The Vault of Horror #16

Credits:
Cover dated December 1950/January 1951
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Werewolf Concerto!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"Fitting Punishment" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Al Feldstein & Johnny Craig
"The Grave Wager" - Art by Jack Kamen/Story by Al Feldstein & Johnny Craig
"Escape!" - Art by Al Feldstein/Story by Al Feldstein & Johnny Craig

One of the oddest EC covers ever kicks off this issue of the Vault of Horror. It features a rather minimalist style and is the only EC horror comic to show only 2 of the 3 horror hosts on the cover, with the Crypt Keeper not having a story inside.

"Werewolf Concerto!" - Three deaths occur in a hotel, causing much anguish for the hotel owner, Hubert as the guests all flee. Hubert comes up with an idea to attract attention to his hotel by inviting the famous concert pianist Mademoiselle Micheline to stay at his hotel for free. Hubert doesn't see Micheline arrive, but some attendants of her carry a large piano inside. He later meets her leaving from her room and believes the lack of evidence that she signed in must have been an error. The murders at the hotel continue and everyone else leaves. Micheline is the only one that stays. Soon after, Hubert turns into a werewolf; it was he who had been killing the guests. With no other guests, he heads to Micheline's suite to find her, but she is gone. He bangs on her piano and it opens up, revealing dirt inside. Hubert realizes that Micheline is a vampire, but it is too late as she attacks him. This story was later adapted into an episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV show. It is interesting enough the only story in the issue that features a female character in it.

"Fitting Punishment" - A cheap old undertaker named Ezra is forced to take care of his nephew Stanley when his sister dies. Ezra hates that Stanley is around and constantly tries ways to save or make money, such as taking gold teeth from the people he buries. When Ezra blames Stanley for a mistake that causes him to have to buy an extra coffin, he hits Stanley with a hammer, crippling him. With Stanley now useless to him, he knocks him down a set of stairs, killing him. He then puts him in the extra coffin he had bought, but needs to saw his feet off since Stanley is too tall. After Stanley is buries, Ezra hears strange sounds and night and finds Stanley's feet at his doorstep. He tosses them in the fire, but Stanley's corpse soon returns to get them back. This story is inspired by "In the Vault" by H.P. Lovecraft. It was also made into an episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV show.

"The Grave Wager" - While visiting an amusement park, 3 men come across Pirro, the Wax-Man, a man who is able to resemble a wax figure. One of the men, Roger, who isn't shocked by Pirro or any of the wax figures they see there decides on a wager with his friends where he will sit in a room with a corpse for the night. His 2 friends dig up a corpse with him, but later go to see Pirro and convince him to wear make-up and play the corpse. That night he rises up, but Roger freaks out, killing him and going insane as a result. The issue's weakest story, both in art and writing.

"Escape!" - A prisoner named Luger comes up with a plan to escape from the prison where he is being held. He manages to have himiself transfered from his job of transporting bricks to working in the morgue. There he plans to sneak out of the prison in a coffin, as he frequently sees the coffins of those prisoners who have died escorted out of the prison in a hearse. During a visiting day, he tells one of his colleagues to rescue him from the coffin after it is transported out of the prison. The night finally arrives for him to escape and he heads into the coffin. A couple of men come to carry the coffin out, but carry it to a crematorium that had recently been contructed in the courtyard. A plot that had been redone multiple times over the years, including a couple of stories that I have already covered in this blog in The Haunt of Fear #13 and Tales From the Crypt #45. This was yet another story that was adapted into an episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV show, making 3 stories from this issue alone.

The Vault of Horror #36

Credits:
Cover dated May 1954
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Twin Bill!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"Witch Witch's Witch!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Johnny Craig
"Pipe Dream" - Art by Bernie Krigstein/Story by Johnny Craig
"Two-Timed!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Jack Oleck

A fairly strong late issue of the Vault of Horror, principally through the efforts of Johnny Craig. By this point, Craig was editor of the comic, and he wrote 3 out of 4 stories here, the most he'd ever write for a single EC comic.

