Marvel Tales (1949 series) #96

On a snowbound train in Bavaria, American author Clifford Armstrong meets an older fellow traveler, Herr Berger, who urges him to abandon his plan to investigate the legend of Frankenstein and the Monster. Berger departs at the next station, and Cliff presses on alone to a remote village where the terrified locals eye him with silent hostility. At the village inn he meets Nina Frankenstein, the last female heir of the Frankenstein family, who mistakes him for one of the Fanatics — agents of a foreign power seeking the Frankenstein secret of creating life in order to build an invincible army. Nina explains that the Fanatics have kidnapped her father and taken him to Frankenstein Castle to force the formula from him.

Cliff and Nina trek through the blizzard to the castle, arriving just as the Fanatics succeed: under duress, Nina's father reveals the secret, and the scientists apply it to the Monster's lifeless body. The creature stirs, sits up, and immediately turns on its reanimators, crushing them to death and smashing through the castle walls. It tears through the village, toppling houses and hurling inhabitants through the air before returning toward the castle. Cliff and Nina, caught in its path, are seized — the Monster knocks Cliff aside and carries Nina deep into the castle's dungeons. Cliff pursues through darkened tunnels, pelts the Monster with a rock to break its hold, and lures it into a rubble-filled passage while Nina escapes. Cliff squirms free through a gap too narrow for the Monster, and the two survivors use dynamite to detonate the entire castle. The Monster staggers from the ruins emitting its death wail before a second explosion obliterates it entirely. Weeks later, back in New York Harbor, a white-haired Cliff introduces reporters to his new wife, Nina Armstrong, and denies there was ever any truth to the Frankenstein legend.

The Deadly Dwarf!

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

At the talent agency Jansen Theatrical Enterprises, failed ventriloquist Wylie is being turned away by agent Jensen when his dummy — a small, sharp-eyed figure no bigger than a large doll — suddenly speaks on its own, astounding everyone in the room. Jensen immediately signs the act, and Wylie, bewildered by what he has witnessed, takes the dwarf back to his furnished room. There the creature introduces himself as Demo — short for Demon — and proposes a partnership: he will supply the voice and the talent in exchange for half of Wylie's earnings. The act becomes a sensation, with Wylie and Demo playing to packed houses coast to coast.

As fame and money accumulate, Wylie's greed grows and he attempts to fire Demo, commissioning a look-alike dummy to replace him. On stage with the imitation, Wylie finds he cannot project his voice at all; Demo is seated in the audience, his malevolent stare apparently suppressing Wylie's ability entirely. Humiliated before the crowd, Wylie is reduced to begging Demo to return. He lures the dwarf to his locked dressing room with the promise of reinstating him, then attempts to strangle him — only to discover that Demo's neck is made of wood. Demo gloats that he has learned Wylie's secret and that the secret must never be revealed. A single horrible scream escapes the room. The next morning Jensen and a detective break down the door to find Wylie dead, strangled, with all doors and windows locked from the inside — and Demo seated in the chair, grinning.

The Mask of the Mind!

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

In London in the year 1780, a cloaked figure wearing a hideous mask has been robbing graves of their buried jewelry, escaping police pursuit night after night by darting into alleys and removing the mask to reveal himself as Dr. Benjamin Hill, a respected and beloved physician. Hill is compelled by a dark, irresistible urge he cannot explain or fully control, and his double life goes undetected because no one would suspect the gentle doctor. When word spreads that wealthy philanthropist Sir Robert has died and been buried with his fortune willed to the poor, Hill dons the mask for what he declares will be his supreme and final robbery. Police have posted a guard at Sir Robert's grave; spotted and chased, Hill barely escapes without time to remove the mask, reaching his home just ahead of the officers. He tears off the mask inside, hides it, and opens the door to the police with a calm greeting — but as he passes a mirror he sees with horror that his own face has permanently taken on the monstrous shape of the mask, his crimes having twisted his features into the very likeness of evil he once wore. The police, seeing only the monster, drag him away as he screams that he is Dr. Hill.

Don't Shake Hands with the Devil

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Horror magazine publisher Jeremiah Pendergast is alone in his locked office when a grotesque, skull-faced stranger materializes through the sealed door, introducing himself as an emissary of Satan. He has come because Pendergast's magazine Satanic Stories has turned more souls away from evil than any other force alive or dead, and Satan intends to stop him. The visitor produces a manuscript scroll made of human skin — the Manuscript of Misery — written in archaic script and seemingly penned with liquid fire. Pendergast, unable to resist reading it, falls into a hypnotic trance and utters a promise to lend his soul to the ruler of Hades. The emissary erupts into hellfire and Pendergast plunges through the floor into the depths of the earth.

