Number 2563: Pappy pimps “The Bottle Imp”

“The Bottle Imp” is a short story written in 1889 by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read the original story in high school and was impressed. The imp in a bottle can grant wishes, but if the owner of the bottle dies with it in his possession he will end up in hell for eternity. Or so it is said. From Stevenson’s original story, the man selling the Bottle Imp to the main character tells him, “. . . the glass of it was tempered in the flames of hell. The imp lives in it, and that is his shadow we behold there moving . . .” The way the buyer goes for it reminds me of stories of naïve country bumpkins, in the big city for the first time, buying the Golden Gate Bridge or lead bars painted gold. The difference is in this case the Bottle Imp is real.

The adaptation is from Classics Illustrated #116, published in 1954. Artwork is done by Lou Cameron, whose distinctive artwork is seen a lot in comics of the era.

 

Number 2004: The patriotic poison gas

After having a ghostly encounter, our hero, Gordon, is led to the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, both telling him to turn over his formula for a super potent nerve gas to the U.S. Government. What could go wrong with that decision, eh? (As if nerve gas isn’t deadly enough in its original form.)

“The Unknown Ghost” is of its era, when it was unpatriotic to question the wisdom and motives of the government. Even so, had Gordon divulged to the powers-that-be in 1952 that his decision was made by listening to ghosts I think he would have found himself in a hospital for a mental evaluation. This is another of those oddball ACG supernatural stories which for its full effect is better read by you than described by me.

The story of a ghost that “holds all the trumps” is from Out of the Night #4 (1952). It  is drawn by Lou Cameron.

Number 1964: Witchy women

In time for Halloween on Monday, here are a couple of tales from Ace Comics’ The Hand of Fate, both from the same issue, both featuring witches. I like the artwork in both, but as for the stories...I hope you don’t think too much about the plots. They are horror comics, after all, and like many horror stories strain credibility even more than typical comic book plots.

Someone at Ace Comics got confused (and not just by the events in the stories), and the last two issues of The Hand of Fate are number 25. The Grand Comics Database lists them as #25a (November 1954) and #25b (December 1954). Our stories today are from #25b, which is also the last of The Hand of Fate. As fate would decree, it was the last issue before the Comics Code was implemented in early 1955, and despite their crazy plots, brought about the death of horror comics as we knew and loved them, .

Lou Cameron drew “The Last Hiding Place.” Achieving a near-perfect imitation of Jack Davis’s style, Larry Woromay drew “The Witch’s Wicked Words.” Both of these stories have been shown by Karswell in years past at one of my all-time favorite blogs, The Horrors of it All.

Number 1836: Man with a lion’s head, and lion with a man’s head

A few days ago I featured two similar horror stories, one directly swiping from the other. The more recent of today’s stories doesn’t swipe from the first, but both have somewhat similar themes. They were also published five years apart in ACG’s Adventures Into the Unknown. The first is pre-Comics Code, from 1952, in issue #31, and the second is from a Comics Code-approved issue, #86 published in 1957. “The Curse of Ukpong” is drawn by Lou Cameron, and “Lion With a Man’s Head” is signed by longtime ACG artist Harry Lazarus.