"Twin Bill!" - A man, Larry Bannister, catches his wife and lover together at their cabin in the woods. He forces them at gunpoint to hike a mile into the woods then dig their own graves. When the lover fights back, Larry strikes him unconscious, and he buries both him and his wife alive. Larry returns to his car only to find that it won't start due to a dead battery. He returns home in his wife's car and it takes him several weeks to be able to return to the cabin to replace the battery. He forgets the keys however, and figures that he will dig up his wife's corpse and take them from her purse rather than have to make the long trip home to get them and risk that his car will be seen. When he arrives at the grave however, he finds it empty. Larry flees back towards the cabin, seeing the figures of his wife and lover in the distance, and when he makes it back, he waits there, hoping to shoot them when they come in. They finally do come in, but when he turns on the flashlight they are revealed to be rotting corpses, fused together, and his gun has no effect as they kill him. Some very strong artwork from Craig on this story, which also does a very good job of providing a very dark, scary atmosphere throughout.

"Witch Witch's Witch!" - A man named Eric who lives in a small European village goes away on business one week and when he has returned, he is now married to a woman named Helena. This upsets Eric's mother, as well as his fiance Alicia and her mother, but Eric will hear none of it. Soon afterwards, Eric's mother dies of a heart attack. The local church group bans Helena from attending and soon after their leader dies. Alicia's mother starts a rumor that Helena is a witch and caused this, and one day while passing her by, Helena stares at her and she drops dead. The rumors continue to build that Helena is a witch and at her mother's funeral, Alicia starts grabbing her chest with pain, claiming that Helena is doing it. A mob rushes to Eric and Helena's house, accusing her of a witch and finding a pin cushion shaped as a human that they think is the cause of Alicia's suffering. Eric tries to stop them, but is shot, and the mob carries Helena to the town square where they put her in the middle of a roaring bonfire. Suddenly, Helena raises her arms, shouts out a chant, transforms into her true form, and the entire mob turns to rats. Another strong story; its not often in these types of stories where someone is accused of being a witch, and then actually ends up being one.

"Pipe Dream" - The old Chinese man Chen Chu Yang spends his days smoking opium in a den and dreaming. He tells of how years ago, he had dreamed of his wife dying after smoking his opium and when he came home she had died. Chen is supported by his son, but he is soon drafted. Chen returns to his smoking and dreams that his son will die as well, and he does, being struck by a car on the way home from his going-away party. Chen's daughter marries a man against his wishes and months later she tells him he unbearable and beats her. Due to Chinese honor Chen tells her she must stay with him and will only be free if he dies. Chen then has another opium-induced dream where he is able to kill his son-in-law and free his daughter. When he awakens the man has died, but with no explanation, his daughter is put to death for the murder. Chen returns to his opium to dream another dream. Another strong tale, and similar to the recently reviewed "Murder Dream" it is a surrealistic, largely dream-based story, although this story is a bit better than that one.

"Two-Timed!" - A boy hears a noise one night and heads outside to the woods, where he finds an adult man who has just beat a woman to death with a pipe. The man grabs the boy, but suddenly there is a bang and the boy falls unconscious. When he wakes, his parents are there with the local constable and the man is gone, but the ground is all burned as if there was an explosion. Years pass. The boy, now an adult, hears that his wife is plotting to kill him, so he plans to kill her instead. He fools her into thinking he is going away then brings her into the woods where he beats her with a pipe. He suddenly notices a boy and grabs onto him, but realizes it is himself at a younger age and lets go. Thinking the bang he heard years before may have been a gunshot, he grabs a gun from his beaten wife and lights her on fire. Suddenly a shot rings out and he topples over. The town constable comes out and reveals that a paper at the scene many years ago had the current date on it, which led him here. An odd, confusing tale which is quite a disappointment after the first three stories in this issue.

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.

