Heading:
Author:
Title: WEIRD MYSTERIES No. 4
Place Published:
Publisher:Stanley Morse [Indicia: Gillmor Magazines, Inc.]
Date Published: April, 1953
Description:

CGC certified: VG (4.0). Purple Label [B-3]. Off-white pages. Restoration includes: Color touch, pieces added, tear seals, reinforced. Cover: Bernard Baily. Art: Basil Wolverton ("The Man Who Never Smiled" 3-pager), Ross Andru, Hy Fleishman, Tony Mortellaro?, Ed Smalle. Overstreet: "Classic B. Baily Skull cover." GPAnalysis: A Purple Label 4.0 ["C-3"] sold for $454 in 2015. For comparison purposes, a Blue Label 4.0 sold for $2000 in 2016, and more recently, a Blue Label 2.0 sold for $1999 in June 2021.

An Egyptologist weds & beds a sexy she-mummy; a drifter serves as a human blood bank for a miserly vampire; a sexy corset ad seems geared more towards lonely horndogs than female readers. An almost pornographic vibe permeates this seedy mag: from cover to cover it's pure pandering. The sheer tawdriness must have incensed Dr. Wertham and his ilk, but it gives this comic an palpable aura of transgression that boosts its appeal to horror hounds. Bernard Baily's insane cover certainly doesn't hurt, with its depiction of a stiletto-skewered skull disgorging a mutated ant with a grotesque human head.

"Horror comics are full of angry skulls crying for vengeance.... [For example], Baily's genuinely bizarre cover for Stanley P. Morse's Weird Mysteries no. 4, with its Japanese officer suffering a punitive rebirth from his own skull, as an insect with a human head." — Jim Trombetta, The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read! Abrams: 2010, p. 116.

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.