The Pre-Code Horror Index

[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!

[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.

[Yoc]

Thanks for the review Gry.
That is a pretty glaring problem, fingers crossed they can find the missing page.

-Yoc

[Grymsayre]

In our last episode, I had just bumped my head against the hard reality that many of Farrell's horror books had managed to elude DCM's scanners, and I was trying to compose myself to live with that fact.  But then I thought:  Why should I?  Weren't these same books all cannibalized a decade or so after their original appearance?  Weren't their stories pulled out, vandalized, retitled and redistributed across a wide range of cheap and lurid magazines?  Weren't those magazines scanned and made available online from such sites as the Eerie Publications Comics Collection?  Didn't the Grand Comics Database provide a convenient means of tracing those stories from book to book, from title to title?  And couldn't an enterprising young man (or a crazy old one), by putting all these pieces together, reassemble those sadly mistreated books and send them out into the world again in some loose approximation of their original forms, like so many resurrected cadavers long past their freshness dates?  He could and did.  That is, I did.  And I am ridiculously pleased with the results.  So, unless I am forcibly restrained (here's your chance, guys), I will soon be uploading some of these here on the sight.  I don't for a moment believe that this work is of any value.  But it amused me while I was doing it, and it might amuse others to see it.  And who knows?  It may even prod some on-the-fence collector into scanning his own authentic issues, if only to help wipe these abominations off the DCM map.

[movielover]

I think those reprints or whatever fall well past the cutoff date of Dec. 31, 1959

[Grymsayre]

Forcibly restrained it is.  Thanks.

[Yoc]

Thanks for your offer Gry.
As much as I'd like to say upload we can't risk the site.  But good for you and your hard work recreating the books.
We will live in hope the original books eventually all get scanned.

-Yoc

[Grymsayre]

Hard work?  Nah.  Hard work is what I do for money.  This was done for fun.  As everything related to DCM was done for fun.  My thanks to you (and to The Horrors of It All, and to Fifties Horror, and to Craig Yoe and Mike Howlett I don't know how many other book editors and publishers) for showing up when the list of things I would willinging do for fun was beginning to look a bit thin. 

[Yoc]

Well said.  And I agree, everyone you mentioned are excellent sources for info and stories!

-Yoc

[tilliban]

You got my attention, Sir Grymsayre!

I am the guy running the FIFTIES HORROR website.
My sources for missing books are dried up. I am very interested in your work...
If you cannot upload it here, give me a call at mail@fifties-horror.de.
Or shoot your data over using a free WeTransfer upload.
I'm always looking for online-missing precode-horror stories!
To present on FIFTIES HORROR. And I can live showing reprints from the 60s or such!

Anyhow: am curious to see what exactly you produced.

[OtherEric]

A very minor comment/ question/ possible addition to the list:  Wouldn't A Feature Presentation #5 (The Black Tarantula) qualify as a 2nd horror book from Fox?

[Yoc]

I agree Eric, adding it now.

-Yoc