The Vault of Horror #22

Credits:
Cover dated December 1951/January 1952
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Fountains of Youth!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"The Monster in the Ice!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Gone... Fishing!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Al Feldstein
"What the Dog Dragged In!" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines

Quite a strong issue of the Vault of Horror, featuring all better than average stories.

"Fountains of Youth!" - Despite warnings from her older brother, 19 year old Eileen interviews for and gets a job as a personal assistant for Madam Dubois, a famous socialite who wears a heavy veil over her face. Eileen heads with Dubois on a cruise ship to Europe but quickly becomes sick. Dubois stays by her bedside as Eileen rapidly ages and passes away. Eileen's brother Kenneth heads to Europe and confronts Dubois, being shocked at how young she is. Believing something fishy is going on, Kenneth stays nearby and spies on another young woman who becomes Dubois's next assistant. Kenneth follows Dubois and the woman as they go on another cruise ship voyage. When the young woman becomes ill, Kenneth convinces the doctor to seperate Dubois from her and lock her up. The young woman soon becomes better, but Dubois, who the doctor explains is some kind of youth-sucking vampire ages to death and crumbles to dust. A decent story to start off the issue, aside from the fact that the doctor at the end seems to know all about what is truly going on with Madam Dubois out of nowhere.

"The Monster in the Ice!" - A couple of Americans, Dawson and Campbell are in charge of a geological expedition in the arctic. The local eskimo Lomo refuses to bring them near a place where they hope to do some geological readings, fearing a monster in the ice. Dawson and Campbell head there and find a frozen body with its face obscured in the ice. They take it back them to their cabin and Lobo claims it is the monster. Campbell, refusing to believe him, orders Lomo to cop the ice off the body and show that it is just a dead human being so he will stop being so afraid. While Lomo works on chopping the ice, Dawson tells Campbell of the original Frankenstein novel where the monster was lost in the Arctic at the end. Dawson wonders if the novel was true. Suddenly there is a scream. Dawson and Campbell rush to see Lomo, who has gone insane and find that the monster has escaped. The two decide to trap it by digging a hole in the ice and acting as bait. Eventually the monster arrives. Upon seeing its horrific face, they lose their minds and are dragged into the water by it, with all three being frozen. A year later a couple of Air Force officers discover the frozen bodies and decide to dig them out. An excellent story inspired obviously by Frankenstein, but with a new twist on things. The monster, whose face is only revealed in a couple of panels on the final page is one of Ingel's scariest monsters.

"Gone... Fishing!" - An expert fisherman, Max, brings his friend Steven to the beach where he starts fishing. Steven is opposed to fishing on moral grounds, but stays for a little while as Max explains the various fishing gear he has to him. Eventually Max catches a giant bass, and Steve, not wanting to watch him cut it up, leaves. Max fishes some more with no success. He pauses for lunch, but realizes that it was in the car that Steven drove off in. Suddenly he finds a candy bar on the ground. Max bites into it, but the candy bar has a hook in it that goes into his mouth, and Max is dragged into the sea as if he was being fished. A strong story featuring one of EC's most common house plots. Feldstein came up with the story himself, making it one of the few stories during this timeframe in EC's history where the story wasn't based on a springboard provided by Gaines. The story would later be adapted into a French film called The Fisherman. It was also used for an episode of the Tales from the Cryptkeeper cartoon. This is one of the rare instances where the main horror host for the comic didn't host the third story, instead it was hosted by the Crypt Keeper and the Vault Keeper hosted the final story of the issue instead.

"What the Dog Dragged In!" - A young blind woman named Betty is dependent on her dog Jerry, who usually goes out with notes from her to get groceries and run other errands. One day Jerry is hit by a car driven by a wealthy philanthropist named Roger. Roger nurses Jerry back to health then returns him to Betty. Roger and Betty quickly become close and Roger proposes to her. As he's leaving however he is hit by a car and is killed. Betty sends Jerry out to find him, with no success for over a month. Eventually however Jerry digs up Roger's corpse, and he returns to Betty. This story was an unauthorized adaption of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Emissary". Gaines/Feldstein made one major change in that the main character of that story was a young boy, changed here into the adult woman Betty. Oddly enough this unauthorized adaption wasn't found by Bradbury, although he quickly noticed some unauthorized adaptions appearing in Weird Fantasy 13 a number of months later.