Haunted Horror #12

Published by: IDW/Yoe Books
Released on: Aug. 8, 2014
Writers: but not credited
Artists: various
Cover: Warren Kremer
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Yoe Books brings the readers another fun-filled issue of Haunted Horror, and per usual its chock full of pre-code goodness form the 1950s complete with a hint of cheese. The stories, whether they are original, stolen, or outright crappy, are always a blast to pour through. So let's get to it. But first, get a load of that rotten cover. We can thank Witches Tales #22 from 1953 and artist Warren Krener for that. Some NY subway occupants may still look quite similar to his interpretation of them.

• “Code of the Shadowmaster” from The Beyond #30 (1953); art by Lou Cameron. Linc (Lincoln?) Mars is a silhouette artist working a carnival when he is hired by The Great Deringo, and old and dying magician. The old codger wants him to cut a silhouette of his likeness into a funeral cloth and he can somehow continue to live. Linc gets stupid and rips the old man off and kills him. Seems Linc never heard of the old legend that if any Deringo dies by violence, the perpetrator opens a can of uh-oh.
• “A Dead Ball” from Mysterious Adventures #14 (1953); artist not known. No this one isn't a tale of necrophilia; just a football story. Coach Rawson used to be a great coach but the death of his drunk-driving son made him snap and become an asshole coach. He pushes one player to death right on the field during a game and the attending brother of the boy who died, and a former player on the coach's team, wants revenge.
• “Bride of Death” from Adventures Into Darkness #7 (1952); art by Jack Katz. A nicely creepy large first panel opens this one up, which is about a mad scientist who has created a serum that can bring back the dead. HEY! Wait a minute…isn't that a Lovecraft story? Another great rip-off from lower rent comic publishing. The bodies are never fresh enough, and so live bait is the next step. It backfires on the guy.
• A one pager from Chamber of Chills #22 (1954) features art by Howard Nostrand. It's called “Chilly Chamber Music: Songs from the Spook Box!” and is pretty stupid, really. It's just a couple of quick, illustrated limericks that both end in the violent death of a woman.
• “Your Head for Mine” from Journey Into Fear #10 (1952); art by Iger Studio. Blonde bombshell Sandy has an affair with the handy man and they decide her old man needs to die so they can get the insurance money. Nope, nothing new there for plot. The headless husband comes back from the grave to get a head (apparently his was blown off by a rifle), and he finds one.
• “The Cloak of a Corpse” from Out of the Shadows #7 (1953); art by John Celardo. Another one-pager, this time a quickie about a cloak stolen from a man who died in the gallows.
• “Mind Over Matter” from Chamber of Chills (1953); art by Bob Powell. A doctor learns a powerful secret from a dying mystic and wants to bring the power to Western medicine. The power? Project one's consciousness into the mind of an individual. What happens? He learns his lesson messing with forces he has no business messing with.
• “Murderer's Row” from The Thing #5 (1952); art by Tex Blaisdell. Elsa gets a job running the ticket booth at a wax museum her boyfriend wanted to attend with her. She poo-poo'd the idea of going to see the goods, but had no problem working there. One display, Murderer's Row, has some beastly bad man from history and literature. And, you guessed it, they aren't just simply wax figures.
• Lastly, “And Then What????” from This Magazine is Haunted #11 (1953); art by Bob McCarty. A shrink works with a man who thinks he's turning into a bat, complete with hanging upside down and eating spiders. Some electroshock does the trick, which somehow gives the man a shave and some clean clothes too. The shrink has a double life, which we only get to see in the ending panel.

Another balls-to-the-wall issue from Yoe, jammed to the gills with pre-code horror satisfaction. Other than “A Dead Ball” (aside from that story's very last panel), this is another good batch of comic oddities that Yoe thankfully brings to those not alive when these were first published and have never seen these tales. It's great to read pre-code horror that's different than the much-celebrated EC horror material. Some of it is rehash and unoriginal, but it's always, ALWAYS, wicked good fun to read.