Number 427


Powell and Nostrand


For a brief time in the early 1990s the Harvey horror comics came back. Three issues of Silver Scream were published by Lorne-Harvey under the "Recollections" imprint, reprinting stories from the 1950s in black-and-white. Silver Scream #2 reprinted mostly from Black Cat Mystery #51. "The Old Mill Scream," drawn by Bob Powell, and "Come Back Bathsheba" are from that 1954 issue.

"Bathsheba," by Howard Nostrand, is a great example of Nostrand doing his Jack Davis-style work. The story is a satire on the 1952 movie, Come Back Little Sheba, which is in turn based on a stage play by William Inge. That's a caricature of Burt Lancaster as Doc.

I wish this series had gone more than three issues, but by the time they were published the black-and-white comics boom of the 1980s was bust, and most likely these comics didn't have the distribution they needed for survival.