Celebrate Halloween with OTR!

As a fan of old-time radio, one of my favourite ways to observe Halloween is through listening to great OTR shows. As a young teenager when I first became a fan, there were some programs which gave me a few thrills and scares, listening to them late at night in the dark, my mind half-asleep. Below are the best scary shows I've ever heard; the links lead to archive.org and you can download them by right-clicking the link and choosing to save the file.

Happy Halloween!

Dimension X: There Will Come Soft Rains/Zero Hour; Mars is Heaven

Escape: A Shipment of Mute Fate; Pollack and the Porrah Man; Evening Primrose; Casting the Runes; Taboo; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; Confession; Papa Benjamin; Snake Doctor; Ancient Sorceries; The Grove of Ashtaroth; The Log of the Evening Star; Three Skeleton Key; Present Tense

Inner Sanctum: The Judas Clock; The Devil's Workshop; Terror by Night

Lights Out: Spider; Little Old Lady; Murder Castle

Mystery in the Air: The Horla

Quiet, Please: Whence Came You?; The Thing on the Fourble Board; My Son John

Suspense: The Hitchhiker; Fugue in C Minor; Drive-In; To Find Help; August Heat; The Furnished Floor; The Pasteboard Box; The House in Cypress Canyon; Hitchhike Poker; The Ten Years; The Lunch Kit; Mission Completed; Never Steal a Butcher's Wife; Too Hot to Live; On a Country Road; Track of the Cat; The Death of Me; The Whole Town's Sleeping; The Waxwork

Weird Circle: A Terrible Night; The Curse of the Mantle; The Trial for Murder

I Love Atlas Comics#16: "The Dinner Guest!"

From the mixed-up files of artist Don Perlin comes Astonishing#35 (1954)'s "the Dinner Guest!" Sounds elegant!

Somewhere in the USSR, poor old Sasha welcomes a Soviet commissar into his home and insists he take the best chair in his shack.

The commissar has come to review Sasha's claim that he needs more money to live on. Sasha quickly explains why: his son Ivan is a zombie! On the evening after Ivan's funeral, Sasha was shocked to find Ivan at his door, now a zombie!

Sasha explains how his son was a criminal and murderer in life, much to the disinterest of the commissar. Sasha says since Ivan's return he's been cold and rotting. This is why he needs more money - to afford more food and clothing for Ivan. Since Ivan is legally dead, however, the commissar doesn't believe anything can be done and suspects he's being fed a pack of lies.

Sasha reacts violently, pulling a knife on the commissar and forcing him into the chair as manacles are placed over his arms and legs.

You see, Ivan has a special diet since becoming a zombie...and that's what they really need the commissar for!

I hope you've enjoyed these seven days of "I Love Atlas Comics;" I may return to the feature again from time to time, likely to visit the other Atlas genres like crime, war and western. Enjoy your Halloween tomorrow!

I Love Atlas Comics#15: "Out of My Life!"

Today we head back to 1953 and Bob Fujitani's "Out of My Life!" from Adventures into Weird Worlds#22, a tale well calculated to keep you in...confusion!

We open on a young woman meeting an older man at a restaurant. The woman, Lise, has just told the man about her lover, Ralph. He's having an oddly muted reaction to hte news.

As she asks him how he feels about her and Ralph he acts like nothing is trouble him, but she suspects he's planning something. Sure enough, the man has something on his mind.

Still, he doesn't give away his secret, offering a creepy toast.

Lise asks what he'll do with himself now; he says he'll travel to Europe, while thinking he needs to take care of Ralph first.

Lise seems upset by the idea of the man being alone and it pleases him to think she'll miss him. Just then, Ralph arrives and the man's horrible secret is revealed!

Wait a minute. WHAT? The surprise ending is the older man is the woman's father? That's...that's not a twist! At least, not a twist worthy of a comic called Adventures Into Weird Worlds. This would have been acceptable fare in Young Love or Love Romances.

It's only a three-page story, but that's about four pages too many. The writer probably thought he was being very clever, hinting toward some dark secret where none actually exists. The author is uncredited, but if he's still alive, he'd be at home with today's dozens of comics-which-hint-towards-things-happening-but-nothing-ever-does. "Out of My Life" fascinates me for being so absolutely out of place.

I Love Atlas Comics#14: "Double Feature"

From 1954's Mystic#30 we have a single feature called "Double Feature," courtesy of Al Eadeh.

We look in on one Warren Koster, museum employee.

He's very upset with his boss Mr. Blackton and assumes the quickest way to the top is to murder his superior. However, before bringing down the axe he realizes he'd be easily caught and convicted. That evening, Koster goes to see a double feature at the theatre: "Marked for Murder" and "Trapped."

The movies give him an idea. He memorizes the plot, then the following evening he goes to the same show again, but walks away from the theatre with his ticket stubs.

This is a pretty familiar alibi in fiction of the time - the murderer claims to be at the theatre while a movie he'd seen earlier is playing. The stubs will hopefully clinch his alibi, leaving him free to murder Mr. Blackton...and that's exactly what Koster does.

