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The Pre-Code Horror Index

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Grymsayre:
This topic really caught my eye. I have assembled, over the last month or so, a library of digital comic books drawn from the DCM by way of Sadowski's list, and the title of my main folder very nearly matches the subject line above!

Anyway, the collection seems to have leveled off with 819 titles found and another 60 missing, which is probably in accord the more recent statistics presented above. But in looking over those missing 60 I notice a definite trend. A full 25 of those 60 missing books are Iger Shop books: 20 Ajax-Farrell, 5 Superior. And of those 25 Iger books, 10 are from the run of Ajax's Haunted Thrills.

Why should this be? Maybe this is just the luck of the draw. And yet, some part of me wants to believe that these peculiarly ugly and warped lines of comics would have been a bit more likely to be trashed by angry parents or incinerated by outraged community groups. I do not know if that is the kind of thing that history records.  But I do know how traumatized I was myself when, as an early reader of Creepy and Eerie, I found the first issue of Weird and made the mistake of dipping into ts mind-sullying pages. I did not know then about the Iger stories that the Weird stories were drawn from.  But many years later, when I stumbled across examples of these in various collections, I recognized them at once.

I also found they had grown on me. In fact it was my hunt for the Iger horrors that led me to take on my library project in the first place. So there is a certain sad irony in the fact that they may comprise the one part of the library I will never be able to complete.

Yoc:
Hi Gry,
Sadly the missing Haunted Thrills issues have eluded us.  But there are many precode collectors like yourself and we live in hope they will someday be scanned and shared here on DCM.

Take care,
-Yoc

tilliban:
Yeah, it is as it is.
Don't know wyh so much Iger stuff is missing.
Books seem to be rarer than others, prices range higher.
They are out there, in the US, somewhere.
I operate out of Germany and can't get my hands on any more books.
Contributed 110 pre-code horror books to this database in the last five years.
Still hope some US collector is willing to scan his 'reading issues' of missing precoders...
Cheers from Köln (Cologne).

Yoc:
Wow, 110, that's AMAZING!
Thanks so much for all you've done for us T!
:D

Grymsayre:
I posted about those elusive Igers about a month ago, and just last week I stumbled across Haunted Thrills #1 being offered in digital format.  I have posted a review on Amazon, but I thought it would reach more of the people who might want to see it if I posted it here as well.  Here it is.

Nice try, but . . .

Yojimbo is one of several companies offering public domain comic books for electronic delivery. I generally steer away from such companies. Websites like The Digital Comic Museum and The Horrors of It All do a fine job of making such material available online, and they do it at no charge. And I suspect they are the ultimate source of most of what is being offered anyway. Still, those sites can't supply everything. So when Yojimbo offered Haunted Thrills #1 on Kindle, I decided it was worth three dollars to find out what they had.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The presentation is (mostly) cover to cover, including text pages and ads. All the pages are beautifully restored, very clean and bright. The stories themselves are no masterpieces but I knew that going in. I don't know how readable they would be on a hand-held device, but they look just fine on my desktop monitor. If I had stopped there I would have given this product five stars for sure.

So why do I give it only four? For three reasons. First, the inside front cover has been moved to the back of the book. Second, a full-page ad for some of Yojimbo's other products has been inserted into the body. Neither of these are major offenses. A publisher must make money somehow, even at the expense of a little historical accuracy. But the third offense is pretty major, and only carelessness can explain it. The sixth page of the fourth story, "The Witch's Curse," is missing. That's right. You heard me. A comic page has been left out.

It is not too late to correct this. I am a forgiving sort. I will be happy to restore the missing star if Yojimbo will restore the missing page. So come on, Yojimbo. How hard can it be? This is electronic publishing, after all. It is not like there are piles of dead-tree books to be pulped. You could correct the problem in about a day, if you have the page. If you don't have the page, I don't know what I can do for you.

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