Number 2543: “Fire burn, cauldron bubble...”

Note to students: do not use this Shakespeare story to write a book report. Just thought I’d warn you. The story does hit some high points of Macbeth’s plot. The ending was made to fit a horror comic (as is explained in the splash panel), but not exactly what I would have expected. A better ending for me would be to have all of those of Macbeth’s assassination victims come back from the dead and go after Macbeth.

Charles (Chuck) A. Winter drew “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble” in a definite horror-story style. Lots of dark panels with heavy shadows, lots of work on evil grimacing faces, too. Winter was a guy who entered the comic book business by working for the art shops of Harry “A” Chesler and Jerry Iger. He also freelanced. Chuck Winter was born in 1896, and when he drew this story he’d been in Ye Olde Comick Booke business since 1938. I remember seeing his work in DC Comics of the early '40s, and the list of publishers who had used his work is fairly long. He appears to be an artist who dropped out of the industry after a while, and his biographical information ends right about then. I don’t know what he did after comic books. He died in 1967, age 70.

From Atlas’s Adventures Into Terror #27 (1954):

Number 2407: Ghosts and witches

What would Halloween be without ghosts and witches? In my opinion nothing, so I have two stories; one with ghosts, one with witches.

“The Dead Don’t Sleep” was originally published in Atlas’ Adventures Into Terror #30 (1954). Art is credited to Al Eadah. “Death by Witchcraft” is from Harvey Comics’ Witches Tales #4 (1951). The Grand Comics Database credits Rudy Palais for pencils and Vic Donahue for inks. The reprint in Haunted Horror #23 from IDW, and a blog entry in The Horrors of It All from Karswell in 2007 doesn’t think Palais had anything to do with it.

Have a great Halloween!

Number 2058: In the jungle, the frighty jungle

In both of today’s horror tales from pre-Comics Code Atlas, white people go into the jungle and something terrible happens to one or more of them. In “The Lizard,” from Adventures Into Terror #8 (1952), search for a devil lizard ends in a transformation. (Bad juju, bwana.)

Artwork is credited by Atlastales.com to Harry Lazarus, with Dick Beck a guess as inker. The Grand Comics Database agrees that Lazarus penciled it, but guesses that either Beck or Christopher Rule inked it.

Cal Massey (not to be confused with Cal Massey, jazz trumpeter and composer) drew “Look Out For Lakoonda.” In the case of this story, greed is the motivator. That and the jungle are usually disastrous for the characters in a horror comic.

Massey, an African-American, was a very talented artist who worked in comics for a time, then went into other art fields in the fifties. He became a very important fine artist. But at one point after comic books, he was contributing to Jim Warren’s nascent publishing empire, and Warren’s short-lived Playboy imitator, After Hours. Here is a full-page cartoon Massey did for After Hours #1 (1957):

From Adventures Into Terror #20 (1953):

Number 1123


Monster mish-mash!


The second-to-last posting in our monstrous week of postings is a trio of Atlas horror stories from the 1950s.

"The Thing In the Water" is from Adventures Into Terror #4 (1951). I like it despite the somewhat crude art by an unknown artist. It's about people being turned into fish, and if that wouldn't be horrible I don't know what would.* My scans come from the '70s Marvel reprint comic, The Crypt Of Shadows #12. "The Thing That Grew" is from Adventures Into Terror #7, and is another favorite genre, blob stories, where shapeless, undulating, gelatinous masses grow and consume people. It's credited by Atlas Tales to "Lazarus," (Harry, or one of his two brothers?) and an unknown inker. Finally, from the same issue a classic, "Where Monsters Dwell," by the wholly original Basil Wolverton. Atlas Tales notes the splash panel is not drawn by Wolverton, even though they kept his signature box. It wasn't unknown at Atlas for editor Stan Lee to snag the first artist who walked in the door and ask him to redraw another artist's work. Why he needed to change Wolverton, of all people, is probably lost to history.
















*More fishy horrors from Karswell at The Horrors Of It All.