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Title: MISTERIOS DEL GATO NEGRO No. 46 * Mexican HAUNTED THRILLS No. 5
Place Published: Mexico
Publisher:La Prensa
Date Published: July, 1957
Description:

CGC certified: Good- (1.8). Tape on cover. Off-white pages. Mexican version of Voodoo #1 (Ajax-Farrell, 1952) under the cover to Haunted Thrills #5 (Ajax-Farrell, 1954). Color interior. Stories translated into Spanish. Cover and art by uncredited Iger Studio talent. CGC Census: This is the only graded copy.

Weird ghouls inhabit an empty skull on this Mexican mag's cover, a refried rehash of Haunted Thrills #5. The image of unwelcome inhabitants taking up residence in someone else's headspace evokes the atavistic fear of demonic possession — the superimposition of one being's consciousness over another's. Critics of Yankee horror mags abroad may have found this visual metaphor all too apt. Lurid American comics were considered by some to be a kind of cultural invasive species, choking native arts in a weedy bramble of pulpy shlock. As Dr. Wertham remarked in the eleventh chapter of Seduction of the Innocent, "There is a wide revulsion and agitation against them... Like the export of narcotics, crime comic books have become an international problem."

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.