Number 947


The dead are with us always


At the end of April we had a tale of haunted love, the other day a funny story of Tubby and a ghost, today two stories of death and hauntings of an unusual sort.

In "Twice Alive" we have an imaginative setting for ghosts, our own bodies. We all know our genes live on beyond us, but what if all of our ancestors inhabited our body? Even such an outrageous idea works because of Bob Powell's masterful artwork. It's too bad Worlds Beyond #1, a Fawcett comic from 1951, wasn't printed better. My scans for this story are new. I showed the story a few years ago and my poor scans of the time made the bad printing look even worse. It has haunted me since. So to exorcise the ghosts of bad scans, I resurrected this eerie story and gave new life to the pages.

Harvey Comics' Black Cat Mystery #32, is dated December, 1951, one month later than Worlds Beyond, and has another eerie story, this time featuring "the ghost of death." Both stories are done by Powell with the assistance of Howard Nostrand, who worked his name into "Deadly Acres" on the side of the moving van.