STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL "Five Sinister Statues"

Does "madness" lie within a tale...

...where the kool Bill Everett-rendered cover illustration doesn't match the interior art by Richard Doxsee?

The statues in this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Strange Tales of the Unusual #11 (1957) resemble Indo-Chinese (Siamese or Laotian) sculptures, unlike the ones on the cover, which look decidedly-Chinese!

Makes you wonder which came first, and how long it was between the cover and the story actually being drawn!

Sadly, we'll never know the answer, since none of the creatives involved are still alive!

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Taylor Illustrated History

Science Fiction Comics 
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Humor in a Jugular Vein: CRAZY "Drag-ula!"

As Halloween draws ever closer, let's look in on the original "bat man"...

...in this...unusual...tale from Atlas' CRAZY #2 (1954)

As was usual with the lead tale in CRAZY, it's lovingly-rendered by the amazing Bill Everett!

Heck, Bill might even have written it, since he already had a number of scripting credits!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Humor in a Jugular Vein: CRAZY "Zombie!"

After Frank N Stein, you'd probably expect us to post Drag-Ula!

Nope!

I'm in a "shambling undead" mood, so here's a tawdry tale about...you know...

Veteran Bill Everett seemed to enjoy going from his usual realistic style to a more-detailed variation of Bill Elder's work on EC's MAD and Panic, as this story from Atlas' Crazy V1 N4 (1954) shows.

Heck, Bill might even have written it, since he had a number of scripting credits already!
Next up...Drag-Ula!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Humor in a Jugular Vein: CRAZY "Frank N Stein"

For the Halloween season, we're gonna tickle your funny bone...

...with a bunch of rarely (if ever) reprinted horror-themed humor strips from the 1950s!

If imitation is truly "the sincerest form of flattery", then Atlas Comics was easily the most sincere company in comics with no less than four MAD / PANIC imitations; Crazy, Riot, Snafu, and Wild between 1953 and 1956!

Besides humor specialists like Dan DeCarlo, the sheer volume of Atlas humor titles gave the opportunity for artists who usually did Westerns or horror or romance or sci-fi to expand their range, like this tale illustrated (and possibly written) by veteran Bill Everett, who proved more than up to the task with this spoof from Crazy V1 N1 (1953).

Note: Marvel's reincarnated the title several times including a long-run b/w magazine in the 70s-80s.

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Russkies and Alternative Facts UNCANNY TALES "Propaganda"

We ran the later, Comics Code-approved re-do of this tale HERE...

...but here's the NSFW version (due to racial stereotypes) from Atlas' Uncanny Tales V1N09 (1953)!

Though the story is cover-featured, the cover art by Bill Everett and Sol Brodsky has nothing to do with the story!

Illustrated by Manny Stallman, this version concentrates on the "horror" aspect, but the later version pushes the anti-Communist side of the tale.

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Secret History of Marvel Comics:

Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman's Empire
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Christmas Creepiness SPELLBOUND "When You Believe..."

Considering A Christmas Story was directed by the guy who did Black Christmas (1974)..

...it's almost a miracle the holiday classic about a kid and his toy gun didn't end up like this Xmas tale of a kid and his toy gun!

Rendered beautifully by Bill Everett, this Yuletide tale from Atlas' Spellbound #16 (1953) appeared during the height of the horror comics craze of the early 1950s.

The identity of the writer is, sadly, unknown.

When the story was reprinted in Marvel's Weird Wonder Tales #3 (1974), the first panel of the opening page was slightly-modified, eliminating almost all the text!

I have no idea why!

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Black Christmas (1974)

Directed by Bob Clark (A Christmas Story)

or

Black Christmas (2006)

The Unrated, Gorier Remake!
or

Black Christmas (2020)
The Even Gorier Second Remake!

CoronaVirus Comics ADVENTURES INTO WEIRD WORLDS "Face of Death!"

Due to a lethal epidemic, a well-off guy named "Donald" quarantines in his home...

...but it's not 2020!

It's "present day" in this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Adventures into Weird Worlds #4 (1952)!

If the story seems a bit...familiar...it's because it's an unattributed retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's classic chiller "Masque of the Red Death"!

Can we blame artist Bill Everett whose beautifully-rendered art depicts the tale?

There's no attribution to the writer...who could be Everett himself!

He occasionally wrote his own stories.

Or was it one of the other writers who worked for Atlas, usually without credit!

We'll never know...
Note: After Atlas became Marvel, they revived horror comics at the end of the Silver Age.
Writer Roy Thomas and artist Don Heck did their own "present day" version of Poe's scary short story (with attribution) as you can see HERE!

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Raven and the Red Death

Adapted by Richard Corben