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Weird Menace: The 1930s rise of the Shudder Pulps followed by the rise of the forces that ended them and transformed horror on the newsstand.
Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: l.b. cole, pre-code horror
Harem of Horror and L.B. Cole's Terrors of the Jungle #4, at Auction
L.B. Cole's cover for Jay Disbrow's Lost World-style feature Morass of Death makes Terrors of the Jungle #4 a 1953 Pre-Code Horror classic.
A startlingly lurid dinosaur mayhem cover by L.B. Cole paired with a weird Lost World-style interior story by Jay Disbrow is a match made in Pre-Code Horror heaven (or hell, as the case may be). We've said this before about these Star Publications titles: Cole covers of this era are unfailingly a treat that pokes you right in the eyeballs. Cole and Disbrow made for a good match in this era, and Disbrow's strange stories brought out the best in Cole for the covers. In addition to Disbrow's savage jungle tale Morass of Death, Terrors of the Jungle #4 also features a Rulah story from Zoot Comics called The Harem Horror about which GCD says, "Whoever drew it was imitating Baker."
These Star Publications L.B. Cole covers are like candy for Pre-Code Horror covers, and Terrors of the Jungle #4 is an interesting mix of material beyond that. Always in demand, there's a Terrors of the Jungle #4 (Star Publications, 1953) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages up for auction in the 2023 July 13 – 14 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40227 at Heritage Auctions.
With the heat turning up on the comic book industry in 1948, Curtis Publishing, who published comics via their Novelty Press imprint, had found themselves getting caught up in the controversy over the industry during that period. Best known as the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal, Curtis decided to throw in the towel on comic books by 1949, selling their titles and inventory to Star Publications, a company formed by L.B. Cole and lawyer Gerhard Kramer. The company leveraged this inventory, along with other reprint material from Fox Feature Syndicate titles, to create a noteworthy line of comics, adding Cole's legendarily eye-catching covers and new material from the likes of Jay Disbrow.
Jay Disbrow contributed to around 45 comic books for Star Publications 1950-1954, across the company's titles, focused on horror and romance. In Morass of Death, a plane crash in a lost valley in the Congo results in dinosaur vs dinosaur and dinosaur vs human violence, with the life of a beautiful jungle girl hanging in the balance. One of the best issues of the Star Publications era, there's a Terrors of the Jungle #4 (Star Publications, 1953) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages up for auction in the 2023 July 13 – 14 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40227 at Heritage Auctions.
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