Number 1535: Clutching hands and faces of fear

I think the American Comics Group did a fine job of using a small number of titles to keep the company afloat during both boom and bust years of comic books. It started as Better or Nedor, and its early history is documented elsewhere. You can read about it in this preview PDF of Alter Ego #61, with a fascinating article by Michael Vance. When ACG came up with its supernatural titles, Adventures Into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds, they became the two books that were their mainstays, and would take them to the end of their history in 1967.

The supernaturals, as assistant editor Norman Fruman called them, sold quite well, and ACG added Skeleton Hand, which didn’t make the crossover to a Comics Code-approved book (probably because of its title), Out of the Night, and a one-shot issue of The Clutching Hand, which isn’t identified as ACG on its cover. That’s likely because ACG was trying out stories that didn’t have the boy-girl happy endings that a lot of their “horror” stories did. Fruman is listed as editor of The Clutching Hand. According to one bio I read of Fruman, he wrote about 700 scripts for Better/Nedor/ACG.

Here are examples of the two styles, one with the happy ending, and one more typical of the horror comics from other publishers.

From Forbidden Worlds #17 (1953), drawn by Al Camy:

From The Clutching Hand (1954), drawn by Kenneth Landau:

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More Ken Landau, including a pre-Code story from Out of the Night, and a story for the very last issue of Forbidden Worlds in 1967. Just click the thumbnail.

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Number 1258: Forbidden Worlds’ sad ending

Kenneth Landau is an artist who appeared in ACG’s pre-Code comics, and so I'm showing a story he did for that company's Out of the Night #14, from 1954. He also appeared sporadically in ACG's post-Code comic books, and I'm also showing you the story he did for the very last issue of Forbidden Worlds #145, in 1967.

Landau worked in animation as a layout artist, and if you look at his listing on IMDb.com, you’ll probably recognize most of the things he worked on.

The story from Out of the Night is typical of the type of horror comics ACG did at the time. There is a likeability to them, and the endings (as in “Out of the Screen”) are optimistic. Good triumphs over evil. Yay. (It doesn't mention that the inventor who wreaked such havoc with his 3D system will be sued after admitting he's responsible for the deadly dinosaur attack.)

But the story from the last Forbidden Worlds has a very different ending for ACG, and editor/writer Richard E. Hughes. If Hughes — who is reputed to have written all of ACG's output under pseudonyms in those years — wrote it* he sacrificed his usual optimistic ending for one of tragedy. I'll let you read it and see.

Landau was a journeyman comic book artist.** He signed his stories, but even without a signature the earlier stories are recognizable by his pen-shading.

 Kurt Schaffenberger did the cover for Forbidden Worlds under his pen-name, Lou Wahl.

*The writer's name on the splash panel is Adam Barr, not one of the pseudonyms attributed to Hughes by the Wikipedia entry on him. That doesn't mean it wasn't Hughes, though. And by the way, “Richard E. Hughes” was apparently a pseudonym for Leo Rosenbaum. Hughes/Rosenbaum died in 1974 at age 64.

**A silly rumor went around for years that Kenneth Landau was actually Martin Landau, the actor. Martin did some cartooning in his time, but he’s not Ken Landau.

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Number 691

Pre-Code/Post-Code

This is the final installment from Pappy's Science Fiction theme week.

The Comics Code was implemented in early 1955. By late 1954 some of the publishers of the period, like ACG and Atlas, seemed to be anticipating the Code by toning down their comics. The last pre-Code issue of ACG's Adventures Into the Unknown, #61, dated January-February 1955, dropped the horror themes that had carried it since the late 40s.

The lead story, "The World That Was," is drawn by Kenneth Landau. It was reprinted, as a Code-approved story, in 1960 in Forbidden Worlds #86 as "Interplanetary Episode." What struck me in comparing the two is that the original pre-Code version looks cleaned up...like they replaced parts of the story with more innocuous material, then put the worse stuff back in when they reprinted it under the Code. Yep, it's confusing all right, and seems to fly in the face of the evidence of other comics reprinting pre-Code stories much cleaned up by the Comics Code.

[SPOILER ALERT!] The story, in its second version, while more pathetic, brings more sense to the ending. Blowing up the world because Simon was accused of stealing a wallet seems mild compared to the reaction from the town when he was starving or his dog was killed. It's also not a story written by editor Richard E. Hughes. It wasn't his style to end a story in such a negative fashion. It's a head-scratcher why this particular story, of all the hundreds of ACG's stories published, was chosen to be reprinted.

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