The Vault of Horror #26

Credits:
Cover dated August/September 1952
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Two of a Kind!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"Graft in Concrete!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Half-Way Horrible!" - Art by Sid Check/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Hook, Line and Stinker!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines

"Two of a Kind!" - A well known stage actress named Willow will only work at night and any attempts to take a photograph of her ends in failure. Willow starts going out with her latest costar, Brad Phillips and they plan to go on a weekend trip to a ski lodge together. Each holds a secret from another; Willow is a vampire and Brad is a ghoul. They plan to make the other their victim during the trip, but realize that they've fallen in love with each other and can't do it. The two are trapped in a cabin due to the severe snowstorm for several days. Rather than attack each other, Willow drinks her own blood and Brad eats his own flesh until the cabin collapses, killing them. A rare example of a romance horror story featuring different types of horror monsters falling in love. Another horror romance story, this time featuring a vampire and werewolf instead of vampire and ghoul appeared in "A Little Stranger" from The Haunt of Fear #14.

"Graft in Concrete!" - Four crooked politicians including the mayor and three members of the town council conspire to build a new road through the property of and using the construction company of one of the council members. Each of the council members appear to have information on at least one of the others, resulting in a lot of blackmail and kickbacks. One of the council members forces the others to run the new road through the cemetary that he owns. Rather than move the bodies, he simply has the headstones moved to save money. The four of them drive on the road the night before it is to be opened by the public, but numerous corpses burst out of the road and come after them, causing their car to crash. The next morning the construction company has a steamroller go over the road to fix it, but ends up crushing all four of them. The ending of this story is a bit questionnable as you wonder how in the world the steamroller driver completely missed the fact that it was running over the four politicians. A painted version of the cover of this issue, which was about this story, was later used as the cover for the Fred von Bernewitz's EC book "Tales of Terror!"

"Halfway Horrible" - A man calls for an undertaker to come to his apartment, where he keeps himself enshrouded in darkness. The mysterious man tells the undertaker his story. The man had a split personality which would do worse and worse things, starting with simply going out and partying, but escalating to criminal activities. When the man murders his psychiatrist while in his other personality, he flees the country to Haiti. There he finds a voodoo priest who he convinces to destroy the bad side of his personality. The priest does this, but it results in half of his body rotting away, which is why he called for the undertaker. Sid Check did 4 stories for EC around this time. He featured a Wally Wood/Joe Orlando-type style. He was an okay artist at EC and did some good stories, including this one, but didn't last that long. This story was later adapted as an episode of Tales from the Crypt.

"Hook, Line and Stinker!" - A woman named Bernice has been going out with a man named Stanley for 15 years but he always hesitates to ask her to marry him no matter how much she begs. Lately Stanley has grown to love fishing, bringing home a mounted fish after every weekend. One weekend Bernice goes for a walk and finds Stanley in a field with another woman, revealing that he made everything up about the fishing trips. The next week he returns with another mounted fish, and Bernice attacks him with a knife, mounting his body up on the wall. The issue wraps up with its weakest story, but overall this is still a fairly strong issue across the board.

The Vault of Horror #12

Credits:
Cover dated April/May 1950
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Portrait in Wax!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig (hosted by the Vault Keeper)
"The Werewolf Legend" - Art by Wally Wood & Harry Harrison/Story by Gardner Fox
"Horror in the Night" - Art by Harvey Kurtzman/Story by Ivan Klapper
"Terror Train" - Art by Al Feldstein/Story by Al Feldstein

Today I cover the first issue of the Vault of Horror, which along with The Crypt of Terror #17, was the first horror comics released by EC. Vault of Horror stories originally appeared in issues 10 and 11 of War Against Crime prior to EC changing the title to the Vault of Horror with this issue.

