All right, after being largely disappointed by the first two issue of the new Boris Karloff Gold Key Mysteries title, I figured I owed it to myself to go back and read an issue of the ORIGINAL series.
Here's the (awesome) cover of my most recent acquisition, issue #19 of "Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery," published in 1967!
How freaking great is that? And, as I mentioned in the previous posts, doesn't logo look better with Boris's head incorporated into it, allowing the excellent cover painting to focus solely on some of the issue's actual story content? Yes. Yes, it does.
AND, this being a classic Gold Key comic book, the back cover features that same painting, unobscured by trade dress:
We are already off to a better start here, folks. At this point, the modern day version of the series should already be taking much better notes than it has been.
But okay, that's the cover. Common "wisdom" these days on the interwebs is that Gold Key books were filled with sadly disappointing content once you got beyond those beautiful covers.
I have always been bewildered by that nonsense, as I never recalled the Gold Key/Whitman books of my day feeling let let downs at all.
But, hey: my memory is pretty crappy, right? So let's see what we find within the actual pages of THIS issue and find out if my nostalgia has been giving the new series a bad rap.
Spoiler: my memory is fine (in this case). The new series gets no slack here.
We open with the 13 page cover story about a strangler that has been terrorizing a hospital. Turns out, the killer WORKS there!
And he also looks almost exactly like Hong Kong Phooey's boss, as voiced by and modeled on actor Jon E. Ross:
A surgeon's hand is ruined in the shootout that ends the strangler's life, and as you may have guessed, an emergency operation is performed to replace that surgeon's hand with....one of the hands of the recently deceased strangler!
Over the course of the next several pages, our hand-transplanted surgeon ("Dan," apparently) is driven to despair by the strangler's hand, which apparently has a menacing mind of its own!
One visit to a fortune teller and one cruise ship voyage later, and Dan has the strangler's hand removed at sea! Upon its amputation, the severed appendage changes into a demonic claw!
And that's just the opener, folks.
What follows is an actually interesting text piece telling the true life tale of a "jinxed" zeppelin, some pretty bad attempts at "humor" strips, and then a four-page story called:
"The Dragon Tattoo." In this tale, a racist jackass of a white Navy sailor bullies a Hong Kong artist into giving him a Red Dragon tattoo that is only meant for members of the Imperial lineage. The surly sailor gets his supernatural comeuppance, and the very unfortunately drawn artist gets the satisfaction her deserves. A surprisingly anti-racist tale, hampered by, as I mentioned, the very much not okay way that the aggrieved artist is rendered. Ah, 1967.
The last story in the issue is "The Ghost Champ," an 8-pager in which a dirty boxer uses an inside tip that results in the accidental death of an opponent. "Accident" or not, that fallen foe returns to not only haunt our cheating chump, but to beat him til his ribs are broken, and then whisper a ghostly hint into the ears of the champ's next contender. Fallen but not fatally so, the ghost reminds the "champ" that he'll always be there by his side if he's somehow considering a comeback...
Three stories, all with actually satisfying narrative content! And great art! Who'd'a thunk it?
What's more, the issue features a one-page "picture dictionary" science fact lesson about the magnetic pole, as well as two short illustrated horror essays on the inside of each cover!
Gotta say, new Gold Key: OG Gold Key is making you look pretty bad.
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