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 1660: Moody blues...reds...greens...yellows...

In the excellent blog, Ace Horror, Jim McLaughlin is given credit as the artist who had the most stories in the Ace horror comics. These two stories by McLaughlin, who had a fairly straightforward illustrative style, are from The Beyond #15 (1952) and Baffling Mysteries #10 (1952) respectively.

In scanning both stories something that struck me is the moody coloring. The story, “Diogenes’ Deadly Lamp” does not have any panels colored in traditional style, although “Don’t Wake the Dead” is a bit more traditional. In both stories the coloring adds an aura of eerie mystery and dread.