[MarkWarner]

If nothing else, last week's Never Again #1, proved that there is actually such as thing as a "a higher class of Charlton", but I think that the bar for this is probably set quite low.

Now, from one of my least favorite genres, to probably my favorite. For This week's choice  I trotted off to our horror category section https://comicbookplus.com/?cbplus=horror and grabbed a book which looks like it may well fit the bill. It is The Tormented #2 which can be found here  https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=39721

As our selected story, I was torn between the cover one "The Devil's Circus" and the first one "Design For Death". So rather than make a choice I figured that combined they are only 13 pages. So, let's do both and maybe make comparisons?

Happy reading!

[SuperScrounge]

Design For Death - The title's a bit of a misnomer, Design For Life would seem more accurate as Leopold has found a way to keep what should be dead alive. Okay storytelling with a more interesting idea.

The Devil's Circus - Eh. Nowhere near as good as the first story. Kind of plods along. Also one would expect a circus run by the Devil to have style, flair, panache instead of being dull.

The Lady in Black - Good.

The Face in the Floor - Eh.

Don't normally comment on the ads, but it was interesting to look at the teams represented on the Major League shirts. Milwaukee Braves (previously Boston, now Atlanta), Cincinnati Redlegs (now just Reds), and the Dodgers logo missing a city name. (When did they move?)

Honeymoon Horror - Okay. The best of the comic stories, although not quite as good as the text story.

An ad for the Giant Kiddie Playhouse. Perfect if you have giant kiddies who need a place to play. ;-)

[paw broon]

Once again, I surprised myself as I quite enjoyed this read.  Design for death was entertaining even if I was sure that Mrs. Nose in the Air was heading for a sticky end.  As a depiction of the the mad artist, this was pretty good and somewhat unsettling.
The Devil's Circus was better than I thought it would be, as I don't like circuses, but this was more about side shows.  The cover of the comic depicts a trapeze act, and, despite looking through the book twice, I could find no trace of it.  Once again the curse of the cover having sfa to do with the interior raises it's ugly head.  I enjoyed the art and the story kept me reading.  A bit careless of the devil to lose one of his attractions, don't you think?
Oddly enough, I enjoyed the mop story, also, with the jannie's increasing madness.
I'll have to start reading more horror titles.

[narfstar]

Hey Mike Roy we have a story called Devil's Circus how about a cover. So from that he made a cover. Nothing to do with the inside but a darn good cover. While I liked the premise for Design it was not a good idea to have the splash give away the whole story. It would have left a little to the imagination if the splash had not been there. The art was pretty good. Mike S does good work on horror stories. He does well with expressive faces. The story was not logical but it did not need to be. It had a good play on the indecisive idea.

[neil meikle]

    One of the benefits of the reading group is certain gems that we have previously overlooked are brought to our attention. I haven't checked through the small publishers section a lot and this had passed me by.             
     As already stated the cover did have nothing to do with any of the stories but that was about par for the course back in the day, even EC was guilty of it a few times.
      This can be immediately forgiven with the splash page for Design For Death, the look on Mrs Van Dells face was priceless. Yes, it's obvious from the word go that she was going to be a victim but the last panel does give the story a kooky kind of twist.
      The Devils Circus was the low point of the comic for me. I agree with SuperScrounge he should have been a bit more flamboyant about it, shouldn't he?
      The Face in the Floor is one of these weird little comedy horror stories that ends up making it's own illogical kind of sense and the artwork is quite appealing.
      With Honeymoon Horror, I can't help thinking that perhaps Alfred Hitchcock used to read the comic, one of the episodes of his TV series was very similar to it indeed. And The Bird Sanctuary from the first issue might have inspired a certain movie of his too.

[bdw]

I liked it, can't go wrong when the comic starts with a Severed head on a platter

baseball shirt ad: This would have been a Brooklyn Dodgers shirt as the Dodgers and Giants both moved to Calif in '58

The Washington Senators depicted (the 1st ones) would become the Minnestota Twins in 1961 I believe)

(a second Washington Senators team was started that became the Texas Rangers in '72 I think)

And note the Philadelphia Athletics (late Kansas City and Now Oakland) and the year of this ad (1954) would have been the 1st year of the Baltimore Orioles (previously the St Louis Browns)

I like how the ad says "Unconditionally GUARANTEED Against Fading Of The Screened Print"  (Hmmm, wonder how they made out with that claim.)

