CGC certified: G/VG (3.0). Cream to off-white pages. Cover: Mike Roy. Art: Mike Roy, Mike Sekowsky. CGC census: 20 copies. GPAnalysis: Only 3 reported sales in a dozen years. Most recent sale is a 3.0 that sold for $597 in Dec. 2019. At the moment of cataloguing, there's a single copy on eBay: a coverless, crappy 0.3 with a Buy-it-Now price of $205.

Two stiffs manhandle a terrified blonde in a moonlit boneyard. The dead guys' torsos are skeletal, but from the waist down they're flesh and blood, fully functional and ready for action. Dr. Wertham considered the sex-and-death motif in pre-Code horror comics to be an unhealthy "invitation to sadistic perversion," but who knows? The psychological connection between disgust and arousal is probably closer than we'd like to admit.

"The Tormented #1 goes so far as to show an attempted threesome in the graveyard; two quasi-skeletons energetically wrestle a struggling young woman into a grave, forcing her legs apart in a posture that gives new meaning to the phrase 'body language.'" – Jim Trombetta, The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read! Abrams: 2010, p. 201. Trombetta argues that the recurrent rape and necrophilia motifs in pre-Code horror comics form a "brutal satire about sex" that "now seems prophetic." He doesn't say whether or not he lets his kids read this stuff.

Tough mag to find, due in part, perhaps, to an obsessed fan who's been hoarding copies for years for his own seedy gratification (a savage hoard of Onan?). "I know somebody who, for reasons only known to him, decided years ago to acquire every single copy he could find of both The Tormented #1 and #2. Last time I checked, he was up to about four copies of each. The fellow attended a goodly number of comic shows in those years and this gives us some idea of how scarce these comics are." – George Suarez, Tales Too Terrible To Tell #5. NEC: 1992, p. 42.

Enjoying the Sale? Order a fully-illustrated softcover catalogue for 30 bucks. Only about 100 copies were printed and they're going fast. To reserve a copy, contact PBA's Director of Comics: ivan@pbagalleries.com.

Consign to PBA Galleries. Our comic sales average a 98% sell-through rate, our prices realized are top-of-the-market, and our research-intensive catalogues are the best in the business. Seeking Silver Age Marvel, Golden Age superheroes, and pre-Code horror. Contact ivan@pbagalleries.com.