Number 446
To know the secret of the Black Dungeon is to die...
"Black Dungeon" is from 1951, Mystic #2. The Atlas site, www.atlastales.com, says the artist is Mike Sekowsky.
I owned Mystic #2 until about 2000 when I sold it on eBay. Ever do that? Sell something and immediately kick yourself for doing it? I've done it too many times. My bum is sore from those self-kicks. I felt lucky to find the story in one of the Marvel reprint books of the '70s, Beware #8, 1974.
I like the splash panel, although it doesn't have anything to do with the story, nor does the original 1951 cover, but in its own right the story is pretty good.
5 comments:
This is very much like an old Robert Bloch story that was turned into an ep of THRILLER on TV. If Bloch's story came first, this is a swipe.
What? A comic book rip off a popular writer? Unheard of...except by EC and every other comic book publisher in history.
I believe I remember the story by Bloch, but not the Thriller version. Is the main character's name Hugo?
This is a really good one Pappy, I have the reprint version too but not the original. And yes, I have regrettably ebayed off a couple comics... I even have the shoe print on my arse to prove it. Wah.
my GOD that was depressing! but well done.
It does remind me a lot of the Robert Bloch short, "The Weird Tailor," which a bit of searching reveals was first published in the July 1950 number of "Weird Tales," so predating this story by a year. It was done as a "Thriller" episode in 1961 and later as a story within the portmanteau movie "Asylum" in 1972 starring Peter Cushing and Barry Morse. Despite being scripted by Bloch, it's one of the more disappointing Amicus anthologies. I know you didn't like their "Vault of Horror" and, I would guess, their "Tales from the Crypt," Pappy, but I saw them before I'd even heard of EC and so enjoyed them for what they were. I'm very fond of portmanteau films myself, right from "Dead of Night." It's a shame they're out of fashion.
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