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Worlds of Fear

Entry updated 12 August 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.

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US Comic (1952-1953). 9 issues (numbered #2-#10). Fawcett Publications Inc. Artists include Bob McCarthy, Sheldon Moldoff and Bob Powell. Harry Harrison drew at least one story, whilst Otto Binder (as Eando Binder) wrote the text story for #5 (neither were sf). 36 pages: #2-#8 had three strips, #9 and #10 four: all had a short text story. #10 also had a one-page non-fiction piece recounting nineteenth-century guidance on how to become a Werewolf. Each issue was subtitled "stories of weird adventure".

#2 (that is, the first issue) opened with "City of Fearful Night": oversleeping and missing his flight, Frank Thompson journeys by train, but is forced to get off at a station serving a "midway" town, so called because it is halfway between the living and dead worlds. It houses those who died before their time, by murder or accident, until the world of the dead is ready to take them (see Eschatology). It turns out that his plane crashed and he was listed among those who died; fortunately he does manage to rejoin the land of the living. In "The Devil's Prize" John Dirge, an embezzler, fakes insanity and is committed to an asylum, only to learn his supposed accomplices are not going to have him freed. A man he assumes is a fellow inmate offers him the ability to possess three bodies (see Identity Transfer) in return for his soul and, humouring him, Dirge agrees. On finding he has the promised powers he enacts his revenge – but then finds himself in Hell. The issue also has a werewolf story.

#3's first story is "The Metamorphosis of the Gkmloooms", where Archer, an American escapologist touring Japan, is abducted during an underwater trick and taken to a laboratory beneath Hiroshima. Here the leader of a group of Mutants with eyes covering their bodies Telepathically explains that they sprang from Suki Gkmlooom "an amorphous mass" that was the child of a survivor of the atomic bomb (see Nuclear Energy; World War Two). "A violent humanity has created us – and now we shall absorb this same humanity", by using a Ray which they test on Archer. He escapes but by the time he reaches his girlfriend he has transformed; pursued by a mob he is forced to flee, carrying her back to underground Hiroshima. In the end she too becomes a Gkmlooom and the pair join the thousands of other mutants marching out of the sea: "In an aura of ominous silence, the horde of strange beings emerged upon the face of the Earth" (see Invasion). In "The Strangler" Dr Latoza creates a stimulant that temporarily brings the dead to life, believing he can thereby exert control on the victim – but his first subject is an executed strangler who easily dominates him. The issue's third strip features ghost pirates.

In #4's "The Resurrected Head", Dr Alpha has developed the Technology to keep disembodied heads alive: after succeeding with a cat and a gorilla he is ready to try his first human. The gangster Weasel Thompson offers up his own boss, Wiley, a genius at planning robberies, who would have to work for him if just a head (see Brain in a Box). The operation is a success, though Wiley finds his new existence a living hell. However, Dr Alpha has kept the headless body alive and, when Thompson breaks into the locked room it is stored in, Wiley is able to control it (see Psi Powers) and kill the gangster: but the doctor kills Wiley before it can be turned on him. Alpha now needs a new head and wonders if the reader's will do. #5's "Heartbeat House" has a lawyer and a doctor plotting to kill the wealthy eccentric Augustus Uhr, owner of a large collection of gargoyle-faced clocks that do not need to be wound. However, they do eventually stop: one does so during their visit, having run for 50 years – they are bemused by Uhr's weeping as if it had been a living thing. The pair discover the clocks are powered by human hearts – and that Uhr has as few scruples as they do (heart-powered clocks might perhaps be deemed reverse Cyborgs). In "The Devil Puppet" a puppeteer takes wood from a tree used as a gibbet to carve a puppet: naturally it turns out to be both living and evil. "The Conqueror Worm" has Scientist Dr Rypton stealing a newly buried corpse and reviving it with an injection. The resurrected man quotes Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" (January 1843 Graham's Magazine): "The play is the tragedy, 'Man', / And its hero the Conqueror Worm." Indeed the graveyard worms, cheated of a meal, turn on Rypton and devour him.

#6 opens with "A Death for a Death" where, each night in bed, entomologist Dr. Ansel Jarrat transforms into a different insect – beetle, centipede, fly, caterpillar – suffering their perils (spiders, rats and so forth), all this as punishment for his habit of killing specimens without chloroforming them first. Finally, since because Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (trans 1937 chap), inevitably comes to mind, he becomes a cockroach and is stepped on by his landlady. In "The Locked Door", artist Tom Daly meets his hero Peter Gynt, whose macabre paintings fascinate him until he learns that Gynt kidnaps derelicts, painting and killing them since "Life is matter and matter energy! While the energy escapes from the dying body, I capture it on my canvas." This process creates homunculi of his victims, which eventually kill him; Daly learns his lesson and goes back to painting glamorous ladies for magazines. In #7 "Journey to Chaos" the Devil offers Stephen Blake the chance to recover his dead wife in exchange for his soul. Armed with a Magic sword (see Sword and Sorcery; Weapons), Blake travels through galaxies and Time until he reaches the Land of the Dead, where he meets Cerebus, Charon and crosses the River Styx. He defeats Death and brings his wife back to the land of the living – but Death curses him, saying the first person he touches will die. So, to his wife's bafflement, Blake runs from her: but when the Devil appears to claim his soul Blake touches him: "You've tricked me! I'm dying! Y-A-A-A-A-H!" The story presumably drew some inspiration from the myth of Orpheus.

#8 includes "????", where Mona tells police of her last conversation with fiancée Paul, at his insistence in a darkened room: he explains their marriage can't go ahead since "I've changed." Paul and two others had investigated an Inca cave in South America: legends said "once human life dwelled in these caverns, but degenerated into a form of elementary protoplasm ... vicious and horrible" – and sure enough, the other two are eaten alive by unseen creatures; Paul, though part devoured, is saved by a female of this species. He explains he is only here to collect his things before going to live with his saviour. Protesting, Mona turns on the light to see the other woman – she is a short tentacled octopus with some hair and a giant eye. Mona turns to Paul, to find his appearance is the same. In #9's "They Are Watching You!" the damage to a scientist's nervous system after a laboratory fire means he can now understand animals. A rabbit he is about to shoot begs for its life and tells him rodents are planning to wipe out humanity, the Black Death having been a dry run (see Pandemic; Rats). Later he finds the rabbit dead and a message on a leaf beside it: "This is what happens to traitors." The scientist works to foil the rodents, but it is a battle of wits which he loses. #10's "The Fleshless Ones" has Perry Mahoney discovering living skeletons who use a machine to remove people's flesh, which they then wear to walk among us in preparation for conquering "the Earth people" – their wording suggests the skeletons, though human-like, are Aliens. After they abduct his girlfriend, Perry goes to rescue her: he believes he succeeds, discovering his error when she kills him.

Issues #2-#7 are the strongest, with more satisfactory plotting than is usual and some effective artwork: "The Devil's Prize", "The Metamorphosis of the Gkmloooms" and "Heartbeat House" stand out. #8-#10 are weaker, being more typical of the era's Horror strips: the stories and art at times seem rushed, but even so, each had one good story. It is to be regretted that Worlds of Fear had such a brief existence. [SP]

further reading

  • Worlds of Fear: Volume 1 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2017) [graph: collects issue #1 of Worlds of Beyond comic and issues #2-5 of Worlds of Fear comic: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Sheldon Moldoff]
  • Worlds of Fear: Volume 2 (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2017) [graph: collects issues #6-10 of Worlds of Fear comic: in the publisher's Pre-Code Classics series: illus/various: hb/Norman Saunders]

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