Adventures Into The Unknown Archives Volume 1

Adventures Into the Unknown Archives

by Bruce Jones (Editor, Introduction), Al Feldstein (Illustrator), Leonard Starr (Illustrator)

The first ongoing horror comics anthology, Adventures into the Unknown is finally collected into a series of deluxe hardcovers! The pre-Code delights found in this debut volume include inventive, exciting tales like "The Living Ghost," "Kill, Puppets, Kill," "The Affair of Room 1313," and the ongoing "True Ghosts of History" feature -- with contributions from Golden Age greats Fred Guardineer, Al Feldstein, Leonard Starr, Edvard Moritz, and others!

Genres: Horror, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Anthologies

216 pages, Hardcover

First published June 19, 2012

Reviews

[Jan Philipzig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horror Comics: The Beginning

The comics from the late 1940s collected in this volume mark the very beginning of the horror genre in comic-book form. There is still no sign of the irony and sophistication that would in the early 1950s distinguish the horror comics published by EC, as almost every story engages in an earnest discussion of the question whether ghosts and other supernatural phenomena actually exist or not. Moreover, the reader is not yet expected to be familiar with the various horror sub-genres, and is thus provided with basic information on relevant questions such as: how do you kill a vampire?

The publication of horror stories in comic-book form was highly controversial at the time, as comic books were still widely perceived as children's fare. The letter column launched in issue #4 was accordingly not only designed to promote the series but also to appease critics. A mother is quoted: "Yesterday, my ten-year-old son, Tony, brought home his first copy of 'Adventures Into the Unknown.' To say that I was pleased and thrilled is an understatement. A far cry from the murder type of book, your magazine inspires imagination and a love for things off the beaten path... Your book is simply tops!" The authenticity of such letters is questionable at the very least, of course.

The gore that would soon become a trademark of horror comics, making the medium an easy target for anti-comic-book crusaders, is still completely absent here - as is the social critique that would come to characterize many EC stories. While those sociocritical EC stories tend to cast the post-war period's rise of suburbia as a source of conflict and misery, the ones collected in this volume generally celebrate the new middle-class lifestyle. According to them, the "American Way of Life" is not threatened from within but strictly by strange supernatural forces that originate either from the distant past or from other parts of the world. In short, all signs of trouble in complacent post-war America are blamed on the Other.

Ideologically, then, this book leaves much to be desired. Still, its historical significance is undeniable, and even in terms of entertainment value I found the lack of irony and in-jokes quite refreshing and enjoyable. My favorite story by far was issue #1's "The Living Ghost," an outrageously wild ride that must be read to be believed!

[Nicolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading this and the Crime Does Not Pay Archives, that sometimes I'd forget what I was reading at times, since the art style was similar and the stories here also have a crime element. However, it's the resolution to the story that would be my guide for me to know I was reading which one. Crime stories usually have plenty of shoot outs, but the horror stories in Adventures into the Unknown have a fantasy and supernatural twist in the end.

Overall, this has the better stories compared to the Crime Does Not Pay Archives, and the art, too is amazing, since it is no longer constrained by the realism required to tell true crime stories.

[Diz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reprints the first four issues of one of the first horror comics. These particular issues are from 1948 and 1949. To be honest, the art and the writing is not very good. It's has a lot of self narration and zero suspense. If you're looking to read horror comics for pleasure, you won't find any here. However, it may be of historical interest if you are comparing it to the EC comics that come later or the Warren comics of the 60s and 70s.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der schicke Hardover=Band enthält die Hefte 1 - 4 (Herbst 48 - Mai 49) der wohl ersten fortlaufenden Horror-Comic Reihe, ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNWON. Die Artwork und ihre Wiedergabe haben mich angesprochen. Inhaltlich wiederholt sich vieles und wirkt sehr formelhaft, aber Genre und Medium waren noch jung und die ADVENTURES haben mit Sicherheit ihrerseits dazu beigetragen, die "Konventionen" des Horror Comics mit zu definieren. Dabei ging es den Machern auch offensichtlich gar nicht darum, ganz neue, unerhörte Stories zu erzählen, sondern sie griffen auf die klassischen Geistergeschichten zurück. Manchmal wurden diese aufgepeppt im Stile der Weird Menace Pulps, aber oft sollte auch eine einfach erzählte Story nur einen wohligen Schauder erzeugen.
Die nostalgisch stimmenden Stories lesen sich - wenn man das Genre mag - auch heute noch gut und machen in der richtigen Dosierung uneingeschränkt Spaß.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of arguably the first ever Horror Anthology Comic. I'm a huge fan of these types of comics, so my enthusiasm may have made the stories more enjoyable to me than most. I will say that while these stories arent bad, they aren't on the level of EC Comics, which are considered the greatest of the genre.

