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Haunted Horror #10

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  •  
    Todd Jordan
    Smut is good.

  • Haunted Horror #10



    Published by: IDW Publishing / Yoe Books
    Released on: Apr. 30, 2014
    Writers: various
    Artists: various
    Cover: Tony Mortellaro
    Purchase at Amazon

    Yoe Books' Haunted Horror series hits its tenth big issue, bringing the readers tales of doom reprinted from the pages of various pre-code horror titles. These less celebrated titles were every bit as creepy, and at times downright nasty, as their more well-known counterparts, and Yoe gives the reader a nice sampling of what these books were all about in every issue.

    The cover the issue is a psychedelic mushroom inspired one by Tony Montellaro coming from Mister Mystery issue 8, published in 1952. Additional artwork is found here and there in the book, in the form of horror hosts, by the likes of Art Fuentes and Drazen Kozjean. Here are the stories…
    • “The Cult of Ghosts” from This Magazine is Haunted #3 (1952); art by Bob Powell. Rich old miser Semple Ridgedon goes to one of his slum houses to collect the rent from some deadbeats, only to find no one there. It's midnight! 13 turban-wearing demons calling themselves “The Cult of Death” show up and make a bargain with him, a bargain involving murder. Maybe ol' Semple should have moved the bodies before building over that graveyard. What's most interesting about this one is that the asshole-turned-victim doesn't die at the end.
    • “The Monster's Ghost” from Dark Mysteries #2 (1951); art by Joe Orlando. Bruce Gibson is a man on a mission: show him a real ghost and he gives you $5,000. He buys a house at auction, outbidding a mysterious man who in turn tells him the house is haunted. Well poop in that, Bruce buys the house anyway. The top-hatted mystyery man returns and promises to show him a real ghost, but instead makes a bull-headed green man-monster thing. It's all pretty good until the very last panel, which totally negates ANY redeeming quality about the story. It's a wicked groaner.
    • “Epitaph!” from Weird Mysteries #9 (1954); art by Sal Trapani. A guy loses his wife and she is regarded by all as a wonderful woman. She's the light of his life; she's one in a million. He's so grief stricken that he feels the need to visit her in the cemetery after dark (no, nothing like that). He falls and hits his head and when he comes to, corpses are standing out of the graves re-writing their epitaphs as confessions. Guess what his wife changes her to say? Yep…she was a cheatin' whore. A neat idea and great execution makes for one of the best in the book.
    • “Hand of Fate!” from Tales of Horror #5 (1953); art by Moe Marcus. Danish farmer Elsted keeps finding the mutilated bodies of his farm hands on the moors, but that doesn't seem to rattle the aging farmer. Work must go on. At the funeral, Karl hits on his daughter Katrina, a mute shut-in, hidden away by the farmer. Her mom is hidden away too. Karl can't understand why the farmer won't let him court his daughter and starts sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Guess what he finds out they really are? Here's a hint: evil.
    • “Prey for the Vampire Horde” from The Beyond #22 (1953); art by Lou Cameron. Bats with humans heads is a creepy image. Vampires with old, wrinkled faces are creepy. This has them both, and some great looking panels, but this one also gets kind of hokey. Pramevi (an anagram for “vampire”) wants to extend his life and needs someone to mutter a spell at the moment of his death. Who better than himself? With the involuntary cooperation of an audio expert he gets his message ready, but Eric the soundman has another plan.
    • “Midnight Limited!” from Witches Tales #16 (1952); art by Joe Certa. Dave Barker gets on the wrong train and finds himself on “The Midnight Limited”, run by skeletons and traveled on by skeletons. But even though he is not on the death train's list of passengers, he has to stay on it and the only way is to die. But it'll take more than violent skeletons to kill Dave Barker. Oh wait, no it won't. The skeletons can kill him just fine.

    This is one heck of an issue, and every single story satisfies in one form or another. Yoe Books' method of selecting stories from all sorts of publishers gives the reprint collection a great variety of artists and (sadly) uncredited writers. It's too bad the book is bi-monthly, as the comic world needs monthly horror anthology goodness. Don't pass this issue up if you've been on the fence about trying the book out. If this one doesn't hook you then this stuff never will.







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