"Portrait in Wax!" - Henry is a struggling artist with little talent but a lot of ambition who lives with Robert, who is the exact opposite, lots of talent but no ambition. Henry steals a piece of Robert's artwork and makes a lot of money selling it to an art dealer. He does it repeatedly, making a lot of money. But Robert goes to a showing of the dealer's art and discovers what Henry has done. He is going to the police, but Henry throws acid in his face, knocking him out. Henry dumps him in a vat of acid to destroy his remains. Years pass and Henry makes tons of money off Robert's work. But eventually he sells of all the artwork. Luckily he finds a new artist to make money off of when a sculptor named Jules Vendette shows him his wax statues of people who died. Henry makes lots of money opening a museum of them, claiming the work as his own. But one day while moving a statue he discovers they're not really statues, but corpses covered with wax! Jules is actually Robert, who had not actually died since the vat he was dumped in was just water. He kills Henry and makes him his latest statue. Johnny Craig's first Vault lead story (and along with Curse of the Full Moon, which came out the same month in Crypt 17, one of his first horror stories). Although Craig's art is still somewhat simple looking compared to his later stuff, he still does a good job here. This story would be somewhat redone (with much more horrific results) in Silver Threads Among the Mold from issue 27, which was the first EC story I ever read.

"The Werewolf Legend" - An Englishman named Walter Mallory finds himself transformed into a werewolf and he kills a man who comes by him. The next day he wakes up in his home and grows nervous upon hearing from his cousin Gregory that a neighbor has been torn to shreds. Walter goes to the family library where he finds some manuscripts revealing that several ancestors had been werewolves. The next full moon he awakens as a werewolf again and kills another man. Walter seeks out the police and discusses the possibility of a werewolf doing the killings with them. He asks them to watch his castle the night of the next full moon and kill the werewolf if he sees it. The next full moon Walter becomes a werewolf yet again and kills another man without being caught by the police. Upon returning to human, Walter is prepared to kill himself but is stopped by the police, who reveal that it was actually his cousin Gregory who killed those men. Gregory had hypnotized Walter into thinking that he was a werewolf, faked the manuscripts and killed 3 men who were blackmailing him. The first of numerous werewolf stories to appear in the Vault of Horror. Wally Wood worked with Harry Harrison for a number of early EC stories in the horror and sci-fi comics. The artwork on this story bears only slight resemblance to the well known style Wood later developed on his own throughout much of his years at EC. While the art is a bit uneven at times, this is a fairly strong story.

"Horror in the Night" - A man named Jim visits his brother Tom at Hawkins Tourist Cabins, the family business. Tom is a nervous wreck, telling Jim about a horrific dream he had. In the dream, a couple comes to the cabins to stay the night. Tom suddenly finds himself in the cabin, as if he was a ghost. The wife is a complete lunatic, trying to escape multiple times in the night and murdering a cat by the door. The husband is bringing her to an insane asylum, as she has been crazy ever since their baby was clawed to death by a cat. When she tries to escape yet again, he strangles her then kills himself. Jim convinces Tom that it was just a dream and not something to worry about, but soon the couple arrives for real. The dream coming to life is another common horror story trope. While it is not something I have seen referenced out there from EC historians, this story may be yet another one inspired by an anecdote from Bennet Cerf's Try and Stop Me, as that book contains an anecdote about a woman's dream coming to life much like what we see here.

"Terror Train" - A woman named Gloria is convinced that her husband Ralph is going to kill her to get the $25,000 life insurance policy he has out on her. She catches him bringing poison into the house and one night wakes up with him over her bed, a knife in hand. She flees to a train station, buys a ticket and heads aboard. Soon however she notices that Ralph is aboard as well. After fleeing from him she goes to sleep, but when she awakens she finds all her fellow passengers murdered. She jumps off the train and makes her way to an abandoned shack where Ralph is waiting for her. Ralph throws her in a coffin and buries her alive. Suddenly Gloria wakes up; everything since she awoke and found the other passengers dead has been a dream and she imagined all of it, including her paranoia about Ralph trying to kill her. Ralph is there with a crew-member and has her taken away and put in a mental institution. A fairly strong ending to what is overall a fairly good issue for its time. Having insane women in back to back stories to wrap up the issue is the one flaw, and "Horror in the Night" would have fit better if moved to another issue (perhaps flipped with the 6 page story from The Crypt of Terror issue published the same month) such that there would be more variety. This story was one of a rare number that were reprinted by EC during the new trend, and would later reappear in The Haunt of Fear #20.