Friday, October 17, 2025

Halloween Hospital Horrors ALIEN WORLDS "Wasteland"

To Some Patients, the Most Terrifying Thing About Their Hospital Stay...

...is the poor choice of TV programming the hospital provides!
But when Fate offers some "alternative viewing"...







Scripted by Bruce Jones, and penciled/inked by Tom Yeates, this tale from Pacific Comics' Alien Worlds #5 (1983) combines a nightmare suffered by way too many hospital patients (myself included, during a recent stay) with the classic time travel trope of "don't change anything in the past, no matter how inconsequential, because..."
And if you have to ask "Does this really qualify as a Halloween Hospital Horror?"..well, it takes place in a hospital...and it's horrifying!
Besides, it's my blog!

Friday, October 10, 2025

Halloween Hospital Horrors WITCHES TALES "Tank of Corpses" & TALES OF VOODOO "Satan's Dead Demons"

Did You Know Hospitals Had Floating Corpses En Masse in Tanks of Formaldehyde?

..although not in a swimming pool-type glass tank as shown here!




Though this story from Harvey's Witches Tales #9 (1952), illustrated by Joe Certa, was not reprinted until over a half-century later (in 2012), the script (by an unknown writer) was reused for a redrawn version by Alberto Macagno that appeared only twenty years later in Eerie's b/w anthology magazine Tales of Voodoo V5N6 (1972)...and several subsequent reprintings in other Eerie Publications titles over the years!







I have no idea if the concept of a witch coming back to life if her hair is cut is an actual folk belief or just something conceived by the writer!
But it's kool, eh?

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Friday, October 3, 2025

Halloween Hospital Horrors ADVENTURES INTO TERROR "Body Snatchers"

We Begin Out Our Annual Halloween Presentation...

...with an Example of the Way Colleges and Teaching Hospitals Used to Acquire Specimens for Anatomical Study!
Illustrated by Al Luster and plotted by Stan Lee, this sinister story from Atlas' Adventures in Terror #24 (1953) was typical of the 1950s Horror Age material comics published until Dr Fredric Wertham almost destroyed the comic book business with his Seduction of the Innocent hysteria that inflamed the American Public into believing that "comics caused juvenile delinquency"!

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Friday, September 26, 2025

LINDA LARK: STUDENT NURSE "Introduction"

Writer/artist John Stanley is noted for a number of fascinating, unique, comic book series...

...including, most famously, the comic book version of the newspaper strip Little Lulu!

But he also dabbled in non-humor material creating the ongoing horror anthology Ghost Stories and the one-shot, oversized, Tales from the Tomb, along with this rather unique nursing series which played fast and loose with the genre's cliches and tropes...






With illustrator and co/creator John Tartaglione, John Stanley begins subverting the nursing strip genre from this never-reprinted introductory tale in Dell's Linda Lark: Student Nurse #1 (1961) onward.
She's not desperately-needy (and horny) like Nurse Helen Grant or the neurotic (and horny) Mary Robin R.N. and most other extremely horny comic book nurses!
She's hyper-competent, and actually has a (relatively) normal life outside the hospital!
During her eight-issue run, she was a student nurse, then a registered nurse (in just one issue)!
She also solved crimes, traveled into danger in foreign lands, appeared in a medical TV series...and became the first American woman in space!
Even when they did a story involving her former high school sweetheart who had become a doctor, the story didn't go quite like you'd expect!
And, she'll be replacing Doctor Dan Dazzler, whose series ends in November, as our ongoing feature!

But next week, it's the return of our annual...
Halloween Hospital Horrors Blogathon!
There's never a dull moment around here!

Friday, September 19, 2025

CONFESSIONS OF THE LOVELORN "Someone of My Own!"

Here's a never-reprinted tale that redefines "lovesick"...
...from ACG's Confessions of the LoveLorn #95 (1958)!
Writer Richard Hughes and illustrator Sam Citron add a new twist to the old "steal the doctor from the rich girl whose father is financing his research" plot so common in romance comics!
Support Medical Comics and Stories!
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Halloween Hospital Horrors ALIEN WORLDS "Wasteland"

To Some Patients, the Most Terrifying Thing About Their Hospital Stay... ...is the poor choice of TV programming the hospital provides! But...