Number 2596: The life (and death) of Riley

Does anyone still use the phrase “the life of Riley”? It indicates someone enjoying a great life. The story here is called “The Life of Riley,” to indicate a criminal named Riley who has his own life of Riley after a successful robbery.

It is a horror comic, so a good life can turn bad before the end of the story. At least for Riley.

The artwork is signed by Myron Fass, who drew comic books for a few years. Fass began living the life of Riley when he started his own magazine publishing business after his career in comics. Fass’s magazines were lowbrow, but successful. I don’t believe any comics fan who collects 1970s materials was not aware of Fass’s Eerie Publications, which covered the sleasy magazine market well during those times. Fass died in 2006.

From Beware #7 (1954):

Number 2501: Stolen tombstones

The unlucky “Guest of the Ghouls” is a man (a bad man, because this is a horror comic) who steals tombstones. Tombstones! What would someone do with a tombstone? I know about collectors, especially comic book collectors, but I’ll be in the ground with dirt being shoveled over me and still not understand what one would do with another person's tombstone. They get very bulky, and heavy.

Oh, yeah...I did say it is a horror comic, and logic flies — in bat shapes perhaps? — out the window  in a horror comic. The walking dead also have evil deeds of their own, but they get after Javitt Rodman, because as one of the ghouls says, “You have robbed the dead of their only identity after death, their tombstones!”

Saying something positive about the story, artist Sid Check, using his best Wallace Wood imitation, does a good, creepy job with the corpses. It is from Beware #7 (1954). (Mr Karswell showed the story in 2009, so it is time to show it again. I swear I did not steal his scans.)

 A couple of my favorite Sid Check stories here. Just click on the thumbnail.

 

 

Number 670

2 x 4T


I've mentioned before that John Forte is one of the comic book men who helped carry the industry through it's most productive era of the 1940s and '50s, and then on into the '60s.

In the mid-to-late 1950s Forte drew supernatural stories for ACG (Adventures Into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, et al). He went from there to DC, where he did the series, "Tales Of the Bizarro World" for Adventure Comics, with scripts by Jerry Siegel. That series was replaced by "The Legion Of Super Heroes," also drawn by Forte. Sadly, John Forte died at a young age in 1965.

These are two pre-Comics Code stories: "Never Call a Ghost" is from Trojan's Beware #2, and "Hire a Hoodlum" is from Atlas Comics' Justice #40. Just a few years before his stint with Bizarro, Forte was covering the horror and crime genres like the comics journeyman he was. Prior postings featuring Forte's work are in Pappy's #256, Pappy's #268, and Pappy's #510.