Friday, May 20, 2016

Not Yeti Friday - Various 1950s Horror Comics

This would have been more fitting last week when it was Friday the 13th., but hey, better late than never...

Today, I bring you four chilling Not Yeti tales from 1950s comics...

MUWAHAHAHA.

(Note: these are all discovered on the great blog, The HORRORS of It All.)



Ghoul of the North / Return of the Ghoul from Blue Bolt Weird Tales #113 and #115 (October 1952)

This story from 1952 is about a monstrous beast from the Frozen Wastes of the North (i.e. Alaska).  Interestingly enough, it never  mentions the words "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch" anywhere. Instead, the creature is known as "The Ghoul."



But this thing has Sasquatch written all over it.



Though the "Ghoul" seems to prefer being a giant ape-man most of the time, he is in fact a shape-shifter, and turns into a bat man, a dog man, and some other things too.

At the end of the story, the hero finally kills the Ghoul...


And it turns into its "component parts" (apparently: a skull, a bird wing, a shackled hand, the hindquarters of a dog, and a bat.)

Basically, the Ghoul was a witch doctor's magic spell all along.



Found: The Lair of the Snow Monster from the November 1952 issue of Tomb of Terror #6.

"Out of the frozen land that is Tibet came a terrible monster that preyed on human flesh... that made newspaper headlines scream..."


"My name is Arthur Fisk! Perhaps you remember the events of one year ago that startled the world about a giant snow beast!"


The "giant snow beast" turns out to be a green tentacled blob monster.


This story must owe something to Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness, but that took place in the Antarctic, not Tibet. 



The Werewolf of the Alps from the September 1954 one-shot issue of Horror from the Tomb #1.


"The deadly quiet of the alpine snowfield is broken by the sound of harsh breathing... A man, terror stricken, flees across the snow - he falls, crawls to his feet and staggers on... his strength has reached its end - he falls again... too weak to rise. He turns and -- faces his pursuer..."

A Yeti?  Nope, it's...


Hes' a real jerk.

And the comic's nothing special. However, it has a fantastic ending. The werewolf gets his comeuppance BIG TIME.


He puts the moves on a lady, expecting her to be compliant...


Only...

...she turns out to be "the most powerful of all beasts!"


And dies in the jaws of a were-lion.



The Ice-Monster Cometh from the April 1953 issue of Journey into Unknown Worlds #17 .


This must be the direct inspiration for Steve Ditko's "The Ice-Monster Cometh" almost ten years later in 1962. They share a lot of similar story elements.

Both are about a village where everyone's afraid of an Ice-Monster.


A man comes to town and can't find a place to stay as everyone suspects him of being the monster.


Eventually he finds a place at an inn. That night, he has an adulterous affair with Lucille, the innkeeper's wife. The two of them decide to murder the innkeeper.

He discovers mysterious footprints in the snow... the Ice-Monster? No, it's just Lucille's clever way to fool the village into thinking it was the Ice-Monster who killed her husband.


The two flee together, but Fred reveals his true identity to Lucille....


... some kind of terrifying ice zombie man!

No comments: