Number 1633: Don Rico’s Dr. Horror

On Monday I showed a Lorna the Jungle Girl story written by Don Rico. Rico, who was also an artist and whose history in comics goes back to the very early years, did both the story and artwork for “Dr. Horror,” the back-up feature in Lev Gleason’s Captain Battle #2 (1941).

So...how to explain this story? It uses Shakespeare’s weird sisters (“Double, double, toil and trouble”) from Macbeth as creators of Dr. Horror, a being of pure evil. Beyond that it is an allegory about how nature provides balance and takes care of evil. That’s simplistic, but then so is the story. An eye-catching splash page and several panels of demonic creatures add to its lurid charm.