These stories are more campy and somewhat silly when compared to the more refined EC stories, but this is still not a bad collection. If you're a fan of 50s style horror anthologies, you'll probably enjoy this one.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't technically read *this* book, but I did download and read the first four issues of this comic a few years ago when I had a big interest in pre-code horror comics. These (and many more) are available free on digitalcomicmuseum.com.

Let's just be clear, this isn't EC-quality pre-code horror. Many of these stories fall into what you might call a "ghost fighting" stories. People encounter various supernatural evils and fight them, usually winning out. I found issue #4 pretty bad and didn't read more. Still these are pretty entertaining as examples of really early horror comics -- issue #1 is from 1948, years before EC started their "new trend" horror.

Here's the notes I took at the time, for what it's worth...

1 - *** I enjoyed this comic, the art is often average, sometimes below, the stories are all OK at least. There is some gore. There's something to be said for sheer quantity, and this comic has that down, plus some pretty good tales toward the first half. This is early horror -- 1948. __John Wilder captures a timber wolf in the Canadian wilderness, but the locals have been in fear of a werewolf loose in the mountains. During the night the wolf turns into a man, escapes from it's cage and steals off with John's wife Barbara. He shoots and injures the man, but he gets back into his cage as a wolf and no one's the wiser -- back in America the wolf escapes from the zoo and a series of brutal murders begin. __A "Living Ghost" goes on the prowl. First he murders a train switch operator and causes mayhem and death on the rails. While investigator Tony Brand is looking over the crash, reporter Gail Leslie shows up too, she smells something odd. Later when the ghost pushes two necking lovers' car over a cliff, there's the same smell -- brimstone! The ghost sees Gail and later captures her at her apartment. The ghosts image is so terrible that it's face is etched into her mirror. Tony arrives at her place for a hot date, but discovers the mirror, and learns from a paranormal investigator that he's up against a demon. __A one-pager on the basics of voodoo. __In 1750 squire Aram loses his girl to Philip and pays some men to tie him up and throw him into the sea. As he sinks he vow revenge on Aram's family through the ages. Aram soon dies horribly, as do his descendents. In 1948 Sylvia and Roger are honeymooning at the Aram estate, now a hotel. The ghost of Philip is seen outside, Roger and his friend Ken go after it, but only Roger returns. Soon the ghost returns, now for Sylvia! __One-pager about a pistol used in a duel that becomes a curse to a family. __A below average re-telling of "The Castle of Otranto." __A grim two-pager about a girl who fears Lord Tyrone even more after he has died than when he was alive. She spurned his love once, now he returns for her, and makes her age rapidly wherever he touches her. __Lorna, her boyfriend Fred and his partner Benny hear the reading of her uncle Horace's will, learning that she will inherit a million dollars if she stays in Horace's creepy old house one night. The trio go there and encounter sliding panels, skeletons, ghosts and some real-life thieves.

