Comic books reached their peak of popularity in the early 1950s when a vast and eager audience of children and adults bought over two million comics every day! But the marketplace was turbulent and many of the publishers had problems (as pulps were being phased out) despite strong comic sales. All through this era there was great fear that the bottom could drop out at any time, and by mid-1954 it was obvious that there were dreaded changes due for the comic book industry. Amid all the fecundity many venerable old titles breathed their last breath, and many of the old publishers quit the field.

     Hillman Publications' last comic book was the final issue of Airboy, #111, dated May 1953. Airboy's last exploit is as over-the-top as ever as he sets out to thwart the plans for world domination by a clown who has a private army that he transports to distant destinations by shooting them in huge hollow shells from a colossal cannon. Osta Zomboli stirs up unrest by mocking politicians on stage then blasts his hired bullies to trouble spots to wreak havoc. Of course Airboy manages to bring the curtain down on the evil clown, in eight pages capably rendered by Ernie Schroeder, who drew most of the latter issues of the run.

     The Airboy issues were structured with the middle of the book devoted to a variety of short sketches: biographies of historical figures or vignettes from history and legend, even a few horror stories in some of the later years. This last ish doesn't feature a horror yarn; one wonders if they weren't just using up inventory at the end. Still, the fillers are good quality - they hit on many interesting topics through the years - and this final ish offers: a four-page spy story where frogmen figure out why a ship exploded, a three-page tale of a shoemaker's revenge upon his son's murderer, and a five-pager about sled dogs in the frozen Northwest.

     "Sandwiching" the book is the other lead feature, the Heap. One of the greatest and most under-rated characters of the Golden Age, the Heap was the original four-color "spirit of dying man merges with swamp growth to form a powerful humanoid plant" who for seven years shambled through a series that presented a unique viewpoint. This unheralded swan song takes place in the "backweirds" of Ireland, where the Heap helps make sure a rich countess doesn't cheat her way to winning a horse race and thus rob a poor couple of their one hope to raise enough money to get married. Schroeder drew the Heap throughout the last few years as well; his scratchy style suited the shaggy being. This seven-pager has a nice creepy ending.

     Quality's Police Comics, which had run through the 1940s as a solid anthology headlining Jack Cole's Plastic Man and Will Eisner's Spirit, changed to a crime and detective title in 1950, showcasing Ken Shannon, a tough private eye, and T-Man, a wisecracking Treasury agent who found trouble in all the many countries and continents that he traveled. The last issue of Police, #127 (Oct 1953), is the only one to feature a T-Man cover. The cover is redrawn from T-Man #4 with the scene changed from Panama to Thailand.

     "Thunder in Thailand" is amusing enough, but it's the same old stuff. Still, every so often, T-Man's breezy first-person narration hooked itself to a really good story, and this cast a warm glow over the series. Here, Pete Trask cracks the Commies' trick of smuggling information out of Bangkok by doing business as tropical fish exporters and "coding" the lots of fish they ship.

     Next up is Inspector Denver, a back up feature that started in #103 along with T- Man and Ken Shannon. It's a five-page police procedural that is readable if unoriginal as Denver works to uncover the real culprits in a museum theft.

     The Ken Shannon story is pretty exciting: "The Death Drivers" begins when Shannon's redheaded secretary, Dee Dee Dawson, wins a new car in a contest. The car gets stolen, and turns up-painted and with different plates - on a used car lot. But the serial numbers don't match! Shannon smells a rat and discovers that the used car lot is owned by a guy who also owns a junkyard and an auto daredevil circus, the Death Drivers. Ken and Dee Dee attend a show, which climaxes with a five-car crash. Shannon hangs around "backstage" and hears them talking about switching serial numbers from the wrecks to the hot cars! Of course Ken ends up driving a car out on the track and being chased by the crash-happy drivers. It's a thoroughly enjoyable romp, and Dee Dee's offer to pay Ken his fees in kisses makes a piquant last panel.

     The Police issues wrapped up with a generic "cop drama"; in "The Haunted Cop" a rookie policeman must contend with his father's awesome record with the department.

     Quality Comics hung on until 1956, when they sold their titles to DC.

     Fight Comics' #86 (1954) were among the last comics published by Fiction House, and the interior contents are reprints, but they're marvelous ones! Two episodes of Tiger Man drawn by George Evans in a lushly seductive style, packaged with a Tiger Man cover, makes a worthwhile book.

     Tiger Man fighting crime in street clothes and has a young assistant from India, Pali. Tiger Man receives super strength from a tiger spirit in times of crisis. The series originally ran in Rangers Comics, with the stories here hailing from issues #40 and #41 published in 1948.

     There's plenty of crises in the first tale, a gothic nightmare that starts with Tiger Man piloting his plane over Colorado with Pali and their captive, Black Hugo, thief and murderer. Hugo breaks loose and jams the plane controls and they crash-land near an old mansion that has been taken over by a mad scientist who needs a supply of fresh blood to keep his zombie slaves alive. The process of being captured by the zombies, escaping, rescuing Pali just before his blood gets drained, and going after the mad doctor and Hugo makes a terrific yarn, and it's gorgeously drawn, through nine richly-designed pages of graphic narrative, with many beautifully-textured panels.

     The second story is an adventure yarn of a Briton in the French Foreign Legion who helps rescue an Algerian woman from slavery. It's reprinted from Fiction House series that framed the stories by having them narrated as "true life events" on a live radio show.

