Astonishing #7

Atlas Comics' Astonishing was delivering some of the most unsettling supernatural anthology work of 1951, and issue #7 is a prime example — the cover by Joe Maneely depicts a terrified woman bolting upright in bed, crying out that she knows she's awake yet can still feel a clammy hand on her shoulder, while a hulking, cloaked phantom looms directly behind her with its grasping claws inches away. The left panel strip teases three additional tales — "They Dwell in Darkness," "Out of My Mind," and "Paid in Full" — promising a full evening of supernatural dread. Maneely's linework captures that perfect blend of domestic vulnerability and encroaching horror that made this era of "Astonishing Stories of the Supernatural" so genuinely creepy.