2 - *** Not as fun as the first comic, but still pretty good. Stories feel a bit rushed, art too, lots of "ghost fighting" feels almost super hero-ish. Little gore, but some eerie moments, lots of corny ones. __Centuries ago Turgot the puppet master creates four puppets that do his bidding and have gone on a killing spree. He has taught Jennie the art of puppetry, but when she rejects his offer of marriage he orders his puppets to attack. Her brother saves her life, Turgot falls on his own sword in the attack and the puppets are burned. But in the present a couple dismantles the old house and has it transported to America the killings resume. __Gail and Tony are vacationing to forget the "Living Ghost," when he emerges from a volcano nearby, kidnaps her and takes her to the mountain. Tony goes to Dr. Vandyke a psychic researcher who gives him the idea of enlisting the help of the Dark Phantom, the mortal enemy of the Living Ghost. A seance summons demons which take Tony to the Dark Phantom who he makes a bargain with to get to Gail. __A century ago Henry discovers his wife Jane is having an affair with Robert, a younger man. He assumes they have run off together, so he has her favorite tower locked up forever and commits suicide. In the present, Andrew, one of the heirs to the property decides to open the tower and is killed instantly. Douglas Drew, Ghost-Breaker is called in to solve the mystery. __Betty Saunders becomes an expert at copying the macabre paintings of Van Ruyter, a painter who cut his own hands off and killed himself many years ago. One night Betty gets an invitation from a man to come to his Belgian castle to retouch some Van Ruyter's. She jumps at the chance and travels there. But quickly learns her host is an evil spirit who forced Van Ruyter to paint devils that came to life -- now he wants her to do the same for him! __Captain Wolfson is so cruel to his men that they murder him, and one of the men on board captures his spirit in his ship in a bottle. In the present Stephen Knowles and his family buy the ship and his son soon opens it, releasing Wolfson. __A two-pager about the "Grim Lady of Raynham Hall who stalks the halls, and convinced Captain Marryat of her reality.

3 - *** Nothing superb here, but a solid, early horror comic, more "fighting ghosts" here, pretty basic supernatural stories, hokey endings, no gore really. The art is good, one story by Feldstein is excellent. __During the days of the Salem witch trials Adam Adams leads a group of men to the house of Black Naomi, and before they can burn her alive she creates a familiar in the form of a black cat. There's a series of murders in the village, and in the present a series of accidents occur when repairs begin on Naomi's old house for a young couple who are planning to move in. Once they do, only Adam Adam's ghost can protect them from the witch-cat! __Ruth Morton finds herself the object of an ugly man's obsession, and when she rejects him he swears she will pay. Later that night he crawls into her window and she's saved just in time by her husband Bill and her pursuer falls from their apartment window. Their doctor hears the facts of the case and believes it's a vampire at work, and Ruth isn't safe when she and the vampire are taken to the same hospital. __A one-pager about various Irish spirits. __Many years ago a midget who was tried but acquitted for murder builds a small house in a town. The townsfolk talk of how he desired a full-sized woman in the circus, and caused her death by sabotaging the tightrope. Another man who loved her shows up one day and he and the midget murder each other and the house burns. Years later a new house is built on the same spot, the couple who move in find themselves haunted by the little man who still desires a female companion. __A man tells his story to convince a room of skeptics that ghosts do exist. At the wedding of his parents, the jealous Vardis Nelson busts in and starts shooting people, fortunately he is overpowered. Years later Nelson returns to kill his father, David who is still alive. Nelson cut's David's brake line, causing a fatal accident. After he's dead David returns to warn his son of Nelson's plans to murder him too. __A two-pager about ghost armies reenacting a battle during the English Civil War which foretold the death of King Charles. __Historian Rand and his secretary Debby travel to Whispering Hollow near Creekmore where Rand has purchased an old house. It seems from the years 1720-1770 there were no crimes in Creekmore; only strange accidental deaths. Rand leaves Debby at the house while he goes to town, and soon a bad storm arrives. Wind blows a window open, a large black dog jumps in and runs into the cellar and disappears. Little does Debby know the dog was the ghost of the evil Dr. Gaunt in disguise. It seems there were no crimes during his time because he collected evil and used it to raise two demons which do his bidding, and Gaunt wants Whispering Hollow for himself.

