Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

Number 620


Halloween tales of sex and death


It's a special Halloween edition of Pappy's today, featuring two of my favorite all-time subjects, sex, as in illicit and otherwise not normal, and death, as in dead people up and walking around, looking for that aforementioned sex.

What better way to remember deceased loved ones than to have them coming in the door at midnight stinking of decomposition, rotting flesh dripping from their bones, maggots crawling from their eyesockets, looking for a little lovin'! Works for me!

First up is a tender tale of unrequited love from Twisted Tales #1, written by Bruce Jones and drawn by the incredible Alfredo Alcala. Then a story of a love worth waiting for, even after death! It's drawn by Good ol' Ghastly Graham Ingels from Vault of Horror #19. The original art scans are taken from the Heritage Auctions site.

Bonus!

From Creepy #3, a 1965 Joe Orlando-drawn tale of morbid revenge that fits into our theme. This seems like Horror Comics 101: husband killed by wife and her lover, then returns from grave. It's written by Arthur Porges, a prolific author who wrote hundreds of stories that appeared in mystery magazines like Alfred Hitchcock's, etc. So what was he doing writing a pseudo-EC Comics story for Creepy, when Archie Goodwin is credited for all other stories in the magazine? Damned if I know!

I believe it was Porges' only story for Creepy. I wonder why he named the cuckolded husband Arthur, after himself...?

UPDATE: I am writing this on September 19, 2018. Recently I checked the Grand Comics Database to check on this story for purposes of reference. I was surprised to see that the GCD credits Russ Jones, writing as Arthur Porges, for the story. I did a double take and a comic bookish “What th — !?” For any interested person’s information, Arthur Porges was a real person, as I mention above. He was born in 1915, and died in 2006. He was a math teacher until he quit teaching for the life of a free-lance writer. He wrote for mystery and science fiction digests, preferring the short-story format over the longer form of novels.

I still don’t know if  “Return Trip” was his one-and-only story for Creepy, but I can tell you that if he is credited on the title page, I believe firmly that he wrote it, and if Russ Jones had anything to do with it, I don’t know what it was, and I won’t speculate. Sometimes I wonder where the GCD gets its information. As someone who is trying to provide information on old comics, knowing who wrote them or drew them is important to me. I hate seeing someone lose credit because of bad information.

And believe me, I am as hard on myself as I am on other sources of information. When someone convinces me I am wrong I am happy to go back and set the record straight. That is the good thing about the Internet...unlike print, we can go back and fix our mistakes.