods.
"The Arm of Tatra Magis" in #12 has a scientific expedition visiting Mongolia to take astronomical measurements of an eclipse; they are warned on such occasions Khan Tatra Magis and his twelfth-century Mongol horde ride again, and they do. Fortunately Tatra decides to show the source of his power (his decapitated arm) to scientist Les Jarnell, then leave it unguarded. When discussing the twelfth century, Jarnell reports this was "when the Mongols were swept back from Europe", seeming to imply they were forced to retreat (see History in SF). In #13's "The Beast of Skeleton Island" castaway Harle is rescued, along with a humanoid beast. Harle explains that the piles of human bones on the island (and the beast) were there when he arrived. In fact there had been other survivors of his shipwreck, whom he killed and ate, allowing the beast to share. The beast, a werewolf, explains his experience was the same, the cannibalism causing him to become a werewolf – and Harle finds himself becoming one too. #15 has "The Famine of Chichen-Itza" where an US agricultural scientist (see Agriculture) hoping to alleviate a famine in Yucatan is taken back in time (see Time Travel) to a Mayan City by its princess: there is a famine there too, caused by "Yax, the two-headed serpent Monster", which he kills. Just before the scientist returns to the present, he and the princess discovers where her uncle, the King, has been hoarding grain: a thousand years later it is still usable, so the present day famine is eased.
#18's "Out of Blackness They Come!" has two scientists "combining lights of different colors and intensities ... [to] create infinite blackness"; but the blackness is amoeba-like and drags them into Hell; fortunately one scientist carries a flashlight, which terrifies its denizens. Giant humanoid sea monsters appear in "The Moon Was Red". In #20's "What Was It?" astronomer Charles Latham studies astrology and the occult as well as science, believing he can contact aliens by developing a "super mind", building an "astro-wave machine" whose "electronic "brain"" (see Computers) both picks up and broadcasts thought waves (it is not clear whether this or his own intelligence is the "super mind" referred to). When his frustrated wife attempts to break the device he kills her – but contact with an alien had already been made and it manifests in the observatory (via the machine), intending to abduct him so his body can be studied and enable its species to survive in our atmosphere for a planned Invasion. Latham flees hoping the unacclimatized alien will die, but it possesses his wife's body and pursues: Latham eventually kills it, sacrificing himself. In "Crimson Hands Against Him," a surgeon performs the first successful grafting of new hands (see Medicine); unfortunately he uses a pair he had found in a box years ago, which belonged to a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century murderer.
#21's "No Grave to Hold Him" has a dying atomic scientist Professor Alfred Vance allowing a colleague to transplant his brain into an executed gangster's body so he can continue his work: the equipment has a rheostat that decides whether the professor's brain or the body's glandular system will dominate (see Identity). Two of the criminal's gang, wanting to find where he'd hidden his loot, steal and adjust the rheostat so his mind dominates (despite his brain being removed his old memories have apparently survived): they end up killed, but Vance manages to reset the rheostat. Interestingly the professor now continues with his research – the expected moral about science not entering God's preserve (see Clichés) is not drawn. #22's "She Stalks at Sundown" has a hunter shooting a were-tiger, then taking its cub home – it proves to be a were-tiger too: years later romance blossoms (despite his raising her as a daughter/pet), but her killer instincts occasionally kick in, so he decides they should return to Bengal where she can commute between house and jungle; he dies when he assumes a real tiger is her. "The Oozing Horror" in #23 has a chemist able to fuse with objects and corpses after a laboratory accident caused by his wife (whom he murders); trying to avoid the police he merges with a tree, but for too long; he is permanently fused with it. A "Woman of a Thousand Faces" has a writer, a doctor and his daughter in Africa investigating reports of Goro, a witchdoctor, battling a three-thousand-year-old sorceress. They are sceptics, though when it proves to be true the doctor buckles dramatically: "Science is useless! We're helpless against powers of evil we cannot understand!" Goro is killed but the three repeat his prayers, bringing his ghost into existence, which kills the sorceress. The story is notable for the fact that the African, Goro, is the hero while the westerners are portrayed as sneering fools.
In #24's "Realm of Lost Faces" a Russian adviser to the Chinese army confiscates a dragon mask from a Chinese citizen, then is responsible for his daughter's death before shooting him. The family's guardian spirit, in the form of a dragon, punishes the Russian by slowly erasing his face; he wears the stolen mask to hide this, but is eventually executed by his exasperated boss. The story reads like a World War Two tale rewritten for the Cold War (with Russia and China instead of Germany and Japan), though pre-Communist China's culture is treated sympathetically; it also features some impressive artwork by Lou Cameron. In "My Sinister Double" scientist Jan Luddig succeeds in creating living tissue in his laboratory just as his wife and her lover blow it up. He inhales gas from his experiment and – after surviving the explosion – finds if he gives himself an electric shock a temporarily autonomous double (see Doppelgangers) that can walk through solid objects is created, but it tires quickly and has to return to him to be recharged. He is happy when it kills his would-be murderers, but not when it kills others it feels threatened by; so Luddig hangs himself (see Suicide).
#25's "The Man Who Died Tomorrow" begins with student Hal noticing a tomb has 2038 as the year of birth and 1954 of death (see Time Paradox). The ghost within explains that in the future advances in "occult science" means Time Travel is possible – and as "strange biological weapons" had earlier wiped out most women, the state had paid him to abduct women from the past. However, Hal will kill him tomorrow when he tries to take his girlfriend. The ghost had travelled to 1900 to build the mausoleum, but then decided to try to change events. However he fails, because Hal has fortuitously put a myrtle twig in his pocket for luck, so (a little anticlimactically) is immune to supernatural attack. The merchant in "Lair of the Silken Doom" finds the source of the high quality silk a woman sells him is the woman herself, in her murderous giant spider form. In #26's "The Ghost Who Stole a Body" a surgeon invents a mechanical heart, enabling a diseased heart to be removed, treated and returned: he is to be the first patient. However, an evil ghost possesses his body at the moment of temporary death. Fortunately one of the other doctors is mystically inclined (being from India and practising yoga) and is able to evict the ghost. #27's the "Valley of the Scaly Monsters" has lizard men in the Amazonian jungle trying to turn a scientist's daughter into their Queen. #28 and #29's strips (and at least one of the text stories) are reprints, but revised to tone down the horror elements in compliance with the Comics Code (see Fredric Wertham). [SP]
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