4 - ** I might be a little harsh on this one, but I just found it to be a pretty bad issue. The art isn't terrible, but frankly the expressions on faces don't match the action a lot. No gore, and several of the stories are just nonsensical, a couple corny ones are fun. __Giants of the Unknown - After deciphering an ancient Egyptian manuscript Betty tells her partner Tom that she's convinced the document tells how to find an ancient tomb that holds the father of all Egyptian entities. They elicit the help of Edward Clinton, a rich man who wants fame and power to fund their expedition. They do find a tomb, ignore the usual warnings and enter it anyway and discover a giant mummy within who tells them how millions of years ago he was put into suspended animation by the leader of his people for opposing his warlike nature. The giant takes the trio back in time to his civilization in a plea to stop the human race from making the same mistakes his race did so many years ago. __The Affair of Room 1313 - John Abbot, new employee of an insurance company is sent on a fools errand to try and sell insurance to the MacLeish company which went out of business 25 years ago. The elevator operation acts strange when John asks to go to the MacLeish company office, but he finds it, sells Mr. MacLeish insurance and begins to flirt with his secretary when a crazed man named Mr Gregory enters and tries to murder John. He leaves, but when he's told the truth about the MacLeish company by his co-workers he fears for his own sanity and returns to find out the truth. __Back to Yesterday - Roger Lawrence and his family await the reading of his dead relative's will. A Ms. Margaret Blythe arrives and the will leaves her everything. Everyone realizes she looks like Margaret Anders, who it is rumored that the estates original owner, Roger Lawrence married. But as there's no proof of the marriage, Roger's relatives refuse to accept that she has any legal right to the property and try to have her committed. While fleeing from two orderlies Margaret is transported back into the body of Margaret Anders to uncover the truth. __Specialist in Spooks - Supernatural expert Elliot O'Donnell walks through a park with an old friend and tells about when he saw his first ghost as a student, in an attic room he rented. He fails his examination to be a policeman, so he decides to become an expert in ghosts. He tells about a job he took from a man who saw a "shaggy ghost" in his house, and how that ghost later saved him from disaster. __True Ghosts of History - A two-pager about the ghost of a man seen for hundreds of years at a English Naval barracks. __The Women Wore Black! - Jug Nason and his partner are fleeing from a bank robbery when they spot a gypsy family and run them over to steal their car. They manage to kill the two daughters of the family in the process, and the old woman of the family raises their corpses to get revenge. Some ninety miles away the criminals stop at an old, abandoned house, but soon realize they aren't alone, the two gypsy women are there.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having completed a recent re-read of all my EC comics holdings, and looking for a way into beginning a read of my CREEPY and EERIE collections, I decided to approach things chronologically for my bedtime horror comics. And so that finds me here, at DARK HORSE's much welcomed reprint series of (arguably) the first ever ongoing horror comic book. As wonderful as it is that these things are being collected and printed - and in such lavish style - the sad truth is that I simply can't afford such items for myself, and so I had to take recourse in the much-valued Inter-Library Loan. And now, here is Volume One!

After a scene-setting introduction (rather unwisely printed in black text on dark blue pages) by Bruce Jones which overreaches a bit in trying to place the "why" of horror comics within their context (I get what he's saying but he doesn't really have the space to do anything more than gesture at it) we get the actual comics. Of course, not as sophisticated in the artwork or storytelling as the ECs that came later, in a sense that's what makes them fun (see also my reviews of The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics and Zombie Factory: 27 Tales Of Bizarre Comix Madness From Beyond The Tomb). These are blunt, unapologetically juvenile reads in which everything is given to you in broad strokes and (usually) clunky artwork (although occasionally simplistic style makes the coloring, which tends to be a problem with reproductions of old comics, work very nicely).

But even given those lowered expectations - are they any good? Well, the blunt answer is "not very." ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN, at least at the start, reads like a late 1940s version of such weak tea as DC Comics 70s GHOSTS series (some collected in Showcase Presents: Ghosts, Vol. 1) - which at least had the comics code as an excuse, and featured some surprisingly good art at times. But here, there are no such excuses. Oh, occasionally the art is effective: the snorefest reincarnation story "Back To Yesterday" has some nice faces and an unexpectedly effective "silent panel" - it's also one of the few stories that has credited artwork in the splash page notation for Leonard Starr, the cartoonish/coloring book blunt style of "The Living Ghost" works pretty well, and the same guy, I think, shows up to do a pretty good job on "The Creekmore Curse". But the stories only begin to get better, marginally, by issue #4, the last one collected in this volume.

