Number 1501: Lou Cameron travels through time

These two stories with time travel themes are drawn by Lou Cameron, a favorite fifties comic book artist. The first story, “Mission Into Time” (which begins with a date of 2014) is from Ace Comics’ Space Action #3 (1952, last issue), and the second, “I Was the First Future Man” is from DC’s My Greatest Adventure #24 (1958). You can see how Cameron developed as an artist in six years. (The stories are not very good, a problem with science fiction stories packed into six or seven pages.)

Cameron didn’t stay much longer in the comic book field. According to the Wikipedia entry on Lou Cameron, he wrote an estimated 300 novels, mostly in the Western genre, many of them under pen names. He created the popular Longarm series as well as the Renegade and Stringer series. Cameron died in November, 2010.

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Number 1454: Louie, Louie

Halloween will be upon us in a couple of weeks, and in an attempt to get in the spirit of the occasion I have two stories from Ace Comics’ Web of Mystery, both by Lou Cameron.

By way of explanation, Weird Romance #1 was a one-shot with public domain reprints, published by Eclipse Comics in 1988. Weird Romance had two stories by Lou Cameron from Ace Comics’ Web of Mystery, both from 1954. “One Door From Disaster” from WOM #27, and “Lair of the Silken Doom” from #25.

I’m showing “One Door” in blackline from Weird Romance because I don’t have it in its original color form. In the Eclipse reprint letterer Kurt Hathaway replaced the Leroy lettering of the first printing with hand lettering. “Lair of the Silken Worm” I’m able to show from its four color printing.

Another giant spider attack! I found this cover online, and don’t have a date for it, but I’ll bet whenever it was published it kept many a youngster awake and shivering at night after the lights went out.

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Number 1436: Macabre mirror and Time Trolls

Horror comics characters are usually pretty unpleasant, and by the end of the story get what they deserve in some form of ghastly punishment. And thus the fates of the two main characters in these stories from Ace’s The Beyond #11 (1952).

I have shown these two stories before, but these are newly re-scanned. The art on “The Other Side of the Macabre Mirror” is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Lou Cameron and Rocco Mastroserio. The art on “In the Time Trolls’ Sinister Clutches” is credited to either Mike Sekowsky or Bill Walton, who had similar styles. It looks like Mike Sekowsky to me, but who am I to be art spotting? I don’t know Bill Walton’s artwork that well...not well enough to say with certainty either way.

The antique shop owner in  “Macabre Mirror” — whose appearance inexplicably changes from page one to page two —  looks on page two more like the Vault Keeper from EC.

GCD says they don’t have information on the text story from this issue, so I'm including it for their database.

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Number 1311: Two Aces

Ace Horror is a blog in English which comes from Germany. It spotlights pre-Code horror comics from Ace. Ace is the comic book company from publisher A. A. Wyn who simultaneously published the fantastic and collectible Ace paperback books (including Ace Doubles, a special love of mine). Ace's comic books have grown on me over the years as I've seen more of them. The Ace Horror website is an invaluable resource for anyone studying Ace comics, or just interested in 1950s horror comics.

I’ve shown both of these stories before, and the Ace Horror website links to both of my original postings. If you check them out you can see the differences in my scans, then and now.

Both are from Web of Mystery #13 (1952). First up, a werewolf tale illustrated by Lou Cameron, from a time in his career when he was still finding his way artistically, and before he began signing his work. Next, Lin Streeter drew one of my favorite Ace horror tales, “Syr-Darya’s Death Song,” which is well illustrated, and contains one of my favorite single comic book panels. You can see it at the top of this page. As someone pointed out to me years ago when I created a privately printed postcard of the panel, "It's kinky without being real kinky, y'know? There’s a chick whipping a guy, calling him 'Dog' but they both have all their clothes on.” Ohhhh-kay. Sounds about right to me.

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