Heading:
Author:
Title: WEIRD TERROR No. 6
Place Published:
Publisher:Comic Media [Indicia: Allen Hardy Associates, Inc.]
Date Published: July, 1953
Description:

Good+ (2.5). Moderate spine stress, lower right edge of covers and pages dampsoiled and insect-chewed, small piece of paper COLOR-TOUCHED and taped to bottom right corner of front cover. If you slab this mag in its present state it'll get a PURPLE LABEL, so we'd suggest having a professional conservator remove the tape and color-touched paper-fill. Cream pages, light tan edges. Cover: Don Heck. Art by Rudy Palias, Alberta Tewks, Ken Landau, Alvah Null. Overstreet: "Dismemberment, decapitation, man hit by lightning." GPAnalysis: No results for Purple Label copies in any grade. A Blue Label 2.5 sold for $184 in November 2019.

It's widely known that rival publishers regularly regurgitated EC story plots, but it's less well-known that EC sometimes "borrowed" plots from other publishers, inevitably improving them in the process. Crime SuspenStories #22 has become the most prominent EC mag of all due to Johnny Craig's notorious severed head cover. But few Fan-Addicts realize that the cover story, "In Each and Every Little Package," is a take-off of Kenneth Landau's story "Decapitation" from Weird Terror #6, published almost a year before CSS 22. Both stories feature husbands who chop their wives heads off, only for their misdeeds to be exposed on radio/TV quiz shows.

"Issue #6 contains a Kenneth Landau story, 'Decapitation,' wherein Homer Bobbie kills his wife in frustration over her obsession with radio quiz shows. Subsequently appearing on such a program, he wins first prize: his wife's head! Yuck...." — George Suarez, Tales Too Terrible To Tell #4. NEC: 1991-92, p. 35.

When Bill Gaines defended the cover to CSS 22 before the Senate Subcommittee, he said he considered it to be in good taste "for the cover of a horror comic," adding that "a cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the blood could be seen dripping from it." One wonders if Gaines had Weird Terror #6 in mind when he made this remark, as the comic contains a panel depicting the very thing that Gaines described: a gory severed head with blood dripping from the ragged neck stump. EC historian Jon Gothold recently remarked to PBA's Director of Comics, "That panel is beyond bad taste, it's downright vulgar, and proves Gaines' point about there being a tasteful way to portray a ghastly scene and an utterly tasteless way to show it."

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.