(One of the more successful efforts: Magazine Enterprises’ Ghost Rider, which threw the Wild, Wild West into the mix for good measure!)
Breaking a bit from tradition, the Purple Claw wasn’t the name of a mysterious, costumed figure. Rather, it was a mystic gauntlet wielded by the otherwise White-Bread Dr. Jonathan Weir against the forces of darkness
Although the stories lacked the atmosphere and creativity of Fiction House’s Secret Files Of Dr. Drew, the Purple Claw feature was nevertheless good, not-so-clean fun for fans of exploitative pulp-horror.
Today’s story, our last post if the Mayan prophecy turns out to be true, recounts the Claw’s fateful encounter with a femme fatale who has a …. “thing” … for arachnids. What a way to go, right?
“Web Of Horror” originally appeared in The Purple Claw #2 (Toby, March 1953). The art is credited to Ben Brown (pencils) and David Ganz (inks).
As always, the scans are courtesy of the Digital Comic Museum.
If we’re all still around by the end of the day, I’ll wrap up the year with some classic Walt Kelly Christmas comics! Hope to see you later!!
It seems that the artist couldn’t be bothered to remember on which hand the claw went. (See, for example, 4:4 and 4:5.)
Meanwhile, I will beseech you, in the bowels of the Christ!, to link your thumbnails directly to the full-size images. For example, the first thumb-nail is now linked to http://www.flickr.com/photos/timebullet/8295019962/; it would be better linked to https://secure.flickr.com/photos/timebullet/8295019962/sizes/h/ or to https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8218/8295019962_eca111456d_h.jpg.
Not quite sure how it works, but I’ll give it a shot!