Haunt of Fear #19
"Sucker Bait!" is a chilling tale from Haunt of Fear #19 (1953), a standout story written by Al Feldstein and illustrated with stark precision by Jack Kamen, whose inks and Marie Severin’s colors heighten the dread. This grim fairy tale unfolds with a king’s forbidden love, a betrayal born of jealousy, and a vengeance that twists mercy into horror—delivered with EC’s signature blend of moral ambiguity and unsettling art. The cover, a masterwork by Graham Ingels, captures the story’s dark allure in haunting detail.
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In this grim fairy tale an old king finds a young girl to marry and is deeply in love with her but cannot offer her the physical relationship she needs, so she takes a lover. Three court ladies who are very jealous of her find out and inform the king. The king's honor has been insulted, and so his queen and her lover must pay with their lives, but the king truly loved her deeply and is heartbroken. He makes the three women who ruined his happiness pay by blinding one, deafening the other, and cutting the tongue out of the third.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).