Expert: Chris Brown - 8/15/2010

Question
As a small boy in the early 50s here in the UK, I was greatly intrigued by my big brother's “Horror Comics”.  I can't remember if their covers featured any colour, but their stories certainly didn't, being drawn in a particularly primitive, stark, black and white style, often with large areas of black.  This leads me to  suppose that they were produced in the UK, rather than being imports from the USA, although I could be wrong about that.  The single story I can remember featured a man who had come into possession of a cornucopia which, when commanded, produced all kinds of things but, somewhat as in “The Sorcerer's Apprentice”, couldn't be switched off, leading to the unfortunate man's death  from being smothered by a surfeit of goodies.  Could you possibly identify the magazine from this slender clue or, if not, put me in touch with a knowledgeable source who might be able to do so?  I would be extremely grateful for any help in locating this near sixty year old piece of nostalgia and take this opportunity of thanking you in advance for your consideration.

Answer
Hi Martin

I am more knowledgeable about U.S. than British comics.  However, I have heard some information about the horror comics published in Great Britain in the 50s.  To my understanding, all the contents are reprints of American comic books.  Apparently the publishers were able to get their hands on the original art, or at least the "stats" as they call the production copies of the original art, and print up comics in the U.K. from that source material.  Evidently, they did not want to pay anyone to color the pages or pay the higher cost of printing the comics in color.

The most well-known of the companies that produced these comics is Alan Class Comics.  This company produced almost 1500 comics reprinting American material starting in the late 50s.  The wikipedia entry provides a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Class_Comics

There were also earlier publishers.  There is a book discussing the effort in the UK to ban such comics: Martin Barker's "A Haunt of Fears":

http://www.amazon.com/Haunt-Fears-Strange-History-Campaign/dp/0878055940/ref=sr_...

You can preview quite a few pages of this book on Amazon.

As to identifying the specific story you refer to, I'm afraid that will not be an easy task based on the information you have provided.  The storyline is a common one in horror stories, a person makes a wish and then suffers or dies as a result of unintended consequences of the wish (not unlike the story of "the Midas touch" or W.W. Jacob's famous short story "The Monkey's Paw," among many others).  The appearance of a cornucopia does sound vaguely familiar to me but not so much so that I can pinpoint a specific comic off the top of my head.

I wish I could identify someone for you that has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror stories and might be able to help, but I am unaware of any such person.  And even if someone could identify the original U.S. comic the story appeared in, it would be another matter entirely to figure out in what British comic it was later reprinted.

Feel free to follow up if you have more questions.

Chris