Number 1604: Flapping Head

“The Flapping Head” is a not untypical tale from Forbidden Worlds, but it has the distinction of being drawn by Al Williamson.

Williamson was known for his collaborators on a job, nicknamed the Fleagle Gang by Harvey Kurtzman: Angelo Torres, Roy Krenkel, Frank Frazetta, among others, but for this story the Grand Comics Database credits Williamson for pencils and artists Larry Woromay and King Ward for the inking.

This story has been reprinted several times in the past few decades, solely because of art by Williamson.

From Forbidden Worlds #6 (1952):

Number 1583: You never can tell!

Al Williamson is credited with just a handful of stories at ACG in the late fifties. I haven’t done the research to tell you how many (lazy me). After early 1960, though, I believe the only stories credited to Williamson are reprints.

’You Never Can Tell!” is a story about a little man with a big case of obsessive-compulsive disorder involving auctions and treasure. It’s from Adventures Into the Unknown #107 (1959).* “In the Beginning,” with its shopworn science fiction/early man plot is from Forbidden Worlds #76 (1959).

Williamson often worked with other artists, but I don’t see the most obvious, Roy Krenkel or Frank Frazetta, in either of these stories. There are some Frazetta-style touches in some of the Neanderthal men panels, but I don’t see his dynamic pencils or inks. Al also worked with George Woodbridge and Angelo Torres on some, and they could have helped him here. The Grand Comics Database doesn’t say, crediting Williamson with pencils and Inks on “In the Beginning,” and Jack Davis with the inks on “You Never Can Tell!” That is a collaboration I don’t see by looking at the story. Someone will have to explain to me how they came to that conclusion.

I have shown these stories before many years ago. I have re-scanned them for this posting.

*“You Never Can Tell!” likely got its inspiration from “Rock Diver” by Harry Harrison, which was first published in the science fiction digest, Worlds Beyond #3, in 1951. In that story prospectors use similar suits to explore underground.

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.

Number 1479: Queen of Uranus

Snickering aside over the title of this little opus from Forbidden Worlds #78 (1959), this story is the kind that appears well-intentioned, but the result is not.

The message is if you aren’t beautiful, you don’t deserve to be loved. Poor Miss Purdy, she doesn’t doll herself up so she can’t attract a man or even have respect from the schoolchildren she teaches. Ah, but then an alien from Uranus arrives and he is smitten by Miss Purdy looking just the way she is! Of course, going by the values of the society from whence she comes she thinks, “If he loves me the way I look now, I should improve on my looks just for him.” It backfires in that case, and yet after that rejection Miss Purdy finds true happiness here on Earth with her students and principal by putting on a false face. Happy ending.

The story is drawn by Ogden Whitney, and written by the editor, Richard E. Hughes, using the name Thomas R. Drew. These are new scans. I showed this story before several years ago, and made the same complaints.

Number 1390: “All that glitters...”

For a time in the 1950s comic artist John Forte’s work could be found prominently in ACG titles. He went from there to DC where he did the Bizarro World stories in Adventure Comics, written by Jerry Siegel. He then became the first artist for the Legion of Superheroes. He died young in 1965.

I never really saw him as a superhero artist, although his Bizarro stories are some of my favorites of the era. My affection for Forte is for his work on mystery and supernatural. This particular story, “The Glittering Nightmare,” is credited to Forte and writer Shane O’Shea (actually ACG editor Richard E. Hughes). It has a scientist obsessed with a project that ruins his marriage and an alien lifeform taking on earthly shapes, reminding us of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I showed this story in the early days of this blog, but these are my new and improved scans.

From Forbidden Worlds #76 (1959):

Some pre-Comics Code Forte here. Just click the picture.