He arrives in Hell and is greeted by Satan himself, who shows him the pit of screaming damned souls below and informs him that since he is not yet dead — the Grim Reaper has not claimed him — he cannot be kept permanently. Satan instead curses him: upon returning to his office, Pendergast will be seized by an uncontrollable urge to kill the first person he sees, and will then be electrocuted for the crime, delivering his soul to Hell for eternity. Back in his office, Pendergast's mind blazes with the murder compulsion. He lunges at the first figure he sees and strangles it — only to watch the body disintegrate into nothingness. It was Satan's own emissary, come to witness the deed. Without a corpse, there is no murder charge and no electrocution. Satan has outwitted himself: the first being Pendergast would see on returning would always be the emissary sent to observe him. Shaken and white-knuckled, Pendergast is free — for now — but dreads what form Satan's next attempt will take.

Characters

Good (or All)
Jeremiah Pendergast.

Antagonists

 

Satan

Plus: Demons.

The Witch's Son!

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

In the Hungarian village of Tsigane in 1627, a superstitious mob prepares to burn Marja, an old woman accused of witchcraft, at the stake. A boy named Bela refuses to believe she is a witch — she has always been kind to the villagers — and releases the bears from the cage of traveling bear trainer Petra Brun, scattering the mob. He leads Marja to safety in a cave in the hills, where she rewards him not with gold but with a promise: her son will protect him from all harm and evil for as long as he lives. Bela is skeptical — everyone knows Marja has no son — but agrees to the vow, and also promises never to try to see the son's face. On his way back to the village, a mysterious cloaked figure in blue, mounted on a black horse, appears from nowhere and drives off a crowd that has turned on Bela, whipping them away with a long serpentine whip.

Over the years the cloaked stranger rescues Bela repeatedly — pushing him clear of a falling tree, restraining the village bully, shielding him in battle — always departing before Bela can glimpse his face. Bela grows up, marries Zelda, and finally tells her the full history of his mysterious guardian. Zelda, consumed by curiosity, devises a scheme: she dangles herself from a window as bait. The stranger lunges to catch her, and in that instant Zelda tears away his hat and sees his face — and screams at what she finds beneath it. The cloak falls empty; there is nothing inside. Minutes later the town crier announces that old Marja, one hundred years of age, has just died — at the precise moment Zelda broke Bela's vow. Bela understands at last that Marja's son was never a man but a power only witches possess, and tells Zelda he will never doubt anything again.

The Terror That Creeps

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Explorer and adventurer Russell Sterett addresses the reader directly from his apartment, warning that a horror known only to him now threatens all life on Earth. He has always been obsessed with the Great Sphinx, sensing a living mystery behind its stone face, and eventually travels to Egypt with his guide Kroho Sahk. Inside the Sphinx, beyond any point other men have reached, they discover a colossal wall mural of the evil god Set. Sterett presses forward alone; a blinding blast of fire erupts from the idol's mouth, Kroho Sahk flees, and a hidden chamber opens behind the massive head of Set — revealing a secret room occupied by a living woman of unearthly beauty, the Sphinx herself, a half-human, half-lion demon who was Set's most loyal servant. She declares Sterett her king for unsealing her tomb and awakening her after centuries of sleep.

The Sphinx then recounts her ancient history. In the dim age when Egypt ruled the world under Pharaoh Ta-La-Bokh, he made a pact with Set for conquest. His prime minister Kobh-Mali, the greatest magician in Egypt and Set's enemy, opposed the pact. Set dispatched the Sphinx to wreak devastation: she spread plague, drowned Atlantis beneath the sea, and burned entire civilizations — the ruins that archaeologists dig for today. When Set himself was finally destroyed along with the other gods, Kobh-Mali confronted her and, unable to kill her, imprisoned her soul within a giant stone image of herself in the desert, condemned to watch helplessly through stone eyes as mankind rebuilt and surpassed the world she had destroyed. Centuries passed; man forgot her origin and invented legends to explain the Sphinx. Now she has regained her power, still crawling imperceptibly toward the edge of the desert — a movement no human eye can detect — and when she reaches the edge her full power will return and she will fly to destroy the world in Set's name. She offers Sterett immortality as her king. Overwhelmed by her supernatural allure, he nearly succumbs, but tears himself free and flees. Back in civilization, no one believes his warnings: scientists dismiss the idea that the Sphinx can move, and the story ends with Sterett alone, wild-eyed, while the final panel shows the Sphinx crawling — slowly, inexorably — closer.