Number 1753: “Dead men’s soundless screams”

Over the past few years I have read several news stories about funeral homes and crematories that cheat customers. Overcharging for cheaply built coffins, and worse. There was a story of a Georgia crematory where unburned bodies were stacked up in nearby woods. Another story from Baltimore tells of 40 bodies in a garage. Gee, makes me not want to die if I’m going to be treated like that. I thought at the time those stories would make good horror comics material. And they have. The Beyond #25 (1954) has a story about the dead coming back to life because of the shoddy caskets they have been given to lie in. I am fairly certain that corpses rising from the dead notwithstanding, in real life thievery of the living who are paying to honor their beloved dead has gone on many, many times.

Art attributed to Jim McLaughlin.

Number 242


Don't Wake The Dead


I've got to go back to work today. I've been off since December 21, during which time I have been practicing retirement. I do this just about every year. I want to retire. I'm ready for retirement. When I'm not working I don't have to get up at 4:00 in the morning, which is why a title like "Don't Wake The Dead" seems appropriate.

You think this story from Ace Comics' The Beyond #15 (1952) is a horror story…how about being a wage slave going back to 1965? Now that's a horror story.

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During my time off I read the biography, Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. In 1947 Schulz, besides his day job at Art Instruction, Inc., was moonlighting as a letterer for the Catechetical Guild in St. Paul, Minnesota. According to page 167 of the biography, "[His boss, Roman] Baltes rewarded his efficiency, reliability, and thoroughness by having him draw the climactic panels of Is This Tomorrow--a dire prophecy of a Communist takeover tricked out as a "public service comic book.

I have never seen Is This Tomorrow, although I've seen the cover reproduced many times over the years. According to the biography, the comic book had over 4,000,000 copies in circulation at one point, so there have to be a lot of them out there. Has anyone ever looked at the last few panels and said, "By god, there's Charlie Brown!"?

Number 204


The rope-a-dopes


"Noose For A Magician" is from  Beyond #15 (1952). Art is by Lou Cameron, and the Grand Comics Database guesses Rocke Mastroserio for inks.

The main character follows Pappy's First Law of Horror Comics: "The main character shall be as unpleasant and unredeemable as possible." Our little horror story from Beyond uses the legendary Indian rope trick as its hook. Here's a two-page text story from the Story of Magic issue of Classics Illustrated The World Around Us to tell you about the Indian rope trick. Click on the pictures for full-size images. For those of you not wanting to wade through the text, here's the short course: the Indian rope trick, as it's known in legend, doesn't exist.

Something I like about Ace, publisher of Beyond: the coloring. They had an interesting way of laying whole colors over panels. It's very attractive.