Among the most fascinating comics of the early 1950s are the “Marvel Horrors” – the Fawcett comics with honor themes devoted to Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Junior and Mary Marvel. I wrote a piece on this about a dozen years ago in an early issue of Comic Book Marketplace, but at the time my collection wasn’t complete. Since I particularly treasure the 1948-53 Fawcett Marvels – the last six years of the original characters – I’ve managed to find them all.
There were a lot more horror-themed stories than people might suspect, with the vast majority of them cover-featured and linked to communist depredations of the Korean War, apparently to take advantage of the horror themes so popular in the early 1950s. Ironically, the Marvel Family disappeared before the regular horror comics! The Marvel Family’s last Fawcett appearance was in Marvel Family # 89 (Jan. 1954). Just looking at the cover of an issue with Mr. Tawny, the talking tiger, and the cover of another with a horror theme boggles the mind. The Fawcett folks certainly had amazing imaginations.
By Fawcett horrors, I’m not referring to stories such as “Captain Marvel Fights the Weird Water Man” in Captain Marvel # 118 (March 1951). This story has horror overtones, but the character is too whimsical and actually funny to be scary, except for maybe the very youngest readers. Nor does “The Creeping Horror,” a blob of tar, quite qualify in # 126 (Nov. 1951). Nor “The Haunted Armor” in # 138 (Nov 1952). However, “Captain Marvel Baffles the Vicious Red Crusher” in # 139 (Dec. 1952) certainly qualifies, as does the 6-page “Spider’s Doom,” dealing with a giant spider in the same issue. Kurt Schaffenberger drew these stories in a way that would scare the heck out of a young reader. Even today, they’re a unique combination of horror and whimsy, difficult to really explain. Let’s just say they’re lots of fun to collect.
Schaffenberger’s “The Mongol Blood Drinkers” in # 140 (Jan. 1953) contains out-and-out grisly horror that takes place on Korean War battlefields. The Scarlet Vampire is just about the scariest character in Fawcett’s comic history, making this issue highly collecta ble. While it makes sense that a comic book that often features a talking tiger could come up with a communist vampire, you still have to read this story to believe it. Captain Marvel defeats the vampires with a blob of blazing sun and then drives a wooden stake through their hearts. The scene where he traps and kills The Scarlet Vampire is an amazing example of the changes Fawcett wrought in Captain Marvel. There’s also a grim story in this issue called “The Hand of Horror.”
The only horror story featured in the last 10 issues of Captain Marvel was “The Unholy Spider” in # 146 (July 1953), in which an evil professor tries to escape Captain Marvel’s vengeance by turning himself into a spider – only to be eaten by a female spider in the last panel! The story ends with, “So this is positively the last appearance of the Spider Man” – perhaps the first use of the phrase (minus the hyphen) Spider Man in comic books.
Captain Marvel, the cover feature in Whiz Comics, first flirted with horror in Whiz in “Captain Marvel Becomes a Witch” in # 133 (May 1951). But that story is so over the top, it’s hard to take seriously (if any Captain Marvel story could ever be taken seriously!). It wasn’t until an image of the Grim Reaper appeared on the cover of WhizComics # 153 (Jan. 1953) that Whiz featured a Captain Marvel horror. This striking cover illustrates “Captain Marvel and the Death Horror!” and it’s a pip of a satire, in which a mad scientist turns people into living skeletons. It’s so grim, it’s actually funny, in only the way a Fawcett issue could be. There are horror elements in the last two issues, too – Sivana’s head on a dinosaur on the cover of # 154 and Captain Marvel in the clutches of a giant octopus on the cover of # 115 (June 1953). These last three issues of Whiz are all hard to find.
In Captain Marvel Junior, horror first makes the cover scene in “The Horror Dimension” in # 107 (March 1952), in which a collector’s books lead to all sorts of horrific scenes. This story may be tongue-in-cheek, but still belongs in the horror category.
There were several horror stories that weren’t cover featured in Captain Marvel Junior, such as “The Mad Mongol Monster” in # 115 (Nov 1952), a grim Korean War tale. Even grimmer is “Vampira, The Korean Queen of Terror” in # 116 (Dec. 1952). This is a fitting companion piece to Captain Marvel # 139-140, which came out about the same time. But Captain Marvel Junior spares Vampira for a jail cell instead of killing her.
Master Comics cover, featuring Captain Marvel Junior, came up with only one Korean theme linked to horror. It’s a fabulous Schaffenberger cover for # 132, showing Captain Marvel Junior ripping the wings off a communist jet as the pilot holds his head – definitely one of the most unusual covers of the period. Readers of 1952-53 Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman stories must have been surprised to find Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Junior fighting in the Korean War. Offhand, I can’t recall a DC super hero story with a plot linked to Korea
In Marvel Family, there was lots of light-hearted horror – or at least not horror linked to war. On the cover of #71 (May 1952, “Ghost Island”), a vampire bat eyes Mary Marvel as a tasty morsel. The Marvel men super-heroically fly to the rescue. “The Hissing Horror” in # 74 (Aug. 1952) was not linked to communism, but the blood-soaked cover of # 77 (Nov. 1952) features a giant communist version of King Kull, “the last survivor of a prehistoric race beastmen” (and an anti-democratic beastman, at that).
The next issue, Marvel Family #78 (Dec 1952) featuring “The Red Vulture,” is a companion to the Korean War issues of Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Junior. “The Red Star of Death” is a three-part epic dealing with communism. Themes that are prominent include Korea, space satellites and a mish-mash of a whole lot else. Compare this to stories being published only two or three years earlier, and it’s like two different companies produced these issues.
The Marvel Family also fights Korean War horror in “The Great Red Brain” in # 80 (Feb. 1953) and “The Mightiest Mongol” in # 81 (March 1953). At the end of “The Great Red Brain,” station WHIZ announcer Billy Batson sums up all of these stories with, “The Marvel Family utterly wrecked that secret polar nest of commie snakes! Tong and the Great Red Brain are gone! It all goes to show that the Reds, plotting to destroy freedom, have weak minds! And that includes the Great Red Brain!”
This is a guest article. The thoughts and opinions in this piece are those of their author and are not necessarily the thoughts of the Certified Collectibles Group.
