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Harry Anderson's Undead Horror on Marvel Tales #124, Up for Auction

Underappreciated artist Harry Anderson created some of the most memorable Marvel horror covers of the Pre-Code era, and Marvel Tales #124 is a classic.

It wasn't obvious at the time, but March 1954 marked a turning point in the Marvel comic book line. Harry Anderson's zombie cover on Marvel Tales #124 hit newsstands that month, along with two other zombie covers (Journey into Unknown Worlds #28, Uncanny Tales #21). However, these would be the last time zombies (or werewolves, skeletons, and vampires, among other horror creatures) appeared on Marvel comic book covers for a very long time.  The announcement of the development of the Comics Code was still about six months in the future, and Senate hearings on the industry would come late the next month, but the pressure to change was already in the air.

Marvel publisher Martin Goodman had been the industry's most prolific horror comics publisher, but he already seemed to be figuring out how to navigate that change.  He was not the only one. Already that month, horror featuring zombies and werewolves was beginning to transform into the sort of "weird science/fantasy" genre that Marvel would exploit so successfully for the next several years.

Even the undead horror of Harry Anderson's cover for Marvel Tales #124 was not quite what we might have expected in the interior feature "He Waits at the Tombstone!"  Every story that issue relies on suspense and clever plot twists rather than more explicit horror, but Marvel was already perfecting that formula quite effectively.

Harry Anderson (1911-1972) was a prolific and underappreciated comic book artist working from 1939 to 1955.  He began his career as a ghost artist for the newspaper comic strip Robin Hood and Company for the Toronto Telegram.  In comics, he worked with a wide range of publishers, early on via the Binder, Chesler, and Funnies Inc. studios and later directly for the publishers.  He did promotional comics such as March to Market, the Story of Meat for distributor Swift & Company, and Adventures into the Past for General Electric.  In the heroic genre, he worked on Dynamo for Lev Gleason, The Flag for Ace Magazines, The Conqueror for Hillman, and T-Man for Quality among many others.  This was all solid work, but it seems that Anderson really came into his own when he was asked to draw something weird or unusual.

Anderson's Pre-Code Horror work for Marvel/Atlas includes some of the publisher's most memorable covers of that era, including the werewolf cover of Astonishing #32 and the zombie cover of Mystery Tales #19.  Add Marvel Tales #124 to the list, and the highest graded CGC VF/NM 9.0 copy is up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

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