Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Witching Hour #70 (Vol. 9, April 1977)

Three shocker stories of surprise and suspense.

The cover wouldn't lie to you, would it?

Drone of the Dying: After he is attacked by a swarm of bees, a hiker awakens in a strange hospital.

The Humpty-Dumpty Hobo: Old Joe the Hobo is struck by a car and carted off to the hospital.  Being a poor man, he cannot afford the kind of top notch plastic surgery needed to treat his wounds.  But his doctor assures him that there is a way around Old Joe's financial problem.

The Eerie Secret of File #113:  Leo Larsen hires a pair of industrial spies to steal a scientist's greatest invention.  The secret to which is hidden inside file #113.

Of the strolls down memory lane that I have taken, I think The Witching Hour #70 qualifies as one of the larger disappointments, if not the largest.  I cannot say that I truly enjoyed any of the stories.

Drone gets off to a promising start, but then it trips over its own "twist" (just look at the cover, okay) and falls flat on its face.  The rest of the story was the reading equivalent of watching a fallen someone wobble to their hands and knees and reach out for something while desperately trying to maintain balance...and failing.  Hobo is just a two-page joke, with the punchline smacking poor old Joe right in what is left of his face.  Cute, but nothing special.  There was a far better plastic surgery gag story in issue #71.

Also nothing special is that Eerie Secret buried in the mysterious file #113.  It's just another robot story.  Interesting to note that this robot story is narrated by Cynthia, who told yet another robot story way back in issue #56.  Chick really needs to work on her material.

Then again, I'm not the age group that this book was marketed towards and, to be fair, the odds are against me enjoying every stroll down memory lane.  There will be times like this one, when I get a clear reminder that the "Good Old Days" weren't always so good.

The Witching Hour #71 (Vol. 9, May 1977)

Three bewitching tales:

Death Struggle:  The demanding and shrewish Jan Paxton doesn't give her husband Gary a moment of peace, every minute of every day she's pushing him to achieve some goal, or to do some chore.  She presses him so hard that he eventually collapses from exhaustion and Death comes to collect his soul.  But Jan refuses to let her husband go into that seemingly gentle night...

Bang!  You're Dead, Dr. Fargo:  In order to make a clean getaway, bank robber Harry Hobart needs a new face.  Dr. Fargo is willing to give him one, for a fee, one that Harry and his wife aren't willing to pay.  They double cross the dear, old doc, but the man has a way of getting back at the worms that turn on him...

Baby Doll Was Deadly:  Nikki Turner's mother has died, but the voodoo practitioner left her daughter with a very special doll, one that dispenses punishment to all who dare threaten her.  Cousin Lew and his wife Alma are just the kind of threat Nikki's mom knew would come crawling out of the shadows.  They want Nikki gone so they can inherit her $2,000,000 dollars.  But first they have to find out a way to get that cursed doll out of Nikki's hands...

While the stories in The Witching Hour's 71st issue are a somewhat amusing lot (mostly because the adults behave in a manner that would be relatable to a child, but not to an actual adult) each of them also seems to have an undercurrent of misogyny.  Jan Paxton (who acts more like a browbeating mother than a wife) battles death mostly because she doesn't want to be encumbered with a big house to care for.  You know, you could just seel the place, Jan.  Harry Hobart robs the bank where he works because his "young wife" likes "high living."  Although eventually victimized by her uncaring cousins, young Nikki Turner is first seen cruelly torturing the matrons of the orphanage she had been sent to following her mother's demise.  Perhaps the negative characterizations were the unintended result of writer Carl Wessler trying to appeal to what was (I'm thinking, but could be wrong) a rather sizable readership of young boys.  Or maybe I'm just overreacting to the whole thing.

Nonetheless, each of the stories contained enough of the now familiar blend of spooky shenanigans and black comedy to entertain me almost as much now as it did back when I was a child.

But the search for that damn demon baby story continues.

The Witching Hour #69 (Vol. 9, March 1977)

Mildred, Mordred and Cynthia, your bewitching hostesses, again thrill and delight with a trio of supernaturally themed stories...

Five Fatal Fingers: There is a reason Calvin Simms always wears gloves.  Anything that he touches with his bare hands, withers and dies!

The Captain's Curse: Lew loves showering his greedy girlfriend Gladys with gifts.  But when his former best friend and current Captain, Matt, stands in the way of another shopping spree, Lew decides a little mutiny is needed.

The Girl Who Grew Younger: Sara's twenty-first birthday should be a happy thing.  But Sara's Aunt and Uncle, who raised her, forbid Sara from marrying her one true love, David.  But that issue is soon forgotten as Sara mysteriously begins to grow younger and younger at a frightening pace.  Can the process be stopped before Sara vanishes completely?