[Morgus]

I must have been the only person who EXPECTED the cover to have nothing to do with the story. It was a good cover, but I couldn't figure out how a story would be able to resolve the situation or work it's way to that...so right away I was figuring it was just an interesting cover that had nothing to do with what would happen. The splash for DESIGN FOR DEATH I liked. You knew what was going to happen, getting there was the fun. THE DEVILS' CIRCUS had some good art. (Hey, by the way...the hero of that one seems to remind me of someone...is there a comic book artist or publisher that this might be based on??) FACE IN THE FLOOR was ruined because I could not get around the idea that there would be enough hair to make a decent mop. And, really, how much would a mop COST?? You've already killed her, just grab her purse. HONEYMOON HORROR really did look like an episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK, Neil. I think he owed these guys lunch...All in all a great read. Nice art, that would not have been out of place in an E.C. Hey, Krac' think how much those t shirts of long gone teams would sell for today! Some of those logos were really cool. You could clean up with a couple of boxes of them. but no power on earth could make me wear that Ronnie Sales girdle in a locker room.

[SuperScrounge]

Thanks for the info in the baseball teams, Krac. 

I guess no one else scrolled down to look at the GCD info because some indexer had this bit of info on Honeymoon Horror.

The plot of this story is virtually identical to the story "Revenge" by Samuel Blas, which appeared in Collier's Weekly, January 11, 1947, and was adapted to an episode of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television show in 1955. The same plot was used for the story "Revenge" in Witches Tales (Harvey, 1951 Series) 21(October 1953).

[neil meikle]

    O.K. SuperScrounge I made a mistake, thanks for putting me right but I think my comment about The Bird Sanctuary still holds though. There is still the possibility that this is where he first encountered the story.

[crashryan]

Not a bad little scare-fest. Many horror comics from this period have covers that don't relate to the interior stories, so I wasn't surprised. I'll bet narf's scenario--"Hey, Mike!"--is right on.

"Design for Death:" The story is so-so but Bill Ely's artwork makes it look ten times better than it is. Ely draws wonderful character faces. His snooty society dame is just perfect. The story itself would have been better if it didn't give away the surprise in the splash.

"The Devil's Circus" looks great because of Mike Sekowsky's artwork. Except for the circus itself, that is. That is pitifully cheap. I have a problem with "Devil pulls a dirty trick" stories. I guess not every victim has to deserve his fate. However I prefer even Satan to make the punishment fit the crime. Being unable to make up one's mind doesn't seem to me the sort of thing that rates eternal damnation. Anyway I'm surprised the writer didn't drive the point home by referring to George "being of two minds" about things.

"The Face on the Floor" is kind of silly. Strange that the narration switches from second-person to third-person for a couple of panels. I'm not crazy about Mike Roy but his art is a good fit for the story.

I'm sorry to learn "Honeymoon Horror" was ripped off from someone's story. It's a great concept and Mike Sekowsky does a fine art job. The only sour note is the closing narration, which makes it sound like Ed is a crazy serial killer. Very satisfying all the same. It's hard to identify Sekowsky inkers. Could this one be Mike Peppe?

Hey, my brother and I had a pair of those Rocket Radios! Good old cat-whisker crystal sets. We discovered that by speaking into the earphone we could broadcast to the other radio. The range was only a couple of feet. Not sure why that worked. Or whether it did work. We might have been fooling ourselves.

A pleasant read over all.

[NarutoWilson123101]

I liked the story about the dead girl talking about how she knew the guy and telling Ed to kill them

[Squishy]

It reminded me alot of American horror story

[Thumper_and_squishy]

Good comic .

[Morgus]

Hey, Neil...forgot to get back to you about THE BIRDS. That one I know about...it was a short story first, by Daphne du Maurier...she wrote REBECCA and that one was Hitchcock's first American film. THE BIRDS was published in  early 50's. My English teacher said it's supposed to be a metaphor about the threat of communism in the 50's...okay...Anyway, Hitch got the idea to depart from the short story when he read about this small town in California. Flocks of birds had been poisoned and rammed themselves into windows and buildings and killing themselves. it was close enough to the short story by du Maurier for Hitchcock to make a link and wonder 'what if?'. By the way, that first bit at the start of the movie? Where Hedren and Taylor do that schtick with the birds in a cage? it was a reference to a joke between Peter Lorre and Hitchcock. One gave the other one bird, and the other gave them two birds back. It went on arms-race style until (I think it was Lorre) filled Hitchcocks' living room with birds and winning the battle of wills.

[MarkWarner]

The first impression with The Tormented #2 is what a great cover it has!

Design For Death: The head on the plate looks just like an actress who played slightly dizzy rich dames in 30s/40s comedy films. I don