Heading:
Author:
Title: WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE No. 3
Place Published:
Publisher:Stanley Morse [Indicia: SPM Publications, Inc.]
Date Published: September, 1952
Description:

CGC certified: VG (4.0). Off-white pages. Cover: Basil Wolverton. Art: Basil Wolverton (3 stories), Ed Smalle, Tony Mortellaro. Indicia states printed in CANADA. GPAnalysis: No reported sales in this grade in nine years. A 3.5 sold for $1700 in May 2020, and a 4.5 sold for $2855 in August 2020. PBA sold a 3.5 for $2125 in February 2022.

A giant corpse rockets from the grave like a totem pole of terror on the second-to-last cover of Basil Wolverton's pre-Code career. Wolverton is remembered as one of the greatest stylists of the pre-Code era, but he had trouble selling his work to the publishers of the day. EC's Bill Gaines called his work "ugly," Atlas publisher Martin Goodman found his style "too cartoony and too juvenile," and stories now regarded as classics, such as "The Man Who Never Smiled," were rejected by Ace, Fawcett, Avon, DC, and Harvey. Wolverton finally found a fan in bottom-of-the-barrel dreckmeister Stanley Morse, only to find collecting payments from Morse to be a nightmare worse than those depicted in his horror stories.

"Full payment from S.P.M. continued to elude him. Several times in his diary, he recorded how the mailman 'swished right past our mailbox,' or how, when he was expecting 'some good mail, including checks,' the truck drove right on by." — Greg Sadowski, Brain Bats of Venus: The Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton Volume Two: 1942-1952. Fantagraphics: 2019, pp. 297, 305.

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.