Heading:
Author:
Title: WEIRD MYSTERIES No. 9
Place Published:
Publisher:Stanley Morse [Indicia: Gillmor Magazines, Inc.]
Date Published: March, 1954
Description:

VG (4.0). Spine stress, center crease, corner crease and a few small edge chips to back cover, two chips to margin of last page, distributor's rubberstamp ("DEC 22 P.M.") to "W" in "WEIRD." White to off-white pages. Cover: Bernard Baily. Art: Petrizza, Gerald Altman, Sal Trapani. Overstreet: "Excessive violence, gore & torture." GPAnalysis: A 4.0 sold for $595 in September 2020.

If moral decay is your bag, you'll really enjoy this seedy mag. Gerald Altman's "The Garcon" serves up a tasteless cannibalism tale, made even more nauseating by infantile artwork and a barely literate script that seems geared towards toddlers. Sal Trapani's "Epitaph!" is a tour-de-force of dimestore cynicism, in which a cuckolding cutie's corpse rises from the grave to confess her sins to her clueless hubby. It's bottom of the barrel stuff, dizzying in its degeneracy, and like so many sordid diversions, it's way more fun than it has any right to be.

"As WEIRD MYSTERIES approaches the end of its relatively brief run, the stories do become more and more graphic and the artwork progressively cruder... WM #9 contains a horror classic by Gerald Altman called 'The Garcon.' This innocent title disguises a rather gruesome story about cannibalism in a restaurant... The gruesome climax is heavily diluted by the cartoony art style and the tongue-in-cheek writing... Nonetheless, Gillmor has crossed the Rubicon in terms of story content with this tale." — George Suarez, Tales To Terrible to Tell #9. NEC: 1993, pp. 20-21.

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.