Heading:
Author:
Title: MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES No. 18
Place Published:
Publisher:Story [Indicia: Story Comics, Inc.]
Date Published: February, 1954
Description:

VG- (3.5). Spine stress, transverse tears to spine one of which affects pages near bottom staple, staples pulled, 1/4" split at top spine, small chip to top right corner of front cover, small nicked crease to bottom right corner of front cover, some color loss to yellow moon on cover. Off-white pages. Cover: Hy Fleishman. Art: Hy Fleishman, uncredited others. Overstreet: "Used in Senate Investigative report, pgs. 5, 6; EC swipe, TFTC #35." GPAnalysis: No reported sales in this grade; no sales in any grade since 2019, when a 5.5 sold for $691.

"Bottoms Up," by an uncredited horror hack, was written up in the official report of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1954) for its brutal depiction of a wife's dismemberment of her criminally negligent rummy of a hubby. The story's denouement is pretty clearly cribbed from the ending of Jack Kamen's "The Neat Job" from EC's Shock SuspenStories #1, in which a wife chops up her hubby and stashes his body parts in glass jars.

Overstreet notes that there's a swipe from Tales from the Crypt #35 in this ish, and sure enough, "Ghost Town," in which an innocent stranger visits a small-town diner and ends up on the menu, is a blatant rip-off of EC's "Midnight Mess." What Overstreet didn't notice is that EVERY STORY in this ish is swiped from EC! Hy Fleishman's "String 'Em Up!" features a two-timin' tramp who gets dismembered and turned into a human marionette by her ventriloquist hubby's puppets. The story is lifted from Graham Ingels' "Strung Along" (Vault of Horror #33). Meanwhile, the anonymously-drawn "Skin 'Em Alive!" features a football game played with a human-hide football, and it's pretty clearly derived from EC's notorious "Foul Play" (Haunt of Fear #19).

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.