     Next up is an episode reprinted from the Sky Rangers series, about a couple of flyers who patrol the business enterprises of a mogul called the Tall Texan. In this installment they uncover dope smuggling on a Hawaiian pineapple plantation. It's handsomely drawn.

     The second Tiger Man reprint closes the book, and is another winner. Tiger Man exposes a bogus astrologer who manipulates movie stars in Hollywood. There's a creepy scene in the phony mystic's "Temple of the Moon" where Sultana has his pet birds attack one of his minions who bungles a job. The old plot formulas work best when embellished with fresh details like that. Again, Evans' art is a virtuoso performance.

     By mid-1954 Hillman and Fiction House were gone, as well as Fawcett and Fox; 1955 would claim Eastern Color (whose Famous Funnies was the first continuing comic series) and United Features; and 1956 would toll the bell for Quality, Ace, and Lev Gleason. Never again would so many "big" publishers compete in the four-color arena.

     Four Color Frights of 1952

     Forty-Five years ago horror had it's heyday on the comic book racks, with close to a hundred titles offering tales of gruesome wonder, mayhem, supernatural suspense, and weird mystery. Publishers large and small served up murder and ghostly, ghastly vengeance, stories of transformation - where people changed into creatures, and yarns that showed the spine-tingling results of visitations from beyond our ken. For three fantastic years, from 1952 through 1954, the fantasy genres dominated the four-color scene. Let's take a moment to celebrate by traveling back in time with some books that were on the newsstands for Halloween in 1952.

     Forbidden Worlds #11 (November) is a good example of this fine title from the American Comics Group that enjoyed a 17-year life span, making it the third-longest-running fantasy title from any company. "The Mummy's Treasure" makes an eye-catching cover, and the story inside is horror with a happy ending that packs a wonderful punch of cornball charm. Also in this is - the spirits of Attila the Hun, Jack the Ripper, Mussolini, and Hitler are placed by black magic into their replicas in a wax museum and begin a campaign of terror in a colorful tale with intense art by Harry Lazarus.

     Frankenstein #21 (October/November) contains one of Dick Briefer's finest novelettes, "World of Monsters" where Frankenstein meets up with a mad scientist who's turned his private mesa in the "Arizona wastelands" into a prehistoric jungle, populated by dinosaurs and a wildcat who has been hyper-evolved into a beautiful girl. This great title from Prize ran as a humor series through the late 1940s and came back with #18 in 1952 as a horror title - both by Briefer and both excellent.

     Astonishing #19 (November) boasts a spooky Russ Heath cover - vaguely tied to the opening tale of a grim ghost in the USSR who claims Josef Stalin as his victim. Two weird classics close this Atlas book: the awesome "Top Billing" a sardonic gem about the demise of a comedy team - executed with wickedly witty writing by Stan Lee and lavishly lurid art by Joe Maneely; and "Roll Call," a tale of Death, crisply rendered in the ultra-cool modernism of Bemie Krigstein.

     Weird Thrillers #5 (October/November), from Ziff-Davis starts with a superb painted cover. Inside highlights include 'Wings of Death" where the hunter who brings down the snow eagle ends up feeling the vengeance of many beaks - a so-so tale that profits from nicely-textured art by Frank Giacoia, and "All the King's Men" a wowser about "voodoo-ridden Haiti" and the ghosts of the 19th-century despot Henri Christophe and the squadron of men who marched off a high wall and dropped to death to prove his army's discipline. When a Yankee crook tries to uncover Christophe's buried treasure he gets caught in a spectral re-enactment of the scene, and it costs him his 1ife. Bob Powell's art fleshes out the nifty narrative to make this one of the many mini-masterpieces of 1950's fantasy.

     Beware Terror Tales #4 (November) offers the kind of solid entertainment that Fawcett aimed to deliver. An incredible amorphous monster cover by Bemard Baily begins the book auspiciously, and the three stories inside are all worthwhile. "Revolt of the Fingers," a tale of a young pianist whose hands take on their own personalities - one of them murderous - is a gripping story (literally!) with bravura art by Bob McCarty. "The Black Candle of Life" is a supernatural ten-pager whose familiar plot benefits from a fast pace and the agile graphics of Shelly Moldoff. "The Crawling Horror" is everything the cover promised - as two scientist "room-mates," one the inventor of a compact computer and the other the creator of an evolving and growing blob of protoplasm, run into trouble when their projects merge into a monster.

     Plastic Man #38 (November) shows how in those fantastic years even superhero comic covers were wont to sport rotting corpses rising from their graves. This ish does in fact feature two superhero-horror yarns: the cover tale, where Plas scares the bad guys by appearing as Satan, and 'Wrath of the Wig" about a mad actor who uses voodoo to make the elaborate wigs worn in a French "period" play squeeze their wearers' heads hard enough to kill them during the performances. This month also marked the debut of Quality's first "real" horror title, Web of Evil.

     That's just a half a dozen from my collection, and that's not counting the December and Winter books that were coming out as well. One could truly have engineered quite a fright feast with a handful of dimes back when these books were on sale. The "glimpsed in Gerber" award goes to Horrific #2 (November), whose cover depicts a couple of completely creepy puppet masters moving their hapless humans on strings. Comic Media was just getting started; #3 would feature the first and most famous of Don Heck's great series of "portrait" covers - the corpse with the bullet hole in its forehead. Comic Media was one of the publishers to spring up during the boom years and fallout when the boom went bust in 1955.

Pat Calhoun has been collecting, researching and appreciating comic books since the early 1960s, and is a nationally recognized comic book historian. Pat resides in Santa Rosa, California.