You get one werewolf ("The Werewolf Stalks" - in which a big game hunter traps a vicious timber-wolf and brings it to the big city, only for it to reveal itself as a werewolf, whereupon it escapes from captivity and ravages the city - nice symbolic splash pages in this), one vampire ("The Vampire Prowls" features an odd, jealous vampire - named Marvin, no less! - who gets shot while in bat form, which causes him to fall out a window and be taken off to the morgue as dead, where he is finally repelled by a juniper twig wielded by a savvy doctor, upon which he steals a sporty car to race back to his coffin, where he's staked), a witch-cat ("The Witch-Cat of Salem" is a demonic familiar summoned by Black Naomi to visit her curse upon the town that burns her at the stake - justifiably, she really was a witch planning on injuring children with her spells) and lots and lots of ghosts (including a few fakers, ghosts of evil puppets and their puppeteer in "Kill, Puppets, Kill!", and the ghost of an evil, creepy Midget and his little house in "The Specter of Little Dread House") Oddly, most of the ghosts seem to resort to fisticuffs, or are undone by good ghosts who appear to administer justice...through fisticuffs. Also, seemingly real ghosts can be tricked by disguised dummies and eavesdropped on when in their attic "lairs" (good thing the hero has a "pocket flame-thrower" that looks suspiciously like a revolver!). "Haunted House" has a "fake ghost/real ghost" plot - not the only one in here - reading something more like a Abbott & Costello vehicle involving an inheritance and a will that demands that Lorna must stay overnight in the spooky mansion of an uncle to get her million dollars - lucky she has intrepid boyfriend/private detective Fred Eager (and his portly, cowardly partner Benny Beaver - together they make up the "Eager Beaver Detective Agency", natch) to help her out. A glowing skeleton and a haunted portrait figure in the hi-jinx.

There's an attempt at an occult detective type (Douglas Drew, Ghost-Breaker), appearances by real literary figures related to ghosts stories (Frederick Marryat & ghost-hunter Elliott O'Donnell) and even an adaptation of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (which rushes through the story - probably, in all honesty, to the benefit of the turgid original - CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED-style).

There's even a weak stab at a continuing story - although only two installments (out of the 4 issue) appear: "The Living Ghost" - has the legendary, titular force of evil (actually Satan's chief lieutenant Malevo!) occasionally walk the earth to wreck havoc (here, deliberately crashing trains, flipping over cars at Lover's Lanes, kidnapping women and summoning the creepy specters of evil). Good thing Tony Brand, the D.A.'s Special Investigator is on the case (especially because one caption warns us "Stand by for danger!") and that a psychic researcher gives him a "petrified olive branch" that can render a ghost mortal. This, bonked off of Malevo's hideous puss, does exactly that, allowing good old Tony to get into a regular punch-up with the fiend who, after getting clobbered with a rock and kicked in the face, is then swept off to jail, only to disappear from the electric chair! (I liked the cartoonish art on this) Gail Leslie and Tony Brand return to face off against "The Living Ghost" (who seems to have regained one of his eyes since the last adventure) in "Out Of The Unknown" where the fiend kidnaps Gail yet again, and so Tony has to fall back on his psychic researcher friend, who happens to mention that "The Living Ghost" has an arch-enemy in the equally fiendish "Dark Phantom", whom Tony contacts through a medium (the fiend lives in Tibet) and then pits the one against the other. These phantoms or evils spirits or whatever they are then get into a fisticuffs donnybrook until one defeats the other, and then is defeated in turn by a deus ex-machina. The end, in which "The Living Ghost" again escapes his fate, promises a return in the next issue but twas not to be...stories in which evil spirits are essentially treated like supervillains are not very satisfying.

By the fourth issue, ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN seems to have connected to some kind of FATE-magazine type current to give it direction (which bodes better for Adventures Into The Unknown Archives Volume 2). Not only do you get the "Lost super-race of Egypt" hokum of "Giants Of The Unknown" (which features twenty-foot tall mummies, time travel and super-science!) and the aforementioned reincarnation yawnfest "Back To Yesterday", but the stories are more likely to either be inexplicably eerie ("The Affair of Room 1313" may read like half-baked proto-TWILIGHT ZONE but I have to admit the grim ending and the lack of explanation, were a nice change of events) or slightly darker than usual ("The Women Wore Black" has two on-the-run bank robbers kill gypsy twins, only to suffer under a curse that exacts revenge - again, not really anything we haven't seen a million times but better done than the material that preceded it).