He's done it! The perfect crime! ...Uh, assuming the police don't try to match his fingerprints to the axe. Early the next morning the police come to see Koster and ask for his alibi when Blackton was killed. He produces the ticket stubs and starts to describe the double feature, only to be handcuffed. Koster slipped up in a way he couldn't have foreseen:

Minutes after he bought his second ticket! Extremely lucky and yet unlucky at the same time!

I Love Atlas Comics#13: "Burton's Blood"

Lucky#13 of "I Love Atlas Comics" brings us a tale by Stan Lee and Wild Bill Everett; "Burton's Blood" from Menace#2, 1953; but don't get too cozy in the 50s, we're traveling to that far flung future world of...1998!

During the worldwide atomic war of 1998 (remember that?), John Burton is one of the few beings on Earth to prosper; that's because he's a vampire!

While humanity suffers and dies, Burton feasts on the corpses and easily evades efforts by humans to destroy him. Having eaten to his full, he decides to sleep in a vacant crypt. His sleep is so sound he winds up napping for an untold number of years. When Burton awakens, the world looks quite different to him.

Clearly, humanity has rebuilt itself from the ruins of atomic war so he can't rely upon corpses littering the streets; he'll have to hunt for his food again, so out come the fangs!

Burton soon finds a suitable victim - a man who appears quite corpulent. Burton stalks him until he can isolate him on his own. Burton attacks the large man, but the intended victim shows no fear in the face of the vampire. Burton sinks his fangs into the man's neck, to no effect. It seems Burton slept far, far too long. The atomic war wound up eliminating all human life on the planet:

Robots:1 Vampires: 0

Vampires: the Marvel Undead#1 is in stores today

Vampires: the Marvel Undead is the most recent entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and I know what you're thinking, "Vampires? In the week before Halloween? Must be a coincidence." Maybe you're also wondering why there's a stripper on the cover (it's Lilith, daughter of Dracula).

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself credited as a writer (under "with") for this issue. I mean...obviously I knew I had contributed to the comic. Still, I didn't know if I'd be with the writers or the special thanks. Both, as it turns out.

Anyway, with more than any sane human being should want to know about Marvel Comics' vampires...I approve this publication. Buy a copy.

I Love Atlas Comics#12: "Hammer Horror"

Today's "I Love Atlas Comics" takes up to the realm of crime comics with 1951's Justice Comics#19. Our story is "Hammer Horror," not to be confused with the British filmmakers. Sadly, the artist of this tale isn't identified.

Now, I said this series was going to cover horror comics, yet here I am looking at a crime comic, one purportedly drawn from a real life case. Although this story appeared in Justice Comics, it could have easily been printed in Mystery Tales or Suspense.

A string of murders committed by a man wielding a hammer unnerve the city; police detective John Murray notes the killer only strikes on night when rain is falling and makes this information public, upsetting the public when another rainfall occurs; however, no hammer murders follow the rain. It's only while looking at his son's book on mythology that Murray realizes what's really going on:

Murray missed a vital piece of information about the killings: they occur on nights with thunder & lightning. The killer has modeled himself after the Norse god of thunder, Thor! On the next storm night, Murray manages to save a policeman from being the next victim!

Murray shoots the hammer from "Thor's" hand, but the killer escapes. Finally, Murray has some concrete evidence and studies the murder weapon:

These leads Murray to a barrel-making factory, where there just happens to be a red-bearded barrel maker called...Thorson! Murray waits for another storm to burst out before he makes his move; sure enough, Thorson is the man they're looking for; he believes Thor is his father!

In fact, Thorson's strength is rather prodigious and he escapes Murray.

When the police catch up to Thorson, he's atop a skyscraper, trying to summon his father's help and command the thunder & lightning.

And that's just what happens - his hammer-waving antics draw the lightning to him.

Thorson is dead, bringing an end to the hammer murders. Murray is left to wonder whether the lightning strike was a coincidence or godly intervention.

Like most crime comics, "Hammer Horror" claims to be based on a real life case. I've tried to ascertain if this is true, but I haven't had any luck; supposedly, this is from the casebook of "John Murray" of the "Black Daisy" case. These seem to be references to famed serial killer-catcher John St. John and the Black Dahlia case, but I haven't found any internet sources connecting St. John to this case; if you can identify the real world case, please let me know.

On the other hand, there's an old-time radio program which follows this same story! It's the October 11, 1949 episode of Casey, Crime Photographer dubbed "Thunderbolt." Just like "Hammer Horror," a man named Thorson kills men with a hammer on stormy evenings. This suggests that either the 1949 radio play and 1951 comic script both drew from the same historical sources, or the comic swiped the radio story and tried to pass it off as a "real case" to conceal the matter (50s comics are full of swipes from radio and short stories). Anyway, you can download "Thunderbolt" from the Internet Archive here (right-click to save the file); the surviving copy of this episode is missing the commercial and music bridges (being an AFRS broadcast), which makes it seem more intense than the typical episode of Casey. Also of interest, up until 1950 Atlas had been publishing a Casey, Crime Photographer comic book.