CGC certified: VG- (3.5). Off-white to white pages. Iger Shop art.
Death plays a merry tune on the cover, compelling snakes with human heads to perform a polonaise of horror ("Writhe away, little pawns! I never tire of the Dance of Death when I play this enchanting dirge!"). Inside you'll find ghosts, druids, a seaweed monster, suicide by stiletto, zombies, poisonings, devil dogs who crave human kibble, etc.
The cover's danse macabre theme echoes that of the first issue (see preceding lot), and allows one to draw parallels between the morbid preoccupations of the pre-Code era and those of the Late Middle Ages. As writer David J. Skal notes, "The cataclysm of the plague in the Middle Ages had given momentum to the Dance of Death as a major cultural motif; the imagery of American horror comics in postwar America presented a strikingly similar popular aesthetic. Like the woodcuts of Hans Holbein the Younger, this new danse macabre took advantage of easily reproducible line art to disseminate images of rotting, revenant corpses who carry off the living." (The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. NY: 1993).
CGC census: Only copy in this grade. Comparable CGC sales: None. Closest result: 2.5 sold for $293 (March 2019). Few recent results.
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