So, is the book worth reading? Not really, unless you are a die-hard devotee of horror comics like me. ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN was just beginning to take shape here, and so Volume Two may make a better bet for the casual reader. Best story in this book? Aside from the interesting aspects I noted, nothing is really good as a complete whole, so I guess I'd give it to "The Specter of Little Dread House" and the homicidal ghost midget and his little ghost house (he was 70 years ahead of the curve on the whole tiny house thing!) which re-appears inside a new house built where his own was burned down - the hero traps the ghost midget in a mirror, paints it black and then shatters it, and so the story wins by default on cumulative weirdness points.

[Alex Sarll]

The first four issues of a creaky old pre-Code horror comic predating even the more famous EC, which somehow managed to dodge the same opprobrium, partly just by luck, partly by moderation. As such, it now lacks even the ghoulish heft of its more notorious competitors, meaning its appeal to the modern reader rests mainly on comedy and confusion. Sometimes it re-tells historical ghost stories; elsewhere it seems to be trying to come up with a supernatural mythos of its own, as when the monstrous Living Ghost looks set to become a recurring character, only to vanish once the creators presumably realise there's nowhere much to take it after the second appearance. Pioneering though it may have been as a horror comic, there are times when one wonders whether these people had ever actually read or watched any horror story before; some tales go down what were already well-trodden routes, only to end up in completely the wrong place. Even as kids working from Scooby-Doo and the Horror Top Trumps pack, I think we generally used to come up with something closer to the genre as it now stands – and already stood before the 1940s, come to that. For instance, the archaeological expedition which finds something very strange lurking behind Egyptian legends, something that upends our whole understanding of history...but none of it is really very spooky, more just SF, and also they omit any hint of how this gives rise to the mythology we know, unless you count the headgear. More frequently, the tricks used to deal with ghosts feel like they're from some world at right angles to our own, doing stuff like prodding them with sprigs of juniper or using doohickeys with 'anti-ghost' properties that are stated rather than defined. Which said, there was one I liked – trapping a ghost by catching it in a mirror, then painting over the mirror with black paint before it can get free again. Other than that, the highlight is probably the vampire story in which, as far as I'm concerned, the narrator is blatantly just winding up the annoying bastard to whom he's telling the tale.
"You look tired, doc! Guess the same old routine of colds, fevers and babies gets monotonous, eh?"
"Yes it does – but once in a whle I have a case that's really exciting! Like the time I treated the victim of a vampire!"
A vampire who, while allegedly fitting the classic template of the lore, in fact comes across more as a miffed incel, and is called Marvin Sanders. Oh, and that quote is probably some of the least hokey dialogue in the whole collection. The most surprising thing, though, is that the audience was not quite what you'd expect, at least not judging from the original ads, also reproduced here. In amongst the joy buzzers and such, there are also plenty for stuff like Streamline girdles, aimed at women who want to "Feel Like Sixteen Again". Oh, and one for the publisher's comedy line, including titles devoted to "gay animal antics", which would have made for a very different Suede t-shirt, wouldn't it?

[Nicholas Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe two and a half stars. I read this book shortly after completing the first volume of Tales from the Crypt, and Adventures Into The Unknown definitely feels like a sort of neophyte version of the later, more popular horror title. Adventures into the Unknown includes the largely self-contained stories (albeit with a few exceptions), the preponderance of focus on ghost stories and revenge tales and stories of estranged couples, and the inclusion of text stories, too.

Differences in this earlier horror title include, for some reason, a straight-laced narrator who insists that ghosts aren't real (which seems to undermine the effectiveness of the stories!), a few tales with a recurring character (the truly lame, in my eyes, Living Ghost), the inclusion of "true stories" based on real legends/superstitions, and some more experimental stories dealing with more fantasy-type tropes. The tales themselves are generally of a lower quality than the Crypt stories and thus even more ridiculous at times, but I thought some of them still had charm. I liked the inclusion of a ghost detective in one tale, for example. The art tends to be rougher than Crypt as well, though some stories have quite good art. I also noticed that the artists seemed to be credited in this older book, as they later were as well in Crypt, so I wondered if that might have carried over.

