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 493


Harpy in Central Park


Ace Comics' The Beyond #15, "Harpy in Central Park" is pretty plain in its meaning. A woman who turns into a mythological being, a harpy, uses sex to get her victims, to "snatch men's souls." In the first page one horny guy is looking for a pickup, and is, luckily for him, beaten out by the harpy's victim.

A couple of years after this Ace story appeared, Carl Barks drew "The Golden Fleecing" for Uncle Scrooge #12, and quoting him from 1989's Gladstone Album #19, Barks said, "I almost had to eat those 32 pages of drawings. . .It seems that Harpy or Harpie is an obscure nickname for a streetwalker. I managed to save the story by renaming the old girls LARKIES."

No such dilemma as to what a harpy is existed for the editors at Ace Comics. There is even a noxious odor that accompanies the harpy, and I don't even want to speculate about that. Artist unknown.

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Number 478


Handyman


How many times have we seen horror stories about the detached hands of killers wreaking vengeance? More than I can count, offhand (yuk-yuk).

I can add this entertaining entry, "Spell of the Hypnotic Chord," from Beyond #4, 1951, to that sub-sub genre of horror fiction. Sorry I don't know who the artist is, but the style seems familiar.

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Number 434


Turn on your ghost light!


This is a horror story that isn't really like a horror story. It's from Beyond #4, an Ace comic. It's a ghost story; it has some revenge in it, but not like we're used to, especially if like me, you have a daily diet of Karswell's The Horrors Of It All.

The ending of "Trial By Ghost Light" seems open to sequels. The ambitious DA turned governor's punishment after death is to right wrongs! That's so bad?

I don't know who did the artwork--the Grand Comics Database is silent about this issue--but it's very good.

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Number 403


Vampire Jungle Gal!


It's day two of Pappy's Halloween week.

You'll see some creepy stuff here this week. Just keep hanging around.

In "Moon God's Death-dealing Idol" you get a white jungle princess, but she's a vampire white jungle princess! That's mixing genres for you. This is the final story from Beyond #11, from 1952. The first page reminded me of old Tarzan movies: "Bad juju, bwana! We not go there!"

I've also added the one-page filler strips from this issue, "True Stories of the Supernatural." A word of advice: don't put too much credence in the word "true" when it comes to stuff like this.

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