Black Cat Comics #62

In "Blue Fire," Bart Wallace’s skeptical tour of Camerillo, Mexico, takes a sudden turn when a mysterious blue light snatches his companion Pedro—only for a passing USAF plane to send the phenomenon fleeing. Drawn into a strange, lingering mystery, Wallace spends weeks chasing the glowing anomaly, eventually firing at it with a rifle, triggering a fire that consumes the town. What follows is a haunting, solitary pursuit, as Wallace remains the last man in Camerillo, still searching for proof of what he saw.

In "The Has-Been," a young captain—barely nineteen—grapples with the weight of his title as he pilots a starship through a final, precarious landing. Though his reflexes are sharp and his pride unshaken, the moment he relinquishes control after a near-miss with a tower, he knows his time in the cockpit is over. The story lingers on the quiet dignity of a pilot who still believes he can fly, even as age and circumstance whisper otherwise.

In "Rope Trick," detective Eric Burnside follows a mysterious lead to India, where a fakir points to a vertical rope stretching into the sky. Climbing the rope, Eric is pulled into a surreal realm where he pursues the elusive Panama Pete—only to find the fugitive aged beyond recognition by the time he’s caught. The story’s dreamlike journey from bustling markets to cloud-bound landscapes unfolds with a quiet, uncanny charm, all written by an unknown hand and illustrated by the artist credited in the original issue.

In "The Man Who Never Smiled," a weary delivery boy named Phil stumbles into a haunting moment when a desperate plea from a woman named Gladys Lloyd pulls him into a memory that defies time. After a routine errand turns eerie, Phil finds himself face to face with a past that refuses to stay buried, leaving him with a secret smile only he can hear.

In "The Last Man on Earth," Claire’s confession to Ken about her feelings sets off a chain of events that takes them deep into the unknown. When Edmond reveals the truck’s strange equipment was meant to grow food, the trio finds themselves in a prehistoric jungle—though not as they expected. Amid giant creatures and a hidden cave, emotions run as wild as the world around them, and a sudden shift in scale changes everything.