In a previous review (for The Witching Hour #56) I mentioned the horror comic reading of my youth (none of that super hero stuff for me, thank you, the comic had to have monsters to get my interest) and how certain stories from the mid-to-late seventies stuck with me.  It turns out that The Witching Hour #69 was one of those issues.  The Captain's Curse and The Girl Who Grew Younger are two stories that stuck with me.  Curse because it grossed me out, Girl because the idea of growing younger seemed kind of weird and creepy at the time I first read it.  Not so much today, with nearly thirty more years added to the count. 

What seems odd to me now, having just reread the comic, is that the title story, and this issue's true highlight, Five Fatal Fingers didn't.  Then again, being both an adult as well as a widower, I can appreciate the tragedy at the story's core far more than I would have when I was ten years old.  (Damn, has it really been that long?)  Girl, the bookend and thematic opposite of Fingers, hasn't aged all that well.  No pun intended.  The story's twist ending is an utterly absurd one.  Curse, sandwiched between the two, is a devilishly clever crime and punishment yarn worthy of E.C. Comics.  Only E.C. would have made the story far gorier.

Finding and revisiting this issue of The Witching Hour was an enjoyable stroll down memory lane for me.  While these old comics might not frighten the way they once did, they still can entertain and that is all that really matters, in the end.

Now if I could just find that issue with the monster baby story in it...

The Witching Hour - #56 (Vol. 7, July 1975)

A trio of witches share stories of the strange and unusual...

Mildred: What Drove Him Bats?  A cave explorer discovers a mad scientist's strange invention, but then a mishap sends the unfortunate explorer on a nightmarish adventure.

Mordred: Who Rides With Death!  Two motorcyclists fight over who gets the honor of taking a pretty, young waitress home, but the loser wins a date with death.

Cynthia: The Death of an Iron Lady.  When Ivan Rujakov (a spy for "you'll-never-guess-who"), um, spies a unique presentation in robotics, he has a wonderful idea.  Why not use the robot to break into the Pentagon and steal the mysterious plans for a remarkable defensive invention?

Reading and enjoying the retro-comic Monsters on the Prowl put me in the mood to finally stroll down memory lane with this thirty-year old comic, which I snagged at the 2005 Wonder Con.  (Has it really been thirty years?  It feels like yesterday.)  I have fuzzy memories of reading several horror comics when I was a kid in the seventies, when E.C. style horror books evidently made a strong comeback after the super hero laden sixties.  (Or so I am guessing, based on comments I've seen/heard in various interviews.)  The actual titles of those comics might have faded from memory, but I have never forgotten the stories.  One involved a scientist that was mutated into a giant, floating monster.  Another was about a mother who had given birth to a monstrous infant, and is then driven to commit a horrible act by its evil torment.  The one that scared me the worst was about these people on an island stalked by some beast that rips hearts out.  (The beast made the sound of a beating heart, which grew louder as it drew closer and closer to its intended prey.)  The only title I remember is for a story called Fried Fish.

When I got back into reading comics in the early nineties (there was a brief spurt in the late eighties, when I was addicted to D.C.'s Wasteland), I remembered those horror comics that terrified and delighted when I was all of seven or eight years old.  A little asking around at The Funny Papers (the San Francisco comic shop I frequented at the time) gave me several titles.  At first I thought it was The Witching Hour, but now I am "fairly certain" it had to be House of Mystery.  I can only be sure when I finally manage to track down and get the particular issues that featured those memorable tales. They had to be in a comic printed sometime in 1975 or 76, at least I have a very narrow search area.  Finding affordable issues will be the hard part.

That being said, reading this issue of The Witching Hour was a gentle reminder that looking back on the entertainments of childhood with a middle-aged man's vision can be a bittersweet thing.  The stories are certainly dark, especially Who Rides With Death, but not too dark.  They also have the strange logic of a particularly vivid dream.  The moment you stop to think about the events in any of these strange and unusual tales, that is when they fall apart into so much dust.

But why should I care, really?  I would be lying if I said that reading this comic didn't bring back some sweet memories of reading this stuff when I was a kid.  I also appreciate the serendipitous irony of unknowingly purchasing a comic printed in my birthday month in the pivotal year of 1975.  When a movie called Jaws, and a TV show called Kolchak the Night Stalker, changed my world forever.  So did these comics, really, and no issue could be a better place to start my memory lane collection than with The Witching Hour #56, from July 1975.