I don't think I want to read any more of these tales, but it was interesting to experiment with the genre.

[Niche · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pre-code horror comics. If you aren't familiar with it, the Comics Code Authority (whose logo you can sometimes see in the corner of old Marvel/DC covers) came about ~1954 and ran until the late 90s to early 00s. It was a "voluntary," depending on the era. It largely forbid sex/sexuality, drugs, graphic violence, horror elements (the likes of Ghost Rider and Swamp Thing were rather transgressive), sympathetic crime, etc.

The stories are largely unrelated one-offs, with a few that might reference a recurring monster or a short run for a couple of issues. They often involve a paranormal/supernatural element, but remind me more of the "sensationalist" horror/ghost stories of the Victorian era a la penny dreadfuls. The usual plot is: monster happens to characters, danger!, monster defeated by their weakness. It's not really the kind of horror I'm into, but I'd picked it up for the comics history significance.

[Roberto Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para fanáticos de la historia del cómic norteamericano y mundial, esta es una lectura de interés que nos sumerge en la primera antología de cómics de suspenso, antes que EC Comics las popularizara.

Se nota el cuidado de muchos de los arrtistas en presentrar material interesante, incluyendo historias cortas de prosa que te hacen viajar en tu imaginación. El detalle de invluir en el volumen material adicional como la publicidad interna de los cómics en su tiraje original es un detalle que le otorga a este volumen, publicado por darkhorse comics, un sentir de cápsula del tiempo.

Digno de cualquier bibliiteca de historia del cómic.

[slashyrogue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun

Yes it’s old fashioned, yes it’s ridiculous, but I giggled my way through the hackneyed dialogue and the very convenient fires that somehow kill ghosts of many different types. I’m going to read the next one now lol.

[Michał Bukowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naiwne początki amerykańskiego komiksowego horroru. Motywy często się powtarzają, a całość jest kierowana raczej do nastoletnich fanów historii z dreszczykiem. Co zabawne opowieści starają się czasami przedstawić "naukowe" podejście do zagadnień paranormalnych. Zbiór ma wartość historyczną prezentując specyfikę tematyki grozy w czasach złotej ery komiksu.

Wstępem do zbioru jest ciekawy esej o początkach komiksowego horroru i jego odbiorcach.

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Precode horror.

Good color artwork. Freebie from the vaults. These old horror comics feature a lot of short stories. Sort of similar to CREEPY or Eeerie. Not suitable for children.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and somewhat endearingly derivative collection of pre-code horror comics. Nothing here re-invents the wheel or anything like that, but I found it all pretty engaging for what it was.

[T. Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the some horror/mystery. It's hard to judge this by today's standards.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty tame vintage (golden age) horror comics.

[MB Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adventures into the Unknown was an early and long lasting horror anthology comic book published by American Comics Group. Dark Horse has published the first 12 issues in three hardback volumes. Volume 1 contains issues 1-4, originally published in 1948 and 1949.

Several years ago, during some eBay binging I bought 50+ issues of the title, mostly post Comics Code. I thought they were rather bland and didn't really pursue getting more. When I discovered the Dark Horse reprints in late December I decided to see what the comic was like in its early pre-code years and picked up all three volumes.

If volume 1 is any indication, they were pretty bland, too. Most of the stories feature ghosts, which aren't really my thing. Issues 1 & 2 were a little better than 3 & 4. I probably won't be reading volumes 2 & 3 anytime soon...

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were pretty cheesy to begin with, but they did get better as it went along and were quite good by the fourth issue. The artwork does the job, but it's nowhere near EC or Creepy/Eerie caliber. Of course, this anthology predated those others by a couple years, so you could say the standards for horror comics hadn't been set yet. This is also different in that there are actually a few stories where things turn out all right for the protagonists, whereas EC horror and Creepy/Eerie tended to have dark or "twist" endings.

[Johan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating read. Horror stories from the late forties early fifties.