Expert: Chris Brown - 10/31/2010

Question
Hello, and thank you for taking my question.

This is probably the longest of long-shots that anyone has presented to you, but I thought perhaps I would try anyway.

I remember a horror comic book that my uncle had given me sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s that had some of the strangest and goriest artwork on the cover that I have ever seen. The cover was in color, and it featured something of a charnel house theme. Bodies hanging from meathooks, and some ghoulish character driving a spike into a living person, spread-eagle on a table and bound at the wrists and ankles.

The content inside was in black and white. One story in particular was of an unhappily married couple, wherein the husband wants a divorce, but is denied by the wife because of her vows of "To death us do part". This of course inspires the husband to murder with the usual consequence of being haunted by her ghost. What made it stand out in my mind was that the panel in which the title is given (cannot for the life of me remember it) shows the husband holding a freshly fired pistol, the wife's headless corpse laying before him, and her ghostly head rising into the air with a garish, baleful expression. The interesting thing is, I remember that he didn't kill her by shooting her.

The back cover featured some panels from each of the stories in the compendium, with a particularly disturbing image of the wifes maniacally cackling ghost-head.

I think that this went well beyond what DC and even EC comics were willing to portray. I am rather convinced that it was some independent outfit that really produced some exceptional work. Sadly, my mother, fearing for my sanity, confiscated it and I was never able to find it again.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.


Answer
Hi Chris

First, the bad news.  I can't tell you the specific title and issue you are referring to.

Now the good news: there really are a limited number of titles it could have been.  Black and white horror magazines in this period started with Warren Publications, whose longest running titles were Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.  You could be referring to one of these, but honestly I don't think they ever got that violent on the cover.

When Warren became successful, it spawned some imitators.  The best-known was Skywald.  They published Nightmare, Psycho and Scream.  They were more over-the-top than Warren, but again possibly not quite as extreme as what you are referring to.

No, the best place for you to look would be in the output of Eerie Publications, which put out Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Terrors of Dracula, Weird, Tales From the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo and Witches Tales.  They are well-known for having some of the most graphically violent images ever to appear on a newsstand cover.

Anyhow, you can check out the covers to all the issues of the above magazines at www.comics.org and hopefully something might spark a memory for you.  You could probably go through all the Eerie Publications covers in 10 or 15 minutes if you don't get too distracted admiring all the amazing gore these issues feature.

Good luck!