Author:
Title: CHAMBER OF CHILLS No. 18
Place Published:
Publisher:Harvey [Indicia: Witches Tales, Inc.]
Date Published: July, 1953
Description: CGC certified: G/VG (3.0). Cream to off-white pages. Grader notes: Back cover detached bottom staple; cover detached top staple; piece out left top of page(s) 2-7; creasing to cover; light pieces out to cover; moderate cover tanning; staining to cover.

GPAnalysis: A 3.0 sold for $359 in 10/20; a 2.0 sold for $350 in 3/23.

Credits: Cover: Lee Elias. Scripts: Leon Harvey?, Howard Nostrand? and Bob Powell? Art: Howard Nostrand, Joe Certa, Bob Powell, John Giunta, Manny Stallman, Rudy Palais? Overstreet: "Atom bomb panels."Grave and a Haircut: "Somehow, five-o'clock shadow doesn't seem so bad anymore...." – EC, MAD and Pre-Code HORROR Comics of the 1950s. Green Apple Books: 1997, p. 2.

Classic throat-slashing barber cover by Lee Elias. Under the covers, a man gets irradiated by an A-bomb blast, murders a guy, swills hootch straight out the jug, and spontaneously combusts. According to David Hadju, the rotting corpses and atomic death scenarios that haunt pre-Code horror have everything to do with Cold War paranoia. "The timing [of the horror comics boom] was apt. On September 3, 1949, U.S. government intelligence discovered that the Soviet Union had tested an atomic bomb. Suddenly, for most Americans, young people among them, the Cold War was no longer a political abstraction, a jumble of foreign maps with dotted borders or debates about economic theory, but a palpable threat of vast and gruesome devastation. The zombies with hollow eye sockets and skin peeling off their bones who haunted the boneyards in the panels of [horror comics] could not have been far removed from the readers' mental pictures of their own fate in the wake of the nuclear holocaust now possible at any moment." – D. Hadju, The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. FSG: 2008, p. 177.______________________________________________________________

A limited edition of ten hardcover catalogues is available, in addition to a few dozen softcovers. Fun reference, great keepsake, fully illustrated, chockablock with obscure facts, gags, bon mots. Softcovers are $40, deluxe hardcovers with dust jackets and limitation plates are $200. These books always go fast so don't delay. To order, contact ivan@pbagalleries.com.

Consignments welcome for PBA's Summer 2024 Comic Book sale. Top prices for Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age, Silver Age, original art and ephemera. Find out why PBA is the new fan-fave of funnybook fiends. "This is some of the best commentary I've yet seen on the quality of the content of comic books... Priceless." – R. Crumb. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.

Coming Soon: The DC Universe Collection Part 3: The Golden Age (August 2024) and Weird Tales and Amazing Stories: The PBA Pulp Sale (September 2024). Contact ivan@pbagalleries.com to get on the notifications list.