Monday NSFW Madness VOODOO "Corpses of the Jury" & TERROR TALES "A Jury of Skeletons"

On the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz...

...we're combining fictional horror with the real-life horrors of the Holocaust and concentration camps!

Warning: NSFW!

Memories of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials were still fresh in peoples' minds when this tale was published in 1953 in Ajax/Farrell's Voodoo #5.

There were stories aplenty of hidden Nazis being tracked down, but most involved them being tried and executed by Allied (American/British/French) law-enforcement, not spectral beings, and certainly not in so gruesome, yet poetic, fashion.

BTW, the identities of any of the Iger Studio creatives associated with this tale are, sadly, unknown!

Now, here's a b/w remake from the 1970s (using the same script), since the original couldn't be reprinted in color comics due to the Comics Code Authority!

South American artist Enrique Cristobal illustrated this redo from Eerie Publications' Terror Tales #V6N1 (1974), 21 years after the never-reprinted original's publication.

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Complete Maus

(Multiple Award-Winning Graphic Novel)

Space...Hero?...Saturdays STRANGE JOURNEY "Captain Kiddeo Space Bum"

Is it humor?

Is it serious?

I can't decide...

...read the tale and judge for yourself!

The title is a variation of "Captain Video", a tv show which had been cancelled three years earlier when this never-reprinted tale appeared in Ajax-Farrell's Strange Journey #3 (1958).

Yet the story itself has nothing to do with Captain Video, not even as a spoof of it, like MAD's superb Captain Tvideo which you can read HERE!

The attempts at humor and wit are lacking in both, and the illustrations have none of the wonderful background detail (Called "chicken fat" by artist Will Elder) MAD's artists were famous for!

Plus, the art is so jammed-up, I have the impression the original (perhaps unpublished) story was longer, and re-edited to fit into the 5 page slot in an otherwise average sci-fi anthology.

We do know it's a product of the S M Iger Studio which packaged Ajax-Farrell's books, but not who the particular creatives were...

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 

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Tales Twice Told STRANGE FANTASY "Monster in the Building!"

Remember this mellow little tale, which we presented HERE?

Well, hang on to your hats, because this is what it originally appeared as...

Was the Comics Code Authority justified in ordering the extensive changes to this tale from Ajax/Farrell's Strange Fantasy #14 (1954) we saw HERE?
What do you think?

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Four Color Fear

Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s

Tales Twice Told STRANGE JOURNEY "Hole in the Sky!"

At first glance, this looks like a typical 1950s sci-fi comics tale...

...flying saucers, aliens, and a misunderstanding between humans and "invaders".

A rather typical 1950s tale of a "misunderstood mellow alien".

Note: the cover features a uniformed policeman, rather than the plainclothes detective, confronting the alien!
This was the Comics Code-approved version.
For the original, uncensored, horror comics-era story, you'll have to come back on Thursday!

Art for both the story and cover for this tale from Ajax/Farrell's Strange Journey #2 (1957) by Ken Battefield and the Iger Studios staff.
The scripter is unknown.

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Four Color Fear

Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s

Friday Fun MADHOUSE "Going-Going-Real Gone!"

What if Casper the Friendly Ghost was a middle-aged specter...

 ...encountering live teen "hep cats"?

This tale takes the concept to a literally-surreal level!

BTW, see how many pop-culture references you can understand without Googling them!

The Iger Comics Studio produced this tale for Ajax-Farrell's MadHouse V1N4 (1954), showing teen/young adult hipsters/hepcats encountering ghosts (apparently of middle-aged/older people) who didn't realize their attempts at creating ugly art and terrifying music resulted in cutting-edge popular culture!

When MAD became a surprise hit in 1953 (after the early issues lost money!) other comics publishers were quick to jump onto the bandwagon, eventually bringing out more than a dozen imitations with titles like FLIP, WHACK!, NUTS, EH!, UNSANE!, MADHOUSE/BUGHOUSE, and GET LOST!

These copiers realized that Will Elder’s cluttered “chicken fat” layouts were a major part of MAD’s success, and their pages were also densely-packed with all sorts of outlandish and bizarre gags!

Trivia: While most companies (like Ajax/Farrell) published just a single MAD imitation title, Atlas (the predecessor to Marvel) dove head-first into the fad, with no less than four titles, Snafu, WILD, RIOT, and Crazy!

These “parody comics” are uniquely 1950s catching the popular culture zeitgeist through a dual lens: not only reflecting '50s culture through parody but also being typical examples of that culture...ironically, in a way that MAD wasn't!

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The Sincerest Form of Parody

The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics